Market design for generation adequacy: Healing causes rather than symptoms

This paper argues that electricity market reform – particularly the need for complementary mechanisms to remunerate capacity – need to be analysed in the light of the local regulatory and institutional environment. If there is a lack of investment, the priority should be to identify the roots of the problem. The lack of demand-side response, short-term reliability management procedures and non-market ancillary services provision often undermine market reflective scarcity pricing and distort long-term investment incentives. The introduction of a capacity mechanism should come as an optional supplement to wholesale and ancillary markets improvements. Priority reforms should focus on encouraging demand-side responsiveness and reducing scarcity price distortions introduced by balancing and congestion management through better dialog between network engineers and market operators.