In July 2024, Enerdata created a new department dedicated to electricity markets to meet client expectations. The sudden rise in gas and electricity prices that began in late 2021 accelerated a fundamental trend in our energy landscape: the electrification of our needs, which brings with it a host of uncertainties:
- The rise of low and negative prices in wholesale markets
- Stagnating European electricity demand despite an increase in intermittent renewable energy generation
- Growth in the battery and grid flexibility market, which is still seeking its market model
- Required level of grid development.
Both public and private stakeholders are affected by these changes and are looking for the most reliable insight on the short- and long-term evolution of these trends. How might electricity prices change, and what are countries’ needs for batteries or other flexibility assets? Enerdata already has a range of essential tools and expertise to monitor these trends: energy market monitoring, our global power plant database—Power Plant Tracker, our Clean Tech team's expertise in innovative electricity generation and storage technologies, and, above all, our long-term scenarios for the development of electricity capacity and demand via our POLES-Enerdata model.
In addition to bringing together these existing strengths at Enerdata, one of the roles of this new electricity markets department was to develop a new long-term model for electricity price modelling. It was developed on an hourly basis from an open-source library (PyPSA) and is a complementary approach to our annual-scale POLES-Enerdata model. This enables us to provide an off-the-shelf service for long-term electricity price scenarios (Power Price Projections) and tailor-made studies for our clients' needs.
In contrast to other pure optimisation models, which are often focused solely on electricity, our model capitalises on the global and multi-energy approach of POLES-Enerdata to reach a coherent electricity landscape that aligns with announced global policies and takes their limitations into account.
This team currently consists of 10 analysts working on our various products and our consulting services. Our price scenarios are already commercially available for Europe, and several specific studies (e.g., Analysis of electricity supply prices in Europe for the European Commission) have been completed or are in progress.
This electricity markets department therefore represents a strategic development for Enerdata and will continue to expand by improving the model to include new geographical areas and by recruiting new staff.