Multi-Market Joint Trading of Distributed Resource Aggregators Considering a Carbon–Green Certificate Linkage Mechanism

Abstract

To address the coupling among bidding decisions, resource allocation, and coordinated utilization of environmental rights for distributed resource aggregators in multiple markets, including the energy market, peak regulation ancillary service market, carbon trading market, and tradable green certificate market, this paper proposes a bi-level optimization model for multi-market joint trading considering a limited carbon–green certificate linkage mechanism. First, a quantitative mapping relationship between the emission reduction attribute of surplus green certificates and carbon emission reduction is established, and an upper limit constraint on the offset ratio is introduced to describe the limited conversion of green certificate environmental attributes into carbon emission reduction value. Second, an upper-level bidding model for the distributed resource aggregator is constructed, aiming at profit maximization while considering revenues from the energy, peak regulation ancillary service, carbon trading, and green certificate markets, as well as the operational constraints of gas turbines, energy storage, and flexible loads. This model characterizes the aggregator’s joint bidding strategy and internal resource coordination. Then, a lower-level unified market clearing model is developed to minimize system operating cost and simulate the segmented bidding and unified clearing process of the aggregator, wind power, and thermal power units in the energy and peak regulation ancillary service markets. Finally, the bi-level model is transformed into a solvable single-level model using the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions and the Big-M method, and case studies are conducted to verify its effectiveness. The numerical results show that under the complete multi-market mechanism, the distributed resource aggregator (DRA) obtains a net profit of 2245.03 yuan, which is higher than 1450.33 yuan in the scenario without the carbon–green certificate mechanism and 773.48 yuan in the energy-only scenario. The wind curtailment rate decreases from 8.53% in the energy-only scenario to 2.71%, and the carbon emissions accounted for within the DRA boundary are reduced to 2865.40 kg. Although the price-taker scenario obtains a slightly higher net profit of 2300.20 yuan, its average regulation price reaches 455.20 yuan/MWh, compared with 412.50 yuan/MWh under the proposed model, indicating that the proposed strategy achieves a better balance between aggregator revenue and system-side regulation cost.