Demand Response Aggregator Participation Strategies in the French Electric Day-Ahead Market

This paper focuses on providing tools for the Demand Response Aggregator (DRA) and establishing an optimised strategy to maximise expected revenues. The authors concentrate on the French market, where the role of the Aggregator has been operational for several years, providing Demand Response and enabling demand flexibility. A thorough analysis is conducted of the mechanism through which DRAs participate in the Day-Ahead Market (DAM) to trade energy in the form of flexibility. This mechanism operates under defined rules, allowing DRAs to employ certain strategies and optimise their operations. Under this premise, the French context is analysed, and a DAM price predictor is defined to estimate prices before the DAM closure time. This, combined with existing mechanisms, enables the DRA to anticipate and implement its bidding strategy. As a result, the potential earnings that the DRA could achieve are quantified and analised, which can subsequently incentivise and mobilise end consumers to offer flexibility to the system. The DAM price predictor provides robust results and is a tool that a DRA can utilise.