This dissertation applies a variety of quantitative methods to European electricity market data to enable us to detect, understand, and eventually mitigate market imperfections. The empirical data indicate that market power and barriers to cross-border trade partially explain today’s market failures. Briefly, the five key findings of this dissertation are: First, we observe a decoupling between German electricity prices and fuel cost, even though British electricity prices are largely explained by short-run cost factors. Second, we demonstrate that rising prices of European Union emission allowances (EUA) have a greater impact on German wholesale electricity prices than falling EUA prices. Third, we reject the assumption of full integration of European wholesale electricity markets in 2002-2006; for several pairs of countries, the weaker hypothesis of (bilateral) convergence is accepted (i.e. efforts to develop a single European market for electricity have been only partially successful). Fourth, we observe that daily auction prices of scarce cross-border transmission capacities are insufficient to explain the persistence of international price differentials. Empirically, our findings confirm the insufficiency of explicit capacity auctions as stated in the theoretical literature. Fifth, we identify inefficiencies in the market behavior for the interconnector linking France and the United Kingdom (UK), for which several explanations, including market power, may be plausible.

Diese Dissertation untersucht Fragen, die sich mit dem Einfluss der Übertragungskapazitäten und der Erzeugung erneuerbarer Energien auf dem Strommarkt befassen. Die Arbeit besteht aus drei eigenständigen Aufsätze, die für die politische Debatte einen Beitrag leisten. Das erste Kapitel konzentriert sich auf ein Netzwerk mit strategischen Unternehmen, die die Stromflüsse zu ihrem Vorteil manipulieren können. Dieses Kapitel gehört zur Forschungsliteratur, die Strommärkte als Gleichgewichtsprobleme mit Gleichgewichtseinschränkungen darstellt. In diesem Rahmen vergleiche ich mehrere Strategien zur Stärkung des Wettbewerbs und zeige, dass der Netzausbau zwar den Wettbewerb ankurbeln kann, mit Umstrukturierungen aber größere Verbesserungen des Verbraucherüberschusses und des Wohlstands erzielt werden können. Das zweite Kapitel basiert auf einem ähnlichen Modell mit einem einfachen Zwei-Knoten-Netzwerk. Dieser Ansatz zeigt mögliche nachteilige Auswirkungen (höhere Preise, geringerer Gesamtverbrauch, geringerer Konsumentenrente) einer höheren Einspeisung erneuerbarer Energie in einem Netz, in dem eine Region mit hohem erneuerbaren Potenzial von einer Region mit hoher Last durch eine begrenzte Übertragungskapazität getrennt ist. Die Annahme ist, dass es in jeder Region einen strategischen Akteur gibt, der seine Marktmacht ausübt. Das dritte Kapitel befasst sich mit der Substitution zwischen Übertragungs- und Speicherkapazitäten - beides Instrumente zur Integration von erneuerbarer Energien. Eine Analyse mit einfachen Speicherheuristik zeigt den relativ bescheidenen Effekt des zeitlichen Ausgleichs. Im Gegensatz dazu birgt die Erweiterung des Übertragungsnetzes ein erhebliches Steigerungspotenzial für die Nutzung erneuerbarer Energiequellen, die Verringerung der Kürzungsraten und die Reduzierung der minimalen konventionellen Stromerzeugung. / This thesis investigates several questions related to the influence of transmission capacities and generation of renewable energy on the outcomes in the wholesale electricity markets. The thesis consists of three self-contained essays that contribute to the policy debate. The analysis of the first essay focuses on a network with strategic firms that can manipulate power flows to their advantage. Methodologically, this chapter belongs to the research literature that represents electricity markets as equilibrium problems with equilibrium constraints. In this framework I compare several policies of enhancing competition and demonstrate that although network expansion can stimulate competition, larger improvements in consumer surplus and welfare can be achieved with restructuring. The second essay is based on a similar model, but in a stylized two node network. This approach demonstrates potential adverse effects (higher prices, lower total consumption, lower consumer surplus) from higher renewable infeed in a network where a region with high renewable potential is separated from a region with high load by a limited transmission capacity. I adopt a worst-case assumption that in each region there is a strategic player exercising its market power. The third essay studies the substitution between transmission and storage expansion - two instruments for the integration of expanding renewable energy. Using a myopic storage heuristic I demonstrate the relatively modest effect of temporal balancing of renewable power. In contrast, transmission expansion has a significant potential in increasing renewable penetration, mitigating curtailment rates, and reducing the minimum conventional generation power at any hour. If Europe is to pursue the high targets of renewable power in electricity consumption, the only way to avoid the expansion of cross border lines is extremely high installed renewable capacities and energy capacities of storage.

In this thesis current questions regarding the functionality of liberalized electricity markets are studied addressing different topics of interest in two main directions: market power and competition policy on electricity wholesale markets, and network investments and incentive regulation. The former is studied based on the case of the German electricity market with respect to ex-post market power analysis and ex-ante remedy development. First an optimization model is designed to obtain the competitive benchmark which can be compared to the observed market outcomes between 2004 and 2006. In a second step the horizontal breaking up of dominant firms (divestiture) is simulated applying equilibrium techniques (the classical Cournot approach and the Supply Function Equilibrium approach). The later issue of transmission capacity investment is addressed by highlighting the complexity of network investments in electricity markets and by analyzing a regulatory mechanism with a two part tariff approach. The technical characteristics of power flows are combined with economic criteria and tested for different network settings.