On the market impact of wind energy forecasts

This paper presents an analysis of how day-ahead electricity spot prices are affected by day-ahead wind power forecasts. Demonstration of this relationship is given as a test case for the Western Danish price area of the Nord Pool's Elspot market. Impact on the average price behaviour is investigated as well as that on the distributional properties of the price. By using a non-parametric regression model to assess the effects of wind power forecasts on the average behaviour. the non-linearities and time variations in the relationship are captured well and the effects are shown to be quite substantial. Furthermore, by evaluating the distributional properties of the spot prices under different scenarios, the impact of the wind power forecasts on the price distribution is proved to be considerable. The conditional price distribution is moreover shown to be non-Gaussian. This implies that forecasting models for electricity spot prices for which parameters are estimated by a least squares techniques will not have Gaussian residuals. Hence the widespread assumption of Gaussian residuals from electricity spot price models is shown to be inadequate for these model types. The revealed effects are likely to be observable and qualitatively similar in other day-ahead electricity markets significantly penetrated by wind power. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.