Regularized Equilibrium Problems with Equilibrium Constraints with Application to Energy Markets

Abstract

Equilibrium problems with equilibrium constraints are appropriate modeling formulations in a number of important areas, such as energy markets, transportation planning, and logistics. These models often correspond to bilevel games, in which certain dual variables, representing the equilibrium price, play a fundamental role. We consider multileader single-follower equilibrium problems having a linear program in the lower level. Because in this setting the lower-level response to the leaders' decisions may not be unique, the game formulation becomes ill-posed. We resolve possible ambiguities by considering a sequence of bilevel equilibrium problems, endowed with a special regularization term. We prove convergence of the approximating scheme. Our technique proves useful numerically over several instances related to energy markets. When using PATH to solve the corresponding mixed complementarity formulations, we exhibit that, in the given context, the regularization approach computes a genuine equilibrium price almost always, while without regularization the outcome is quite the opposite.