Optimal electricity price calculation model for retailers in a deregulated market

The electricity retailing, a new business in deregulated electric power systems, needs the development of efficient tools to optimize its operation. This paper defines a technical-economic model of an electric energy service provider in the environment of the deregulated electricity market in Spain. This model results in an optimization problem, for calculating the optimal electric power and energy selling prices that maximize the economic profits obtained by the provider. This problem is applied to different cases, where the impact on the profits of several factors, such as the price strategy, the discount on tariffs and the elasticity of customer demand functions, is studied.