Synergy Among Flexible Demands: Forming a Coalition to Earn More from Reserve Market

We address potential synergy among flexible demands and how they may earn more collectively than individually by forming a coalition and bidding to the reserve market. We consider frequency-supporting ancillary service markets, particularly the manual Frequency Restoration Reserve (mFRR) market. The coalition of flexible demands provides more reliable mFRR services, where in comparison to individual demands, is penalized less for their potential failure and is paid more for their successful activation. This synergy effect is quantified as a function of the number of homogeneous assets in the coalition. A subsequent payment allocation mechanism using Shapley values is proposed to distribute the total earnings of the coalition among demands, while incentivizing them to remain in the coalition. For our numerical study, we use real price data from the Danish mFRR market in 2022.