IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eneeco/v145y2025ics0140988325002634.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The new merit order: The viability of energy-only electricity markets with only intermittent renewable energy sources and grid-scale storage

Author

Listed:
  • Antweiler, Werner
  • Muesgens, Felix

Abstract

What happens to the merit order of electricity markets when all electricity is supplied by intermittent renewable energy sources coupled with large-scale electricity storage? With near-zero marginal cost of production, will there still be a role for an energy-only electricity market? We answer these questions both analytically and empirically for electricity markets in Texas and Germany. What emerges in market equilibrium is the ‘new merit order’. Curtailment at zero prices is a necessary feature of the new merit order, complementing peak prices to cover fixed costs of storage. Storage cannot ‘solve’ curtailment, because curtailment provides essential zero-price periods. Our work demonstrates that as long as free entry and competition ensure effective price setting, an efficient new merit order emerges in electricity markets even when the grid is completely powered by intermittent sources with near-zero marginal costs. We find that energy-only markets remain viable and functional.

Suggested Citation

  • Antweiler, Werner & Muesgens, Felix, 2025. "The new merit order: The viability of energy-only electricity markets with only intermittent renewable energy sources and grid-scale storage," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:145:y:2025:i:c:s0140988325002634
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108439
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988325002634
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108439?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Felix Schmidt, 2025. "On long-duration storage, weather uncertainty and limited foresight," Papers 2505.12538, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2025.

    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:eee:eneeco:v:145:y:2025:i:c:s0140988325002634. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eneco .

    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.