IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cam/camdae/0450.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reliability and Competitive Electricity Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Joskow, P.
  • Tirole, J.

Abstract

Deregulation of the electricity sector has resulted in conflict between the economic aims of creating competitive wholesale and retail markets, and an engineering focus on reliability of supply. The paper starts by deriving the optimal prices and investment program when there are price-insensitive retail consumers, and their load serving entities can choose any level of rationing they prefer contingent on real time prices. It then examines the assumptions required for a competitive wholesale and retail market to achieve this optimal price and investment program. The paper analyses the implications of relaxing several of these assumptions. First, it analyses the interrelationships between regulator-imposed price caps, capacity obligations, and system operator procurement, dispatch and compensation arrangements. It goes on to explore the implications of potential network collapses, the concomitant need for operating reserve requirements and whether market prices will provide incentives for investments consistent with these reserve requirements.

Suggested Citation

  • Joskow, P. & Tirole, J., 2004. "Reliability and Competitive Electricity Markets," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0450, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    • Handle: RePEc:cam:camdae:0450
    Note: CMI, IO
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/electricity/publications/wp/ep53.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chao, Hung-po & Wilson, Robert, 1987. "Priority Service: Pricing, Investment, and Market Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 899-916, December.
    2. Allaz Blaise & Vila Jean-Luc, 1993. "Cournot Competition, Forward Markets and Efficiency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 1-16, February.
    3. Paul Joskow & Jean Tirole, 2006. "Retail electricity competition," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(4), pages 799-815, December.
    4. David M. Newbery, 1998. "Competition, Contracts, and Entry in the Electricity Spot Market," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(4), pages 726-749, Winter.
    5. Paul Joskow & Jean Tirole, 2006. "Retail electricity competition," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(4), pages 799-815, December.
    6. Cramton, Peter & Stoft, Steven, 2005. "A Capacity Market that Makes Sense," The Electricity Journal, Elsevier, vol. 18(7), pages 43-54.
    7. Severin Borenstein & Stephen Holland, 2005. "On the Efficiency of Competitive Electricity Markets with Time-Invariant Retail Prices," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(3), pages 469-493, Autumn.
    8. Green, Richard, 1999. "The Electricity Contract Market in England and Wales," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 107-124, March.
    9. Frank Wolak, 2000. "An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Hedge Contracts on Bidding Behavior in a Competitive Electricity Market," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 1-39.
    10. Richard Green, 1999. "The Electricity Contract Market in England and Wales," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 107-124, March.
    11. Blaise Allaz & Jean-Luc Vila, 1993. "Cournot Competition, Forward Markets and Efficiency," Post-Print hal-00511806, HAL.
    12. Littlechild, S.C., 2000. "Why We Need Electricity Retailers: A Reply to Joskow on Wholesale Spot Price pass-through," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0008, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baldursson , Fridrik M. & von der Fehr, Nils-Henrik, 2007. "Vertical Integration and Long-Term Contracts in Risky Markets," Memorandum 01/2007, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    2. de Bragança, Gabriel Godofredo Fiuza & Daglish, Toby, 2017. "Investing in vertical integration: electricity retail market participation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 355-365.
    3. Dressler, Luisa, 2016. "Support schemes for renewable electricity in the European Union: Producer strategies and competition," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 186-196.
    4. Hauteclocque, Adrien de & Glachant, Jean-Michel, 2009. "Long-term energy supply contracts in European competition policy: Fuzzy not crazy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 5399-5407, December.
    5. Jordi Brandts & Paul Pezanis‐Christou & Arthur Schram, 2008. "Competition with forward contracts: a laboratory analysis motivated by electricity market design," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(525), pages 192-214, January.
    6. Holmberg, Pär & Newbery, David, 2010. "The supply function equilibrium and its policy implications for wholesale electricity auctions," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 209-226, December.
    7. Holmberg, Pär & Willems, Bert, 2015. "Relaxing competition through speculation: Committing to a negative supply slope," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 236-266.
    8. Peter Cramton & Axel Ockenfels & Steven Stoft, 2013. "Capacity Market Fundamentals," Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    9. de Frutos, María-Ángeles & Fabra, Natalia, 2012. "How to allocate forward contracts: The case of electricity markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 451-469.
    10. Holmberg, Pär & Tangerås, Thomas & Ahlqvist, Victor, 2018. "Central- versus Self-Dispatch in Electricity Markets," Working Paper Series 1257, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 27 Mar 2019.
    11. Van Moer, Geert, 2019. "Electricity market competition when forward contracts are pairwise efficient," MPRA Paper 96660, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Desmond Cai & Anish Agarwal & Adam Wierman, 2020. "On the Inefficiency of Forward Markets in Leader–Follower Competition," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 68(1), pages 35-52, January.
    13. SMEERS, Yves, 2005. "How well can one measure market power in restructured electricity systems ?," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2005050, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    14. Liski, Matti & Montero, Juan-Pablo, 2006. "Forward trading and collusion in oligopoly," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 212-230, November.
    15. Miguel Vazquez, 2012. "Analysis of the strategic use of forward contracting in electricity markets," RSCAS Working Papers 2012/13, European University Institute.
    16. Vadim Borokhov, 2015. "Antimonopoly regulation method in energy markets based on the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism," Papers 1507.04478, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2021.
    17. Álvarez-Uribe, Karla C. & Arango-Aramburo, Santiago & Larsen, Erik R., 2018. "Forward contracts in electricity markets and capacity investment: A simulation study," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 1-10.
    18. Rubin, Ofir David, 2010. "Equilibrium pricing in electricity markets with wind power," ISU General Staff Papers 201001010800002361, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    19. Bunn, Derek W. & Martoccia, Maria & Ochoa, Patricia & Kim, Haein & Ahn, Nam-Sung & Yoon, Yong-Beom, 2010. "Vertical integration and market power: A model-based analysis of restructuring in the Korean electricity market," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 3710-3716, July.
    20. James Bushnell, 2007. "Oligopoly equilibria in electricity contract markets," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 225-245, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    electricity; regulation; incentives;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L33 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Comparison of Public and Private Enterprise and Nonprofit Institutions; Privatization; Contracting Out
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • L98 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cam:camdae:0450. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jake Dyer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.