Ensuring Resource Adequacy in Competitive Electricity Markets: POWER Magazine

Power Magazine has posted an article with an informative overview of the issues facing electricity markets.  The article is specific to the US, but the issues there are exemplary of the issues elsewhere:

• capacity markets in PJM (threatened by protectionis in a couple of states)
• the fragile state of the "energy only" market examplifies by ERCOT
• the entrance of a type of 'strategic reserve' model for ERCOT (there is a model in the Nordpool market)
• MISO is currently over capacity, but having introduced a voluntary capacity market approach (with predictably very low pricing) are attempting revising it to make it easier for "load-modifying resources to participate" (MISO having a high percentage of renewables), and take into account the location of generators.
• -ISO-NE and NYISO both have capacity markets characterized by locational capacity requirements.

Ensuring Resource Adequacy in Competitive Electricity Markets: POWER Magazine:

"Planning for resource adequacy—something that was relatively simple in the context of vertically integrated utilities—continues to be a difficult issue in competitive electricity markets. Whereas state public utility commissions used to have exclusive authority to determine what generation needed to be built and when it was to be available, this responsibility has been assumed by RTO/ISOs in regions with competitive markets. Each region approaches resource planning differently, and each region faces unique problems."