Pricing policies for cooperation in the Smart-Grid

In this thesis work it will be investigated the possibility to adopt pricing policies in order to drive the energy consumption towards optimization limiting at the same time the carbon emissions of the "players" in the electric Smart Grid. The thesis proceeds in the following way. In the first chapter the concept of "cooperation" is presented: even if it is often considered more a sociological than mathematical concept, Game Theory and Evolutionary Game Theory offer a frame in which it can be given a precise definition. Hence some concepts of the game-theoretical "language" will be given, together with a first theoretical attempt to provide a solution to the Energy Dispatch problem with a proper pricing policy. The second chapter provides an overview of the electric grid from the technical point of view, showing how some disrupting technologies developed in the last decade are rapidly changing it. In the third chapter, the electric grid will be described from the point of view of the energy market, describing how it actually works, who are the actors in it and why it is also rapidly changing in a more "prosumer" focused direction. The fourth and fifth chapters instead are devoted to the description of two computational models for the Smart-Grid. At first it will be considered the possibility to develop a model for the integration of nuclear power with renewable technologies aiming at underlining their complementarity : based on given electricity and water demand and on given wind and solar profiles, a Genetic Algorithm will be used for the optimization of electricity production, with the possibility to connect the nuclear plant to a desalination Plant to cover the water demand. In the following chapter instead, it will be considered how a central entity might drive the electricity demand through different price signals and the use of smart appliances, preserving at the same time consumers’ privacy. The sixth chapter aims at revealing the more common policies publicly adopted for climate change, with a special focus on the European Union and its pivotal ETS. Sadly, none of these policies has obtained relevant goals up to now, so it will be given another point of view to tackle the climate change problem.