Australian electricity market and price volatility

John Boland, Jerzy Filar, Ghazaleh Mohammadian, Asef Nazari

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    4 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Australian Electricity Market has experienced high price volatility since the deregulation in early 1990s. In this exploratory and preliminary analysis of 2010 data from South Australian electricity market we identify and exhibit a number of phenomena which, arguably, contribute to (A) high cost of electricity supply to consumers and (B) volatility in spot prices. These phenomena include: (i) Distinct bidding patterns of some generators occurring in trading intervals corresponding to periods of low, medium and high spot prices, (ii) Low correlation between electricity demand and spot prices on days when spot price spikes are observed, (iii) Failure of the lottery model and associated Markowitz-type optimisation approaches to adequately explain the shifting structure of generators’ bids and (iv) Unexpectedly high contribution to the consumers costs and risks from the relatively small number of trading intervals where spot price spikes were observed.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)357-372
    Number of pages16
    JournalAnnals of Operations Research
    Volume241
    Issue number1-2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2016

    Keywords

    • Australian national electricity market
    • Bidding strategies
    • Price volatility
    • Risk measures

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