{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T04:13:20Z","timestamp":1760242400305,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":50,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2017,6,30]],"date-time":"2017-06-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1498780800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Energies"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The deregulation of the electricity sector has culminated in the introduction of competitive markets. In addition, the emergence of new forms of electric energy production, namely the production of renewable energy, has brought additional changes in electricity market operation. Renewable energy has significant advantages, but at the cost of an intermittent character. The generation variability adds new challenges for negotiating players, as they have to deal with a new level of uncertainty. In order to assist players in their decisions, decision support tools enabling assisting players in their negotiations are crucial. Artificial intelligence techniques play an important role in this decision support, as they can provide valuable results in rather small execution times, namely regarding the problem of optimizing the electricity markets participation portfolio. This paper proposes a heuristic method that provides an initial solution that allows metaheuristic techniques to improve their results through a good initialization of the optimization process. Results show that by using the proposed heuristic, multiple metaheuristic optimization methods are able to improve their solutions in a faster execution time, thus providing a valuable contribution for players support in energy markets negotiations.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/en10070883","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,6,30]],"date-time":"2017-06-30T10:04:58Z","timestamp":1498817098000},"page":"883","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["An Ad-Hoc Initial Solution Heuristic for Metaheuristic Optimization of Energy Market Participation Portfolios"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"10","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1053-7720","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ricardo","family":"Faia","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Research Group on Intelligent Engineering and Computing for Advanced Innovation and Development (GECAD), Institute of Engineering, Polytechnic of Porto (ISEP\/IPP), Rua Dr. Ant\u00f3nio Bernardino de Almeida, 431, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8248-080X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Tiago","family":"Pinto","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Research Group on Intelligent Engineering and Computing for Advanced Innovation and Development (GECAD), Institute of Engineering, Polytechnic of Porto (ISEP\/IPP), Rua Dr. Ant\u00f3nio Bernardino de Almeida, 431, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"},{"name":"Bioinformatics, Intelligent Systems and Educational Technology (BISITE) Research Centre, University of Salamanca, Calle Espejo, s\/n, 37007 Salamanca, Spain"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4560-9544","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Zita","family":"Vale","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Research Group on Intelligent Engineering and Computing for Advanced Innovation and Development (GECAD), Institute of Engineering, Polytechnic of Porto (ISEP\/IPP), Rua Dr. Ant\u00f3nio Bernardino de Almeida, 431, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2829-1829","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Juan","family":"Corchado","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Bioinformatics, Intelligent Systems and Educational Technology (BISITE) Research Centre, University of Salamanca, Calle Espejo, s\/n, 37007 Salamanca, Spain"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,6,30]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Sioshansi, F. 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