Optimal electricity procurement of large consumers considering power purchase agreements and demand response services

This Ph.D. thesis deals with electricity procurement for large consumers, specifically for those belonging to the cement industry. Under an uncertain and volatile environment, like the electricity sector, this Ph.D. thesis tries to help these large consumers to optimize their energy spend by means of some available sources, like the power purchase agreements (PPAs), the demand response (DR) services and the use of on-site photovoltaic (PV) plants and energy storage facilities. Although most of the considered concepts regarding the electricity sector presented in this Ph.D. thesis are applicable in Europe, the focus of this work is primarily on the Spanish power system. Three mathematical optimization models are provided. The results of the research are presented in three journal papers. Two and three-stage stochastic programming approaches are developed to face the uncertainties. The risk aversion is modeled using the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR). In order to reduce solution times, a clustering procedure is employed to reduce the number of periods used to characterize the target year, and a scenario reduction technique is applied to trim down the number of scenarios used to represent the uncertain parameters.