Security of supply in a green power market – The challenges and opportunities of intermittent power

Security of electricity supply in the long run is both a question of having sufficient energy (TWh) and power (GW) capacity, and equally whether the system can deliver electricity efficiently where and when it is needed. This project concerns how to organize the power market in order to avoid short-run system breakdown and at the same time give socially optimal long-run incentives for investments in production and transmission capacities. We will study these topics by work packages that characterize theoretically the optimal electricity system (WP1), explore different technical, judicial and economic mechanisms (WP2-WP5), and study the interaction of these mechanisms in model-based policy analyses (WP6).

Although we have no industry financing of the project, we have two possible joint ventures with electricity supply companies, which will form the empirical basis for WP4 on Demand management. Ringerikskraft has been given a grant from ENOVA to explore the effects of smart meters and the pricing of end user maximum power usage, and has an agreement with the Frisch Centre whereby we will cooperate on design of an experiment and analyse t