Flexible Market for a Smart Grid: Coordinated Trading of Contingent Contracts

A coordinated trading process is proposed as a design of an electricity market with significant uncertainty, perhaps from renewables. Groups of agents propose to the system operator (SO) a contingent buy and sell trade that is balanced. The SO accepts the trade if it is feasible, else the SO curtails the trade. There is no price. The process converges to a Pareto optimal allocation. The trading process is much more flexible than current two-stage markets. It removes from ISO its market maker role but retains its role as coordinator for system reliability.