Recent News & Events

Lab Seminar: Customer perspectives of real-time electricity tariffs

ARE Ph.D. student Stuart Morrison presented his work on customer responses to variable electricity pricing in Australia. It is becoming increasingly common for energy providers to charge residential consumers a price that is driven by daily electricity markets, rather than a conventional, flat fee. Economic theory suggests that residential consumers will adjust their behavior as prices change throughout the day. But there are many margins along which this adjustment might occur.

Lab Seminar: The Principle of Targeting and Environmental Benefits

Erica Chuang, Ph.D. candidate in the University of California San Diego Department of Economics, presented on principle of targeting for environmental externalities. Economists generally agree that in terms of tax and subsidy structure, Pigou is king. However, market-based instruments that imprecisely target externalities are common, and the degree to which imprecision matters for the objectives of those policies has yet to be fully explored.

Lab Seminar: The Impacts of Grid-Scale Lithium-Ion Battery Investment on Wholesale Electricity Prices in California

Matt Dudek presented his work on the impact of grid-scale battery storage capacity on electricity prices in California. A key barrier to expanding renewable energy production is the daily mismatch between intermittent generation and electricity demand. For example, despite a massive expansion in the low marginal cost solar power production, electricity can only be produced from these sources when the sun is shining.