Market integration with energy-only markets and renewables: lessons of experience from Australia

摘要

The establishment of wholesale electricity markets has been one of the hallmarks of the market-oriented electricity sector reforms and restructuring process that started in the early 1990s. The standard model of liberalization included the establishment of wholesale and retail competition, vertical separation of the distinct generation, network, and retail activities, and incentive regulation of electricity networks. A fuller physical and financial integration of the separate national or regional electricity markets was then required to enable a deepening of competition. For example in the EU, the process of creating a common and integrated wholesale market for electricity that started in the second half of the 1990s, remains a work in progress, while Australia has, since 1998, focused on creating an efficient and integrated National Electricity Market (NEM).