Essays on microgrids,asymmetric pricing and market power in electricity markets.
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文摘
This dissertation presents four studies of the electricity industry. The first and second essays use economic-engineering models to assess different aspects of microgrid penetration in regional electricity markets, while the last two studies contain empirical analyses aimed at evaluating the performance of wholesale electricity markets. Chapter 2 develops a framework to quantify economic, environmental, efficiency and reliability impacts of different power production scenarios in a regional system, focusing on the interaction of microgrids with the existing transmission and distribution grid. The setting is the regional network formed by Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands. The study presents simulations of power market outcomes under various policies and levels of microgrid penetration, and evaluates them using a diverse set of metrics. Chapter 3 studies the interaction between a microgrid and a regulated electric utility in a regional electricity market. I consider the interaction among the utility, the microgrid developer and consumers in the framework of cooperative game theory assuming exchangeable utility), and use regional market models to simulate scenarios in which microgrid introduction may or may not be socially beneficial. Under the assumptions of this chapter, customer participation is essential to the development of socially beneficial microgrids, while the utility has little or no gain from it. Discussed incentives to avoid that utilities block microgrid entry include additional revenue drivers related to microgrid connection, decoupling and performance-based mechanisms targeted at service quality. When prices are below marginal costs of utility provided power, microgrid development may be socially beneficial, but unprofitable for microgrid customers and its developer. By imposing lower charges and higher remuneration for its services, the regulator could ensure that microgrid value is positive, without adversely impacting the utility. Chapter 4 examines the possibility of asymmetric transmission of CO 2 and fuel prices to electricity futures prices in the second phase of the European Emission Trading Scheme. The goal is to assess whether output prices tend to respond more quickly to input price increases than decreases: this phenomenon is known as "rockets and feathers" in the literature. Results do not provide empirical evidence of statistically significant differences in the response of power prices to positive and negative shocks in CO 2 allowance and fuel markets. Chapter 5 re-examines the issue of the potential exercise of market power in California after liberalization, with a focus on its day-ahead energy market the former PX) and its five largest thermal generators. The analysis focuses on a peak hour of operation hour 18) and disregards hours in which congestion occurred. First, I define a direct measure of unilateral market power for each firm, equal to the hourly inverse elasticity of its residual demand function. The second part of the analysis aims at assessing whether the necessary conditions for the unilateral exercise of market power were satisfied in practice, based on a comparison of PX market-clearing prices, estimated marginal revenues and estimated bounds for the marginal costs of generation of each supplier. By conservatively assuming that the estimated upper bound is close to each firms actual marginal cost of generation, the analysis suggests that in a large fraction of hours the thermal generators were acting less competitively that what implied by unilateral profit maximization. If instead I explicitly account for uncertainty in the marginal cost estimates with the introduction of a ±；10% margin on the estimated bounds, thermal generators are equally likely to bid close to their marginal costs or above them. Among the hours characterized by market-clearing prices above marginal costs, 64% present, on average, evidence of less competitive than Nash behavior. Two possible explanations for the observed restrained quantities, relative to the Nash level, include firms coordinating efforts to raise prices on the day-ahead market and a Cournot game among the thermal generators, since the Cournot equilibrium represents an upper bound on supply function equilibria. Abstract shortened by UMI.).