Multistep Electricity Price in Electricity Market in Smart Grid

The multistep electricity price (MEP) policy has been introduced to promote energy saving, load balancing, and fairness in electricity consumption. Nonetheless, with the development of the smart grid, how to determine the quantity of electricity and at what price in a step-like fashion has not been fully investigated in the past. To address this issue, we introduced two types of MEP models: a one-dimensional MEP model and a two-dimensional MEP model in this study, which can be used to formally analyze and determine the desirable quantities of electricity and pricing in multiple steps. Particularly, in the one-dimensional MEP model, the steps are scaled only by the quantity of electricity whereas in the two-dimensional MEP model, the steps are scaled by both the quantity of electricity and the time when the electricity is used. Based on the proposed MEP models, we further investigated the vulnerability of the electricity market operation, systematically analyzed data integrity attacks (six cases) against electricity prices and charges to consumers. Through a combination of theoretical analysis and simulation study, our data shows that the proposed MEP models can achieve fairness in electricity consumption, balance loads between peak and non-peak times, and improve electricity resource utilization. Our data also indicates that data integrity attacks can only partially compromise prices in our MEP models, leading to a limited impact on users’ charges.