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Turn Electric Market Complexity into Profit with AMPL Optimization

Turn Electric Market Complexity into Profit with AMPL Optimization
The modern electric power industry faces unprecedented complexity—from renewable variability and decentralized assets to volatile markets and aging infrastructure. Grid operators and asset owners must now make high-stakes decisions across planning, operations, and markets while balancing reliability, cost, and decarbonization.
Static analyses are buckling under this pressure, leading to suboptimal decisions, hidden risks, and missed value.
AMPL cuts through technical and market complexity and provides the critical foundation for better decisions.
Our solution includes a scalable optimization platform, proven power-sector modeling frameworks, and deep expert consulting—transforming data and operational complexity into actionable clarity, market and regulatory risk into a portfolio opportunity, and grid constraints into a competitive advantage for your assets. The result: faster, more transparent, and more profitable decision-making for your most critical challenges.
 
Discover how AMPL solves specific industry challenges:

Unit Commitment and Economic Dispatch

Turn Electric Market Complexity into Profit with AMPL Optimization
– Description: Deciding which generating units to turn on/off (commitment) and at what power level (dispatch) for the next day/week to meet demand at the lowest possible cost, respecting operational and physical constraints, and
ensuring adequate reserve capacity to reliably serve load.
– Solution: The core daily operational optimization model for grid operators and generator owners, solved hourly or daily.
– Outcome: Minimized generation costs (fuel, start-up), enhanced operational efficiency, and reliable short-term grid balance.
Example Models:

Generation Capacity Expansion and Reserve Management

Turn Electric Market Complexity into Profit with AMPL Optimization

– Description: Determining where, when, and what type of generation/energy storage to build while ensuring adequate reserve margins to meet future demand and reliability standards cost-effectively.

– Solution: A strategic, long-horizon optimization model that co-optimizes capital investment decisions with operational reserve requirements under uncertainty (demand, renewables, fuel prices).
– Outcome: Risk-informed capital planning, lower total system cost, and defensible reliability outcomes.
Example Models:

Optimal Power Flow (OPF)

Turn Electric Market Complexity into Profit with AMPL Optimization

– Description: Calculating the most efficient, real-time operating point for an electric power network by adjusting generator outputs and other controls to minimize cost or losses while respecting all physical line and voltage limits.

– Solution: The fundamental real-time or look-ahead physics-based optimization for grid control, ensuring a secure and economical dispatch that respects AC (or DC) power flow equations.
– Outcome: Minimized system losses and operating costs, maximized grid capacity utilization, and ensured voltage stability and security.
Example Models:

Locational Marginal Pricing

Turn Electric Market Complexity into Profit with AMPL Optimization
– Description: Determining the real-time price of electricity at different nodes in the grid, reflecting the cost of supplying the next increment of demand at a specific location while accounting for generation costs, demand, and transmission system limits.
– Solution: The mechanism that establishes real-time wholesale energy prices, calculated continuously or at short intervals (e.g., every 5-15 minutes)
– Outcome: Efficient price signals that reflect grid conditions, incentivize optimal generation and consumption, manage congestion, and support the reliable and economic dispatch of electricity.
Example Models:

Hydrothermal Scheduling

Turn Electric Market Complexity into Profit with AMPL Optimization

– Description: Coordinating the dispatch of hydro reservoirs (with seasonal water inflows) with thermal plants to maximize the value of stored water over weeks/months/years, considering volatility in hydrology and market prices.

– Solution: A multi-stage stochastic optimization model that schedules water releases to displace costly fossil fuel generation, valuing water as stored energy.
– Outcome: Maximized hydro value and system savings, improved water management, and reduced thermal fuel consumption and emissions.

Power Generation Portfolio Management

Turn Electric Market Complexity into Profit with AMPL Optimization

– Description: Optimizing a portfolio of generation assets to maximize the producer surplus considering a mixed-generation fleet (e.g., wind, solar, gas, hydro-reservoir, hydro-run-of-river, storage) across volatile markets.

– Solution: An optimization model that maximizes portfolio profit, considering several assets with their own competing characteristics.
– Outcome: Optimal reservoir management considering seasonal patterns, thermal dispatch accounting for generation costs, optimal use of renewable and storage sources, over a medium-term planning horizon.

Strategic Bidding via Bilevel Optimization

Turn Electric Market Complexity into Profit with AMPL Optimization
– Description: Model complex pricing and bidding options in electrical markets where multiple decision makers may have different optimization metrics, accounting for their strategic behavior through a bilevel optimization lens.
– Solution: Advanced game-theoretic models that simulate market clearing to forecast prices and generate optimal bidding strategies for physical and financial positions.
– Outcome: Increased bid profitability, and improved market position through anticipatory and high-quality bidding.
Example Models:

Network Design

Turn Electric Market Complexity into Profit with AMPL Optimization

– Description: Planning where and when to build or reinforce transmission and distribution lines, substations, or other grid infrastructure to cost-effectively integrate new generation, meet load growth, and improve reliability.

– Solution: A strategic optimization model for long-term grid infrastructure investment, evaluating trade-offs between capital cost, operational efficiency, and reliability metrics.

– Outcome: Future-proofed, resilient grid infrastructure with optimized CapEx and reduced long-term congestion and loss costs.
Example Models:

➡️ Explore more models at colab.ampl.com or contact us to schedule a demo.

Why AMPL?

AMPL delivers unparalleled advantages to accelerate your optimization workflow:
– Solver Independence & Flexibility: Build optimization models once, solve with any solver (commercial or open-source) – without rewriting code.
– Seamless Enterprise Integration: Deploy your models directly into your production workflow, software stack, or data processing pipeline using robust APIs or the Python ecosystem.
– High-Performance Computation: Solve large-scale, complex models with exceptional speed, powered by efficient integration with world-class solvers.
– Expert-Led Consulting & Support: Leverage AMPL’s industry-specific expertise—not just software support. Our team includes optimization specialists who understand power systems, helping you refine all formulations, tune solver parameters for stochastic planning, and architect production deployment for market operations.
– Extensive Model Library: Jump-start projects with a vast open library of 100+ ready-to-use, customizable optimization models.
– Long-Term Partnership & Stability: Rely on a stable, well-supported platform and a commitment to your long-term success.

Start Your Optimization Journey

🔗 Or book a meeting to explore tailored solutions for your electric power challenges.

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Mikhail Riabtsev

Marketing team