IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2209.14505.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Retail Tariff Design with Prosumers: Pursuing Equity at the Expenses of Economic Efficiencies?

Author

Listed:
  • Yihsu Chen
  • Andrew L. Liu
  • Makoto Tanaka
  • Ryuta Takashima

Abstract

Distributed renewable resources owned by prosumers can be an effective way of fortifying grid resilience and enhancing sustainability. However, prosumers serve their own interests and their objectives are unlikely to align with that of society. This paper develops a bilevel model to study the optimal design of retail electricity tariffs considering the balance between economic efficiency and energy equity. The retail tariff entails a fixed charge and a volumetric charge tied to electricity usage to recover utilities' fixed costs. We analyze solution properties of the bilevel problem and prove an optimal rate design, which is to use fixed charges to recover fixed costs and to balance energy equity among different income groups. This suggests that programs similar to CARE (California Alternative Rate of Energy), which offer lower retail rates to low-income households, are unlikely to be efficient, even if they are politically appealing.

Suggested Citation

  • Yihsu Chen & Andrew L. Liu & Makoto Tanaka & Ryuta Takashima, 2022. "Optimal Retail Tariff Design with Prosumers: Pursuing Equity at the Expenses of Economic Efficiencies?," Papers 2209.14505, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2209.14505
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.14505
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frank A. Wolak, 2018. "The Evidence from California on the Economic Impact of Inefficient Distribution Network Pricing," NBER Working Papers 25087, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Kubli, Merla, 2018. "Squaring the sunny circle? On balancing distributive justice of power grid costs and incentives for solar prosumers," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 173-188.
    3. Clastres, Cédric & Percebois, Jacques & Rebenaque, Olivier & Solier, Boris, 2019. "Cross subsidies across electricity network users from renewable self-consumption," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1-1.
    4. Severin Borenstein & James Bushnell, 2015. "The US Electricity Industry After 20 Years of Restructuring," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 437-463, August.
    5. Woo, Chi-Keung, 1988. "Optimal electricity rates and consumption externality," Resources and Energy, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 277-292, December.
    6. Darghouth, Naïm R. & Wiser, Ryan H. & Barbose, Galen & Mills, Andrew D., 2016. "Net metering and market feedback loops: Exploring the impact of retail rate design on distributed PV deployment," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 713-722.
    7. B. K. Pagnoncelli & S. Ahmed & A. Shapiro, 2009. "Sample Average Approximation Method for Chance Constrained Programming: Theory and Applications," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 142(2), pages 399-416, August.
    8. Gorman, Will & Jarvis, Stephen & Callaway, Duncan, 2020. "Should I Stay Or Should I Go? The importance of electricity rate design for household defection from the power grid," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 262(C).
    9. Picciariello, Angela & Vergara, Claudio & Reneses, Javier & Frías, Pablo & Söder, Lennart, 2015. "Electricity distribution tariffs and distributed generation: Quantifying cross-subsidies from consumers to prosumers," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 23-33.
    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. Günther, Claudia & Schill, Wolf-Peter & Zerrahn, Alexander, 2021. "Prosumage of solar electricity: Tariff design, capacity investments, and power sector effects," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 152.
    2. Junhyung Kim & Keon Baek & Eunjung Lee & Jinho Kim, 2023. "Analysis of Net-Metering and Cross-Subsidy Effects in South Korea: Economic Impact across Residential Customer Groups by Electricity Consumption Level," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(2), pages 1-14, January.
    3. Peter Cappers & Andrew Satchwell & Will Gorman & Javier Reneses, 2019. "Financial Impacts of Net-Metered Distributed PV on a Prototypical Western Utility’s Shareholders and Ratepayers," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(24), pages 1-19, December.
    4. Ahmed S. Alahmed & Lang Tong, 2021. "On Net Energy Metering X: Optimal Prosumer Decisions, Social Welfare, and Cross-Subsidies," Papers 2109.09977, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    5. Manuel de Villena, Miguel & Jacqmin, Julien & Fonteneau, Raphael & Gautier, Axel & Ernst, Damien, 2021. "Network tariffs and the integration of prosumers: The case of Wallonia," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    6. Ansarin, Mohammad & Ghiassi-Farrokhfal, Yashar & Ketter, Wolfgang & Collins, John, 2020. "The economic consequences of electricity tariff design in a renewable energy era," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 275(C).
    7. Ahmed S. Alahmed & Lang Tong, 2022. "Integrating Distributed Energy Resources: Optimal Prosumer Decisions and Impacts of Net Metering Tariffs," Papers 2204.06115, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.
    8. Castaneda, Monica & Jimenez, Maritza & Zapata, Sebastian & Franco, Carlos J. & Dyner, Isaac, 2017. "Myths and facts of the utility death spiral," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 105-116.
    9. Axel Gautier & Julien Jacqmin & Jean-Christophe Poudou, 2018. "The prosumers and the grid," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 100-126, February.
    10. Claudia Gunther & Wolf-Peter Schill & Alexander Zerrahn, 2019. "Prosumage of solar electricity: tariff design, capacity investments, and power system effects," Papers 1907.09855, arXiv.org.
    11. Clastres, Cédric & Percebois, Jacques & Rebenaque, Olivier & Solier, Boris, 2019. "Cross subsidies across electricity network users from renewable self-consumption," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1-1.
    12. L. (Lisa B.) Ryan & Sarah La Monaca & Linda Mastrandrea & Petr Spodniak, 2018. "Harnessing Electricity Retail Tariffs to Support Climate Change Policy," Working Papers 201822, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    13. Ansarin, Mohammad & Ghiassi-Farrokhfal, Yashar & Ketter, Wolfgang & Collins, John, 2022. "A review of equity in electricity tariffs in the renewable energy era," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    14. Saumweber, Andrea & Wederhake, Lars & Cardoso, Gonçalo & Fridgen, Gilbert & Heleno, Miguel, 2021. "Designing Pareto optimal electricity retail rates when utility customers are prosumers," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    15. Burger, Scott & Chaves-Ávila, Jose Pablo & Batlle, Carlos & Pérez-Arriaga, Ignacio J., 2017. "A review of the value of aggregators in electricity systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 395-405.
    16. Venkatraman, Athindra & Thatte, Anupam A. & Xie, Le, 2021. "A smart meter data-driven distribution utility rate model for networks with prosumers," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    17. Passey, Robert & Haghdadi, Navid & Bruce, Anna & MacGill, Iain, 2017. "Designing more cost reflective electricity network tariffs with demand charges," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 642-649.
    18. Ansarin, Mohammad & Ghiassi-Farrokhfal, Yashar & Ketter, Wolfgang & Collins, John, 2020. "Cross-subsidies among residential electricity prosumers from tariff design and metering infrastructure," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    19. Dorothee Apfel & Carsten Herbes, 2021. "What Drives Senegalese SMEs to Adopt Renewable Energy Technologies? Applying an Extended UTAUT2 Model to a Developing Economy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-21, August.
    20. Apfel, Dorothee & Haag, Steffen & Herbes, Carsten, 2021. "Research agendas on renewable energies in the Global South: A systematic literature review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).

    More about this item

    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:arx:papers:2209.14505. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.