Determining the Electricity Price

[eorear86]

Hi All,

I have a quick question. I am trying to find what would be the electricity "price" in each time period. My initial thought is that I would refer to the shadow value (EQ_COMBALM). However, I read in Part II of the documentation, that when a peaking constraint exists for the commodity, the  "price" consumers pay during peak hours would be the sum of EQ_COMBALM and EQ_PEAKM. I found that EQ_PEAKM in my model only exists for a single time slice. So...

(1) Would the "price" during peak hours based on the sum of EQ_COMBALM and EQ_PEAKM only be associated with the single time slice? Or would I interpret this as the electricity price during peak hours in a given period?

(2) And if I am interested in the change in the overall electricity price between the baseline and a given policy scenario, should I refer only to EQ_COMBALM or the sum of EQ_COMBALM and EQ_PEAKM?

Thanks!

[Antti-L]

Hmm...   not sure what the confusion is here. It is quite normal that EQ_PEAK may have a non-zero marginal only in a single timeslice in each period: the timeslice where the peak load occurs.

If your "main" electricity commodity is, say, ELCP (for which you have a peaking equation), consider that you would add a new DAYNITE level commodity, say ELCQ, such that you would simply convert ELCP directly to ELCQ, and you would change all processes consuming ELCP to be consuming ELCQ. Then you would have a price for ELCQ, and that price would be equal to the ELCP commodity balance marginal plus the EQ_PEAKM marginal. In other words, the consumers downstream of ELCP would see a price equal to that sum. Returning now to your questions:

> Would the "price" during peak hours based on the sum of EQ_COMBALM and EQ_PEAKM only be associated with the single time slice?
I don't fully understand this question; the consumers downstream of ELCP would see a price equal to the sum of EQ_COMBALM and EQ_PEAKM, in each timeslice. The validity of the EQ_PEAKM component of the total price will, of course, depend on whether the peak load actually occurs in the timeslice(s) for which you have defined the EQ_PEAK equation. But if you have defined it for all expected candidate peak timeslices (or even for every DAYNITE timeslice), you can be confident it is valid.

> Or would I interpret this as the electricity price during peak hours in a given period?
I don't fully understand this question either; as said, the consumers downstream of ELCP would indeed see an electricity price equal to that sum in each timeslice, including the timeslice(s) of the actual peak load in each period. But I don't know if that is helping at all answering your questions.  

I am sure I must be missing something, and so maybe you could try and elaborate a bit further your questions?

[eorear86]

You have actually helped answer my questions. My apologies if they were a bit confusing. I am new to the electricity side of TIMES.