A real-time pricing scheme in power market with renewable energy considering different advertising attractiveness

Increasing renewable energy and intensifying competition are becoming common in smart grid. How to make decisions to consistently attract users for power retailers has gradually become one of research focuses. However, the coordination of sustained attracting different types of users, competition among power retailers, and demand response between power retailers and users in continuous time has not been adequately considered. In view of the above gaps, this paper develops a real-time pricing scheme combined with advertising attractiveness by constructing the Stackelberg differential game model. Furthermore, this paper also explores the relationship between the maximum revenue of power retailers and advertising costs under this scheme, as well as the changes in users’ consumption of renewable energy after advertising intervention. Numerical simulations show that there is a significant non-monotonic relationship between the maximum revenue and price of power retailers and the advertising cost parameters, indicating that the increase in advertising investment does not always lead to a linear growth in revenue, but presents an obvious segmented feature. Under this scheme, the consumption of renewable energy by users is far greater than that of thermal power, which reflects the enhanced environmental awareness of users. Furthermore, the gap in advertising investment among different power retailers has a significant impact on their maximum revenue.