Rate design for the 21st Century : improving economic efficiency and distributional equity in electricity rate

Electricity tariffs typically charge residential users a volumetric (that is, per-unit of electricity consumed) price that recovers the bulk of the costs of generating, transmitting, and distributing electrical energy. These tariffs also often include taxes and recover other costs associated with regulatory or policy measures. The resulting prices do not reflect the true social marginal costs of generating, transmitting, and distributing energy, capturing little or none of the temporal and geographic variability of marginal electricity costs. These inefficient rates incentivize customers to over-consume power during periods of peak system stress and under-consume power during periods of relatively low demand; this dynamic drives up power system costs, costing Americans and Europeans tens of billions of dollars annually. Critically, it leads to investments in long-lived and low-utilization infrastructure needed to meet peak demands.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Burger, Scott P.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ignacio J. Pérez-Arriaga.

• Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123564

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/123564