Electricity contract design and wholesale market outcomes in Australia's National Electricity Market

Abstract

The emergence of variable renewable energy (VRE) technologies has created a range of different energy contracting techniques. Within Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM), Run-of-Plant (RoP) Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) became the most common form of contract with purchasers of wind and solar energy agreeing to pay a fixed price for energy irrespective of when it is produced and, therefore, its actual value to the market. In November 2023, the Commonwealth Government adopted a 32 GW RoP PPA Contract-for-Difference (CfD) underwriting policy that aims to effectively shield the generator from market price risk. This article discusses different contract structures and their impact on participant behaviour during periods of material oversupply and negative prices. We find that embedded solar PV exports into the distribution network, which are not required to dynamically participate in the wholesale market, have increased wholesale energy supply, enabling profit maximising vertically integrated renewable firms to drive prices lower in a manner that partially strands the output of RoP PPA CfD generators with a $0/MWh price floor. A key conclusion from our analysis is that requiring embedded solar PV to effectively participate in the wholesale market appears to be a pre-condition for the efficacy of government-initiated RoP PPA CfDs.