Although variable renewable energy (VRE) technologies with zero marginal costs decrease electricity prices, the literature is inconclusive about how the resulting shift in the supply curves impacts price volatility. Because the flexibility to respond to high peak and low offpeak prices is crucial for demand-response applications and may compensate for the losses of conventional generators caused by lower average prices, there is a need to understand how the penetration of VRE affects volatility. In this paper, we build distributed lag models with Danish and German data to estimate the impact of VRE generation on electricity price volatility. We find that in Denmark wind power decreases the daily volatility of prices by flattening the hourly price profile, but in Germany it increases the volatility because it has a stronger impact on off-peak prices. Our analysis suggests that access to flexible generation capacity and wind power generation patterns contribute to these differing impacts. Meanwhile, solar power decreases price volatility in Germany. By contrast, the weekly volatility of prices increases in both areas due to the intermittency of VRE. Thus, policy measures for facilitating the integration of VRE should be tailored to such region-specific patterns.

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The large-scale deployment of intermittent renewable energy sources may cause substantial power imbalance. Together with the transmission grid congestion caused by the remoteness of these sources from load centers, this creates a need for fast-adjusting conventional capacity such as gas-fired plants. However, these plants have become unprofitable because of lower power prices due to the zero marginal costs of renewables. Consequently, policymakers are proposing new measures for mitigating balancing costs and securing supply. In this paper, we take the perspective of the regulator to assess the effectiveness of support payments to flexible generators. Using data on the German power system, we implement a bi-level programming model, which shows that such payments for gas-fired plants in southern Germany reduce balancing costs and can be used as part of policy to integrate renewable energy.

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