Know your tools - a comparison of two open agent-based energy market models

Due to the transition to renewable energies, electricity markets need to be made fit for purpose. To enable the comparison of different energy market designs, modeling tools covering market actors and their heterogeneous behavior are needed. Agent-based models are ideally suited for this task. Such models can be used to simulate and analyze changes to market design or market mechanisms and their impact on market dynamics. In this paper, we conduct an evaluation and comparison of two actively developed open-source energy market simulation models. The two models, namely AMIRIS and ASSUME, are both designed to simulate future energy markets using an agent-based approach. The assessment encompasses modelling features and techniques, model performance, as well as a comparison of model results, which can serve as a blueprint for future comparative studies of simulation models. The main comparison dataset includes data of Germany in 2019 and simulates the Day-Ahead market and participating actors as individual agents. Both models are comparable close to the benchmark dataset with a MAE between 5.6 and 6.4 (sic)/MWh while also modeling the actual dispatch realistically.