A Game Theoretic Approach for Distributed Energy Trading in District Energy Networls

In this paper, an analytical model of multi-leader multi-follower (MLMF) Stackelberg game between the integrat-ed energy systems (IESs) and the end users (EUs) in district energy networks is proposed in order to explore the interactions between the two parties, under the environment of perfect competitive energy markets. In this model, the IESs lead the game by independently deciding the amounts of natural-gas input for generation of both the electricity and cooling energies and jointly setting the energy prices. While the EUs, play as followers pursuing their own maximum welfares in a selfish way by determining the energy demands based on the energy prices the IESs announced. We show that the leaders game follows a supermodular game, which finally reaches a unique Nash Equilibrium (NE). We derive the closed-form expression of the Stackelberg Equilibrium (SE) of the game between IESs and EUs. The existence and uniqueness of SE are also proved. A distributed algorithm is employed to obtain the SE of this game. Numerical results obtained on a five IESs and ten EUs system demonstrates the validity of the proposed energy trading scheme as well as the efficiency of the distributed algorithm.