Daily Market Analysis Capability and Results
Nicolas Stauff, USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE), G. Maronati, R. Ponciroli, F. Ganda, T. Kim, T. Taiwo, A Cuadra, M. Todosow, P. Talbot, C. Rabiti, B. Dixon, S. Kim · 2019
Nuclear energy plays an important role in the U.S. energy mix that will likely need to be maintained or strengthened to achieve significant greenhouse gas reduction. However, maintaining the nuclear portfolio becomes increasingly challenging in the current U.S. energy market since the low price of natural gas and the penetration of subsidized and low-marginal cost variable renewable electricity (VRE) are affecting the profitability of nuclear units. In this context, building new nuclear power plants will require increased competitiveness with reduced capital and O&M costs and increased revenues enabled by changes in market policies or increased flexible operation. Within the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, the System Analysis and Integration Campaign has been acquiring the capability to model energy market economics in order to assist decision makers and nuclear utilities. The methods developed and codes acquired are displayed in Figure 1. The objective of this report is to describe the tools acquired for market analysis, and to illustrate their capabilities and complementarities with an example of analysis.