Real-time pricing and the cost of clean power

Solar and wind power are now cheaper than fossil fuels but are intermittent. The extra supply-side variability implies growing benefits of using real-time retail pricing (RTP). We evaluate the potential gains of RTP using a model that jointly solves investment, supply, storage, and demand to obtain a chronologically detailed dynamic equilibrium for the island of Oahu, Hawai'i. Across a wide range of cost and demand assumptions, we find the gains from RTP in high-renewable systems to exceed those in a conventional fossil system by roughly 6 times to 12 times, markedly lowering the cost of renewable energy integration.