Fair Play
Stateful scarcity allocation with fairness over time.
Fair Play
Overview
Most of the time, electricity markets do not need to decide between participants.
If sufficient energy and network capacity exist, every feasible request can be satisfied. The Automatic Market Maker coordinates supply and demand through prices, while Holarchical Coordination ensures the resulting schedule remains physically feasible.
In these operating conditions, Fair Play remains inactive.
Fair Play is only activated when the electricity system encounters a genuine physical imbalance that cannot be resolved through prices alone.
This occurs when there is either:
- Scarcity, where demand exceeds the available energy or network capacity, or
- Abundance, where available generation exceeds demand or export capability.
In these situations, the system must determine how limited resources should be allocated or how surplus should be managed.
Fair Play provides the framework for making these decisions transparently, consistently and fairly.
Why Fair Play Exists
Economic optimisation alone cannot resolve every situation.
Once all feasible and economically efficient schedules have been identified, there may still be multiple valid ways to allocate the remaining shortage or surplus.
Traditional electricity markets often resolve these situations using simple priority rules, deterministic queues or willingness-to-pay.
While these approaches are straightforward, they can repeatedly favour the same participants, creating persistent disadvantage over time.
FP-AMM instead treats fairness as an explicit system objective.
Fair Play ensures that unavoidable scarcity and abundance are shared across participants according to transparent rules that respect contractual commitments while preventing repeated unfair outcomes.
Operating Principle
Fair Play does not replace market pricing or economic optimisation.
Instead, it operates as the final allocation layer after:
- prices have been determined,
- network feasibility has been verified,
- Service Levels have established contractual priorities.
Only when the market reaches the physical limits of the electricity system does Fair Play determine how the remaining imbalance should be distributed.
This separation ensures that economics determines efficient operation wherever possible, while fairness governs only those situations where the market cannot satisfy every participant simultaneously.
Two Modes of Operation
Fair Play operates symmetrically under two conditions.
Scarcity Allocation
When insufficient energy or network capacity exists to satisfy every request, Fair Play determines how the available resource should be shared.
It allocates service according to contractual Service Levels while ensuring that the burden of repeated shortages is distributed fairly across participants over time.
Fair Curtailment
When more generation is available than the system can safely accommodate, Fair Play determines how generation reductions should be shared.
Rather than repeatedly curtailing the same participants, the mechanism distributes curtailment fairly while preserving economically efficient and physically feasible operation.
Fairness Over Time
Fairness within FP-AMM is not measured at a single instant.
Instead, Fair Play continuously maintains a record of previous allocation outcomes and uses this information during future allocation decisions.
Participants that have historically received less favourable outcomes gradually receive greater priority during subsequent scarcity events.
Likewise, participants that have consistently benefited become marginally more likely to contribute during future shortages or curtailments.
This creates a self-correcting allocation process that balances outcomes over repeated market interactions while preserving Service Level guarantees.
Relationship to the Rest of FP-AMM
Fair Play forms one component of the wider FP-AMM architecture.
Each mechanism performs a distinct responsibility:
| Mechanism | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Service Levels | Define contractual reliability |
| Automatic Market Maker | Determine continuous prices |
| Holarchical Coordination | Ensure physical feasibility |
| Fair Play | Allocate unavoidable scarcity and abundance fairly |
| Shapley Settlement | Allocate costs and rewards according to system value |
Together, these mechanisms ensure that the electricity system remains economically efficient, physically feasible and fair under both normal and exceptional operating conditions.
In This Section
The following pages describe Fair Play in greater detail.
- Scarcity Allocation explains how limited energy and network capacity are allocated during shortages.
- Fair Curtailment describes how surplus generation is managed fairly.
- Fairness History introduces the mechanism used to balance outcomes across repeated market interactions.
- Biased Coin Allocation explains the probabilistic allocation algorithm that underpins Fair Play.
- Mathematical Properties presents the formal model, convergence analysis and theoretical guarantees.
Together, these mechanisms ensure that fairness is not simply an aspiration, but a programmable property of the electricity market.