Two legal instruments for promoting renewable energy production - renewable portfolio standards (“RPSs”) and feed-in tariffs (“FITs”) - are in use across the globe. Many studies pit these policies against each other, treating them as either-or options. Some analyses suggest that FITs...

This paper uses a market equilibrium model to calculate how the mix of generating capacity would change if large amounts of intermittent renewables are built in Great Britain, and what this means for operating patterns and the distribution of prices over time. If generators bid their marginal...

A thorough review of twelve recent studies of production costs from different power generating technologies was conducted and a wide range in cost estimates was found. The reviewed studies show differences in their methodologies and assumptions, making the stated cost figures not directly...

Subsidies to renewable energy are costly and contentious. We estimate the reduction in prices that follows from the subsidized entry of wind power in the Nordic electricity market. A relatively small-scale entry of renewables leads to a large-scale transfer of surplus from the incumbent...

Prosumers are households that are both producers and consumers of electricity. A prosumer has a grid-connected decentralized production unit (DPU) and makes two types of exchanges with the grid: energy imports when the local production is insufficient to match the local consumption and energy...

All forms of renewable energy are at an inflection point. Falling costs, changing technology, and new environmental and climate regulations have all moved to exponentially increase the growth of renewable energy. How legal terms, such as "qualifying facility" under PURPA are interpreted and...

Production from zero marginal cost solar panels reduces the amount of energy produced by fossil-fuel-fired power plants during the day. Yet, we find that the operating profits earned by fossil-fuel plants in Western Australia increased by 15% coincident with the doubling of rooftop solar...

This article explores key market design issues to be addressed in future electricity markets dominated by intermittent renewable generation with near zero private marginal costs for generating electricity. Changing technology mixes will change market outcomes, but they do not change the...

We examine investments in power generation projects under policy uncertainty, when the investor has the choice between two alternative technologies, a gas-fired plant and a wind plant. Increased risk of subsidy withdrawal reduces the payoff from and postpones investments in the wind technology....

The introduction of renewable energy sources (RES) in an electricity market changes the shape of the system's supply curve. In a perfectly competitive market, this causes a downward pressure on equilibrium prices called the merit order effect (MoE). However, when introducing or transferring RES...