| 摘要 |
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Competitive wholesale markets today are often inefficient and not fully competitive, in part because retail-customer loads do not participate in these markets.
Electricity costs vary substantially from hour to hour. Because most customers buy electricity at time-invariant prices, they are fully insulated from the volatility of wholesale electricity markets. Retail electricity prices reflect two components that should be priced eparately: the electricity commodity and the insurance premium that protects customers from price variations.
Customers should have the opportunity to see electricity prices reflecting whole-sale-market price variations. Permitting customers to face the variability in electricity costs can improve economic efficiency, increase reliability, and reduce the environmental impacts of electricity production. Economic efficiency requires a range of customer choices.
Offering customers a variety of pricing options is an essential component of competitive markets and a key to improving customer well-being.
Retail customers who modify their usage in response to price volatility help lower the size of price spikes. This demand-induced reduction in prices is a powerful way to discipline the market power of some generators.
And these price-spike reductions benefit all retail customers, not just those who modify their consumption in response to changing prices.
Ultimately, competitive electricity markets will feature two kinds of demand-response programs. First, some customers will choose to face electricity prices that vary from hour to hour. Second, some customers will select fixed prices, but voluntarily cut demand during periods of very high prices.
Although the potential benefits of dynamic pricing are large, so too are the barriers to widespread adoption. Although regulators should not force consumers to face dynamic pricing, neither should they make it difficult for them to do so.
Metering, communications, and computing technologies are needed to support dynamic pricing and voluntary-load-reduction programs. The cost of this infrastructure represents another important barrier to these programs.
In summary, the convergence of retail competition, wholesale competition, and improved technologies should expand the type and magnitude of price-responsive demand. Permitting and encouraging retail customers to respond to dynamic prices will improve economic efficiency, discipline market power, improve reliability, and reduce the need to build new facilities.
85 pages, 15 refs., 6 figs., 3 tabs., Language: Korean |
