March 3, 2026

Market power in the spanish wholesale electricity market

Key Points

Prices significantly increase when major operators exert market power, demonstrating a clear discrepancy with competitive behavior.
The analysis focuses on operator behaviors rather than traditional price-cost estimates, revealing insights about market dynamics.
The two largest operators' ability to manipulate prices raises concerns about overall market competitiveness and fairness.
Understanding these dynamics is essential for regulators aiming to promote competition in the electricity market.

Abstract

In the context of the recent electricity market reforms in Europe and the US, we evaluate the performance of the Spanish pool. Our method is not based on price-cost estimates but rather on the different behavior of operators with higher market power as compared to the behavior of more competitive operators. Our results indicate that the two larger operators in the market are able to increase prices by a significant amount as compared to the situation in which each plant is run independently.

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Authors

Aitor Ciarreta Antuñano

María Paz Espinosa Alejos

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Building similarity graph...

Analyzing shared references across papers

Market power in the spanish wholesale electricity market

Key Points

Abstract

Citation Network

Connected Papers

Discussion

Authors

Actions

References and Citations

Citation Network

Connected Papers

Discussion

Cite this study