电力市场中发电公司间心照不宣的勾结浅析

电力工业所固有的特征使得电力市场更接近于寡头垄断市场.在这样的市场中,除了存在静态的市场势力问题以外,还可能存在动态的勾结问题.这些问题都会对电力市场的竞争性产生负面影响,降低其运营效率.就电力市场中的市场势力问题国内外提出一些识别方法和抑制措施,而对于电力市场中的勾结问题,研究工作则刚刚开始.由于勾结可以采取多种不同的形式,难以判别,但勾结对市场运营的危害性比滥用市场势力更为严重,因而已成为一个受到广泛关注的重要而难以解决的问题.文中主要针对电力市场中的勾结现象进行分析,解释了产生勾结的原因,分析了影响勾结形成与维持的因素,如竞争者数量、市场进入壁垒、市场结算模式、需求侧因素的影响等,同时讨论了识别勾结现象的方法.最后对防止勾结现象的产生给出了一些建议.

A Preliminary Analysis of Tacit Collusion Among Generation Companies in Electricity Markets

The emerging electricity market worldwide is more akin to oligopoly than perfect market competition due to several inherent characteristics of the power industry. Dynamic collusions among, and static market power abuse by, generation companies are two major manifestations of such a market, and they could threaten the competitiveness as well as reduce the operating efficiency of the market. While market power in electricity markets has already been extensively studied, investigations on collusions are still very preliminary and a systematical framework has not yet been developed up to now for describing and analyzing this problem. Given this background, an effort is first made in this paper on investigating several important issues associated with collusions among generation companies in electricity markets, such as reasons probably leading to the formation of collusions, factors having impacts on the maintainability of collusions including the number and market share of competitors, market entry barriers, frequency of interactions among generation companies, market settlement mechanism, asymmetry among generation companies both in cost structures and capacities, as well as demand side responses. Approaches that could be utilized for identifying collusions among generation companies are next discussed, followed by some suggested measures for preventing the collusions from happening.