Upon discussion of price setting on electricity wholesale markets, many refer to the so-called merit order model. Conventional wisdom holds that during most hours of the year, coal- or natural gas-fired power plants set the price on European markets. In this context, this paper analyses price...

European wholesale electricity prices have dropped by nearly two thirds since their all-time high around 2008. Different factors have been blamed, or praised, for causing the price slump: the expansion of renewable energy; the near-collapse of the European emission trading scheme; over-optimistic...

Most production processes can be turned off easily during times of low demand; this is not true for the generation of electricity. For a number of technical reasons, a certain number of conventional (thermal) power stations needs to keep producing electricity at all times, despite negative...

Accurate information about electricity generation and consumption is crucial to power system modelling. Several institutions publish such data: for European countries these include the association of system operators ENTSO-E, the EU body Eurostat, and the International Energy Agency; for Germany...