The impact of renewable portfolio standard on retail electricity market: A system dynamics model of tripartite evolutionary game

The renewable portfolio standard (RPS) in China is to put into effect at the beginning of 2020, which will inevitably affect the strategy of stakeholders in retail electricity market. To study the effect of RPS on retail electricity market, we take the regulators (energy regulatory authorities) and two types of power sales companies with heterogeneous strength into consideration. Then a system dynamics model of tripartite evolutionary game is developed to analyze the strategy interaction of stakeholders and simulate the corresponding evolution process. Based on the background of Chinese renewable power industry, the scenario analysis method is employed to investigate the impacts of key parameters in relation with RPS scheme on stakeholders’ strategy selections. The results show that, to basically ensure all the power sales companies comply with quota obligation, TGC price of different stages should maintain at desired levels, net profit of renewable power sales should be no less than that of conventional power sales, and incentive and punishment should be within a reasonable range. In particular, the results reveal some policy effects such as reversal effect, blocking effect and over-reliance effect. More importantly, these results provide some policy recommendations for the rapid development of renewable power industry.