Discovering Price-Load Relationships in California´s Electricity Market

This paper reports on characterizing recent price behavior in the Califomia electricity market. Market participants-that is, producers, consumers, and traders-are highly motivated by the potential for profits to develop strategies to explore-and exploit-the limits of system operation. These strategies should be reflected in the market as different price to load relationships. We show that a number of regimes, i.e., characteristic behaviors, exist in the price time series and provide a brief analysis of each regime. Knowledge of the number of regimes, their characteristics, and switching dynamics allows insight into the market and power system performance.