Title
On the Dynamics of Distributed Energy Adoption: Equilibrium, Stability, and Limiting Capacity
Abstract
The death spiral hypothesis in electric utility represents a positive feedback phenomenon in which a regulated utility is driven to financial instability by rising prices and declining demand. We establish conditions for the existence of death spiral and conditions of stable adoption of distributed energy resources. We show in particular that linear tariffs always induce death spiral when the fixed operating cost of the utility rises beyond a certain threshold. For two-part tariffs with connection and volumetric charges, the Ramsey pricing, which myopically optimizes social welfare subject to the revenue adequacy constraint, induces a stable equilibrium. The Ramsey pricing, however, inhibits renewable adoption with a high connection charge. In contrast, a two-part tariff with a small connection charge results in a stable adoption process with a higher level of renewable adoption and greater long-term total consumer surplus. Market data are used to illustrate various solar adoption scenarios.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1109/TAC.2019.2906723
IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control
Keywords
Field
DocType
Spirals,Pricing,Energy resources,Regulators,Limiting,Power industry,Stability analysis
Revenue,Mathematical optimization,Renewable energy,Electric utility,Microeconomics,Economic surplus,Tariff,Distributed generation,Market data,Operating cost,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
65
1
0018-9286
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.35
0
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Tao Sun116816.47
Lang Tong25677559.91
Donghan Feng382.66