This paper develops a stylized model of cross-border balancing. We distinguish three degrees of cooperation: autarky, reserves exchange and reserves sharing. The model shows that TSO cooperation reduces costs. The gains of cooperation increase with cost asymmetry and decrease with correlation of...

Wholesale electricity markets use different market designs to handle congestion in the transmission network. We compare nodal, zonal and discriminatory pricing in general networks with transmission constraints and loop flows. We conclude that in large games with many producers who are allowed to...

This paper characterizes the Nash equilibrium in a pay-as-bid (discriminatory), divisible-good, procurement auction. Demand by the auctioneer is uncertain as in the supply function equilibrium model. A closed form expression is derived. Existence of an equilibrium is ensured if the hazard rate...

In most wholesale electricity markets generators must submit step-function offers of supply to a uniform price auction, and the market is cleared at the price of the most expensive offer needed to meet realised demand. Such markets can most elegantly be modelled as the pure-strategy, Nash...

We demonstrate how suppliers can take strategic speculative positions in derivatives markets to soften competition in the spot market. In our game, suppliers first choose a portfolio of call options and then compete with supply functions. In equilibrium firms sell forward contracts and buy call...

This paper develops a framework for analyzing the incentives of national transmission system operators (TSOs) to supply cross-border interconnection capacity in an international electricity market. Our results show that equilibrium transmission capacity is downward distorted, even in situations...

We review the recent empirical research concerning market power on the Nordic wholesale market for electricity, Nord Pool. There is no evidence of blatant and systematic exploitation of system level market power on Nord Pool. However, generation companies seem from time to time able to take...

Forward sales is a credible commitment to aggressive spot market bidding, and it mitigates producers’ market power in electricity markets. Still it can be profitable for a producer to make such a commitment if it results in a soft response from competitors in the spot market (strategies are...

The supply function equilibrium provides a game-theoretic model of strategic bidding in oligopolistic wholesale electricity auctions. This paper presents an intuitive account of current understanding and shows how welfare losses depend on the number of firms in the market and their asymmetry....

The capacity of the transmission network determines the extent of integration of a multinational energy market. Cross-border externalities render coordination of network maintenance and investments across countries valuable. Is it then optimal to collect powers in the hands of a single...