Construction Mechanism for the Short-term Electricity Capacity Market

As a central power hub in China, Hubei Province’s power market reform is of great significance to regional energy security and sustainable economic development. This paper focuses on the construction mechanism of Hubei Province’s shortterm capacity market. By constructing a decision-making model for the number of unit startups and capacity prices, it explores the optimal resource allocation problem of the short-term capacity market. The study divides Hubei Province into five power generation nodes based on geographical and other characteristics, introduces a discount factor $\alpha$ and a quadratic cost function, establishes a profit maximization model, solves for the optimal number of startups, and analyzes its linear relationship with capacity prices. The results show that the optimal number of startups at each node adjusts positively with capacity prices, but is constrained by the total number of startups and non-negativity conditions. This study provides a theoretical basis for the design of Hubei Province’s short-term capacity market mechanism and has reference value for balancing power supply and demand and optimizing power generation resource allocation.