Integrating Renewable Energy with Time Varying Pricing

Paul Bernstein, Makena Coffman, Sherilyn Hayashida, Energy Policy and Planning Group, Energy, Working Papers

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With increasing adoption of intermittent sources of renewable energy, effective integration is paramount to fully realizing societal benefits. This study asks the question, how valuable is residential real-time pricing (RTP) in comparison to time-of-use (TOU) rates to absorb increasing sources of intermittent renewable energy? We couple a detailed power sector model with a residential electricity demand response model to estimate the system and consumer benefits of these two time-varying pricing mechanisms, including greenhouse gas emissions.