The long lead time required to add new capacity in the electricity generation industry means that daily demands are necessarily served by capacity already installed. However, in a competitive market, even if the installed capacity was designed to serve the projected demands, frequent surpluses...

Very tight generation capacity (‘underinvestment’) in competitive electricity markets is a major concern to policymakers. Employing a model with endogenous capacity, capacity mix, operations and with uncertain demand we show that ‘underinvestment’ is due to the rational (non-abusive)...