Discovering price-load relationships in California's electricity market

This paper reports on characterizing recent price behavior in the Californi a electricity market. Market participants, that is, producers, consumers an d traders, are highly motivated by the potential for profits to develop str ategies to explore, and exploit, the limits of system operation. These stra tegies should be reflected in the market as different price to load relatio nships. We show that a number of regimes, ie., characteristic behaviors, ex ist in the price time series, and provide a brief analysis of each regime. Knowledge of the number of regimes, their characteristics and switching dyn amics allows insight into the market and power system performance.