First Guarantees of Origin auctions held by Powernext

Guarantees of Origin (GOs) are green certificates that allow power retailers to certify the nature of the energy sold to their customers, in particular in their commercial offers for green electricity. In France GO’s lifecycle is tracked in a national registry.

The French Department of Energy (DGEC) has appointed Powernext for holding this national registry and for organizing monthly auctions to sell the Guarantees of Origin issued from French renewable power plants under feed-in-tariffs. The GO auctions will help the French State get a new added value from these devices while providing bidders with competitive and tailor-made products. The first auction was successfully held by Powernext on September the 18th.

The auction platform uses a market clearing algorithm designed by Powernext and Artelys and implemented by Artelys for the selection of offers. This algorithm allows GO buyers to differentiate their bids based on technologies, regions, or even specific devices. The market clearing algorithm selects the optimal offers with regards to the auction revenue and equity maximization.

Artelys Knitro is the optimization solver used in the market clearing algorithm and is able to solve the problem in less than a minute.

The press release is available here.