The scheduling role of future pricing information in electricity markets with rising deployments of energy storage: An Australian National Electricity Market case study

In wholesale electricity markets, resource schedules result from market participant decisions informed by knowledge processes, which provide current and forecasted power system and market information. Ensuring that these knowledge processes and market participation rules are purpose-fit is becoming increasingly important with growing deployments of energy storage resources expected to aid in balancing high renewables power systems through energy arbitrage. Our study explores the scheduling coordination role of centralised price forecasts generated by the system and market operator in the fast, flexible and volatile Australian National Electricity Market. Our work offers three contributions: (1) highlighting the increasing frequency and severity of errors in these forecasts, and proposing a hypothesis that market participant (re)bidding is partially responsible for this phenomenon; (2) modelling the extent to which arbitrage revenues might be reduced should these forecasts guide battery energy storage scheduling; and (3) discussing potential changes to participant scheduling strategies and market design that could improve scheduling outcomes. We recommend that Australian policy-makers not only increase the frequency at which centralised knowledge processes are run, but also consider whether stricter market participation restrictions might incentivise participant bidding strategies that are less likely to induce sudden price swings that can hamper effective scheduling.