A new visualization tool from Berkeley Lab allows users to explore trends in wholesale electricity prices and their relationship to wind and solar generation. Variable renewable generation can have important impacts to pricing patterns at the local level, but those patterns are often obscured when looking at regional average annual pricing trends.
The Renewables and Wholesale Electricity Prices (ReWEP) tool allows users to compare pricing trends across locations, regions, and a number of different timeframes, down to the nodal level. These comparisons illustrate the ongoing interactions between wind and solar generation and wholesale energy prices.
The ReWEP tool consists of maps, time series, and other interactive figures that provide: (1) a general overview of how average pricing, negative price frequency, and extreme high prices vary over time, and (2) a summary of how pricing patterns are related to wind and solar generation. Interactive functionality allows investigation by transmission regions (ISOs/RTOs), year, and season, and over diurnal cycles.
The ReWEP tool is intended to provide users a way to explore ongoing changes to pricing patterns, including those related to growth in wind and solar deployment.
