Political shocks and efficient investment in electricity markets

This paper presents a fundamental electricity market model capturing many essential features of investments in electricity markets - fuel price developments, investment and generation costs, demand and dynamic effects such as start-up costs and (pump) storage dispatch. The partial equilibrium model minimizes the total costs of the electricity system ensuring demand coverage. The model optimizes both long-run investment as well as short-run dispatch decisions. From the optimal solution, the optimal future generation technology mix and dispatch can be derived. Furthermore, using the concept of shadow prices in mathematical programming, we calculate electricity price predictions. The model is applied to analyze the effect of recent political shocks in German nuclear energy policy on the electricity market and the power plant portfolio. The effect is quantified using the example of a specific combined cycle gas turbine project. We find a significant impact on the future net revenues.