The impact of wind power on day-ahead electricity prices in the Netherlands

Abstract

A detailed analysis was conducted to assess to what extent availability of wind energy has influenced day-ahead electricity prices in the Netherlands over the past four years. With a meteorological model, time series of day-ahead wind forecasts were generated for the period 2006–2009, and these were compared with APX-ENDEX day-ahead market prices. Wind energy contributes to only 4% of electricity generation in the Netherlands, but was found to depress average day-ahead market prices by about 5%. With the help of the bid curves on the APX-ENDEX day-ahead market for 2009, a model was made to assess the impact of increasing levels of wind generation on power prices in the Netherlands. One of the main findings is that the future impact on prices will be less than in the past. With an increase of installed wind capacity from 2200 MW to 6000 MW, average day-ahead prices are expected to be depressed by an additional 6% in case no additional conventional generation is assumed. Taking into account existing government policy on wind and ongoing work on new conventional power plants, prices in 2016 will be only 3% lower due to wind.