This paper argues that the market rules governing the operation of the England and Wales electricity market in combination with the structure of this market presents the two major generators National Power and PowerGen with opportunities to earn revenues substantially in excess of their costs of...

We simulate competitive benchmark wholesale prices for electricity in California during the summer of 2000, taking account of changes in natural gas prices, electricity demand, and imports of electricity from other states during this time period. We also examine the impact of changes in the...

Advocates of using market mechanisms for addressing greenhouse gases and other pollutants typically argue that it is a necessary step in pricing polluting goods at their social marginal cost (SMC). Retail electricity prices, however, deviate from social marginal cost for many reasons. Some cause...

Production inflexibility together with product price uncertainty creates price risk, which is a potentially important factor for firms' liquidity management. One industry for which price risk can be measured is the electricity producing industry. We use data on hourly electricity prices in 41...

Most US consumers are charged a near-constant retail price for electricity, despite substantial hourly variation in the wholesale market price. The Smart Grid is a set of emerging technologies that, among other effects, will facilitate "real-time pricing" for electricity and increase price...

The standard economic model of efficient competitive markets relies on the ability of sellers to charge prices that vary as their costs change. Yet, there is no restructured electricity market in which most retail customers can be charged realtime prices (RTP), prices that can change as...

One of the most critical concerns that customers have voiced in the debate over real-time retail electricity pricing is that they would be exposed to risk from fluctuations in their electricity cost. The concern seems to be that a customer could find itself consuming a large quantity of power on...

Utility regulators frequently focus as much or more on the distributional impact of electric rate structures as on their efficiency. The goal of protecting low-income consumers has become more central with recent increases in wholesale power costs and anticipation of significant costs of...

This paper evaluates changes in fuel procurement practices by coal- and gas-fired power plants in the United States following state-level legislation that ended cost-of-service regulation of electricity generation. I find that deregulated plants substantially reduce the price paid for coal (but...

Electricity cannot be cost-effectively stored even for short periods of time. Consequently, wholesale electricity prices vary widely across hours of the day with peak prices frequently exceeding off-peak prices by a factor of ten or more. Most analyses of energy-efficiency policies ignore this...