Externalities in the games over electrical power transmission networks

An electrical transmission network consists of producers, consumers and the power lines connecting them. We build an ideal (lossless) DC load flow model as a cooperative game over a graph with the producers and consumers located at the nodes, each described by a maximum supply or desired demand and the power lines represented by the edges, each with a given power transmission capacity and admittance value describing its ability to transmit electricity. Today's transmission networks are highly interconnected, but organisationally partitioned into several subnetworks, the so-called balancing groups with balanced production and consumption. We study the game of balancing group formation and show that the game contains widespread externalities that can be both negative and positive. We study the stability of the transportation network using the recursive core. While the game is clearly cohesive, we demonstrate that it is not necessarily superadditive. We argue that subadditivity may be a barrier to achieve full cooperation. Finally the model is extended to allow for the extension of the underlying transmission network.