Webinar: The Impacts of Variable Renewable Energy on Wholesale Power Prices: Implications for the Merchant Market Value of Wind and Solar

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Featured Speaker: Ryan Wiser, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Dr. Ryan Wiser is a Senior Scientist in and Group Leader of the Electricity Markets and Policy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Ryan oversees a 30-person group that seeks to inform public and private decision making within the U.S. electricity sector through research on electric system planning, reliability and regulation as well as on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and demand response. Ryan has been a lead author for two reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and he has offered invited testimony to the U.S. Senate. He is a founding member of the academic advisory board for the University of San Francisco’s Master of Science in Energy Systems Management; serves on the board of directors for the Clean Energy States Alliance; and serves as a United States representative on a multi-country IEA Wind collaboration on the cost of wind energy. Ryan has published 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, 20 book chapters, and over 380 other conference papers, magazine articles and research reports. Ryan holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Stanford University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from the University of California, Berkeley.

Moderator: Charlie Smith, ESIG

Registration Cost: FREE

Webinar Abstract: As wind and solar deployment continues to grow in the United States, wholesale power prices will by necessity adjust to the new realities of weather- and location- dependent, low marginal-cost generation. Changes in the temporal and geographic patterns of prices, in particular, are expected. This talk will summarize recent research by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that has assessed the past and possible future impacts of wind and solar on wholesale power prices, and how those changes in pricing patterns may uniquely affect the merchant grid-system ‘market value’ of variable-generation sources. Given the potential for ‘value deflation’ as the penetration of variable renewable energy increases, the talk will also highlight a variety of measures that might be taken to enhance the grid-system value of wind and solar. The presentation will end with a brief summary of possible future research directions.