The U.S. regulation of high-voltage transmission is highly complex and, as a result, generally poorly understood. The complexity is created by separate, but overlapping, jurisdictional authorities of the U.S. federal regulators and those of individual states, districts, and territories. While...

Encouraged by the declining cost of grid-scale renewables, recent analyses conclude that the United States could reach net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 at relatively low cost using currently available technologies. While the cost of renewable generation has declined dramatically,...

Future electricity systems with tight constraints on carbon emissions will rely much more on wind and solar generation, with zero marginal cost, than today. We use capacity expansion modelling of Texas in 2050 to illustrate wholesale price distributions in future energy-only, carbon-constrained...

This paper estimates the relationship between investments in five distributed generation technologies and hourly net injections to the distribution grid for over 2,000 substations in France between 2005 and 2018. We find that investments in distributed wind and solar capacity have little or no...

Reliable estimates of the value of electricity transmission are critical if these heavily-regulated investments are to be made cost-effectively. In this paper, we exploit the abrupt closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in February 2012. During the previous decade, SONGS...

The substantial decline in the cost of wind and solar generation over recent decades has significantly altered the energy landscape. With these technologies becoming economically viable, even without stringent decarbonization policies, the role of interregional transmission has become...

Currently, most U.S. electricity consumers pay a constant price per kWh consumed that accounts for most of their bill. Ongoing developments in the power system increase efficiency gains that can be made from exposing consumers to widely varying wholesale spot prices. Pure spot pricing is not...

Economists, energy experts, and policymakers have called for accelerating investment in the U.S. electricity transmission network. Additional transmission lines could better integrate markets, reducing the total cost of electricity generation. They could also allow for the better integration of...

The marginal cost of electricity fluctuates hour-by-hour, yet retail customers typically face flat prices. Using data from all seven US wholesale markets and a new method to evaluate alternative rates set in advance that accounts for equilibrium price effects, we estimate efficiency gains from...

Electricity restructuring has created the opportunity for producers to exercise market power. Oligopolists increase price by distorting output decisions, causing cross-firm production inefficiencies. This study estimates the environmental implications of production inefficiencies attributed to...