Half-Hourly Regional Electricity Price Modelling for Commercial End Users in the UK

Abstract

This paper details a methodology to model half-hourly electricity priceprofiles fortheUK commercial end-users; thus allowing consumersto visualize and calculate more accurately thecost of the electricitythey consume.The methodologyconsistsin a bottom-up model that definesindividuallyall the tariff components of the bill and thenaggregatesthemto quantify the cost of a kWh across the day. In this work ,‘representative day’ electricity price curves for different months, day types, voltage levels connections, and regionsinthe UKfrom 2015 up to 2020are presented.Outputs from this work can informcompaniesto better understand their energy costs and accurately perform economic assessments of investments inschemes that reduce emissions andaim towardsreachingnet zero energy buildings. In addition, the disaggregated structure of the model allows specific analysis ofindividual components thus highlighting which elements carry a larger weight on costs across the year; such as network charges originatedfrom distribution and transmission system operators. Due to its multi-variable dependency, the model produces more than5,000 representative day curves. The results show that thosecommercial buildingsconnected to Low Voltage (LV) in North Wales and Merseyside, Northern Scotland, the South West and South Wales face the highest average electricity prices, whereas consumers connected to HV in London and Yorkshire have the cheapest electricity in the UK.