Operations planning of a hydro producer acting as a price-maker in an electricity market

Renewable energy integration is gradually increasing in several European countries, such as Portugal and Spain, aiming to reduce emissions in power system operations. Particularly, significant investments in hydro energy systems are envisaged in Portugal, representing a secure and reliable energy source towards sustainable development. Additionally, a pool market structure implies that producers should aim at maximizing profits on a day-ahead basis. Usually, hydro power producers have been considered as price-takers, accepting the price signal as input data. Instead, a MILP approach is provided in this paper to determine the operations planning of a hydro producer acting as a price-maker in a day-ahead electricity market. A realistic case study is presented, based on a hydro energy system in cascaded configuration characterized by spatial-temporal interdependency between reservoirs, in order to thoroughly evaluate the expertise of the proposed approach.