Electricity price modeling from the perspective of start-up costs: incorporating renewable resources in non-convex markets

This paper constructs a comprehensive electricity market model in the context of China, highlighting the deviation caused by neglecting start-up costs from an engineering perspective. The model allows for the abandonment of excess wind and solar power generation, contributing to the achievement of research objectives in scenarios with a high proportion of renewable energy. Our method innovatively integrates fuel and carbon prices, clean energy expansion, and power system marginal prices according to the carbon trading rules of the Chinese power industry, providing a more accurate representation of market dynamics. Findings reveal that neglecting start-up costs can lead to significant biases in electricity prices. We demonstrate that the marginal price sometimes deviates from the fluctuation of the real value. While fuel and CO2 prices can be transmitted downstream, the value of new energy must be transmitted through its impact on the marginal unit. This insight is crucial for understanding the “missing money” problem in electricity markets. Based on these findings, we propose policy recommendations. We suggest considering fixed and average costs as pricing benchmarks and utilizing capacity utilization as a signal for demand response to adjust power pricing. Furthermore, we recommend trading different energy types separately in the spot market with different pricing benchmarks to ensure the homogeneity of marginal units.