Network Expansion to Mitigate Market Power: How Increased Integration Fosters Welfare

Alexander Zerrahn and Daniel Huppmann

No 1380, Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: Lack of transmission capacity hampers the integration of the European electricity market, and thereby precludes reaping the full benefits of competition. We investigate the extent to which transmission grid expansion promotes competition, efficiency and welfare. This work proposes a three-stage model for grid investment: a benevolent planner decides on network upgrades, considering welfare benefits of investments through a reduction of market power exertion by strategic generators. These firms anticipate their impact on market clearing, in particular when lines are congested. To this end, we provide the first model effectively endogenizing the trade-off between costs of grid investment and benefits by reduced market power potential. In a three-node network, we illustrate three distinct strategic effects: firstly, by reducing market power exertion, network expansion can promote welfare beyond pure efficiency gains: optimally accounting for strategic generator behavior can push welfare close to a first-best competitive benchmark. Secondly, network upgrades entail a relative shift of rents from producers to consumers, and thirdly, they may yield suboptimal or even disequilibrium outcomes when strategic behavior is neglected.

Keywords: Market power; electricity transmission; network expansion; Generalized Nash equilibrium (GNE); mixed-integer equilibrium problem under equilibrium constraints (MIEPEC) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 L13 L51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 p.
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ene and nep-net
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.463010.de/dp1380.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Network Expansion to Mitigate Market Power: How Increased Integration Fosters Welfare (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1380

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().