Electricity markets are transitioning to zonal and nodal pricing to maximize social welfare, improve price signals, and enhance congestion management. South Korea, traditionally reliant on uniform pricing, is evaluating this transition but lacks a detailed impact analysis. This study assessed the impacts of various zonal and nodal pricing schemes on power systems and provided policy implications for this transition. We (1) modeled the power system at various levels of granularity, obtaining a detailed 4579-node representation; (2) constructed a set of zonal and nodal pricing schemes reflecting changes in market-clearing models and pricing mechanisms; and (3) performed quantitative analyses through simulations for each scheme. Under the current system marginal price (SMP)-based uniform pricing, the schemes with the least market impact are SMP-based zonal pricing with two bidding zones and extended locational marginal pricing. These results can guide the development of an appropriate pricing transition pathway, although a market price reduction of 4.8–7.0% appears inevitable. Within the Korean electricity market, wherein a Transco is a monopoly retailer, we identified potential conflicts of interest for the Transco in zonal and nodal pricing. By focusing on South Korea, this study offers valuable insights into any electricity market considering the transition to zonal and nodal pricing.

The complexity of modern power systems is increasing because of the development of various intermittent generators. In practical reliability evaluations, it is essential to include both the failure of conventional generators and the output characteristics of renewable energy; the use of the latter has increased rapidly. The weather-dependent nature of renewable energy output, which is inexplicable in the load duration curve method, highlights the need for further study of the methods of a reliability evaluation that can consider temporal characteristics. This paper proposes a deterministic reliability evaluation method based on the Booth–Baleriaux method, chronologically extended to address the preventative maintenance schedule of a generator and the characteristics of renewable energy. The proposed method was applied to an IEEE reliability test system for performance verification, and a reliability evaluation was performed considering various chronological patterns. The proposed method was also applied to determine the adequate capacity reserve that should be installed in a Korean power system. The proposed method is stable, and it produced robust results.

Electricity markets are transitioning to zonal and nodal pricing to maximize social welfare, improve price signals, and enhance congestion management. South Korea, traditionally reliant on uniform pricing, is evaluating this transition but lacks a detailed impact analysis. This study assessed the impacts of various zonal and nodal pricing schemes on power systems and provided policy implications for this transition. We (1) modeled the power system at various levels of granularity, obtaining a detailed 4,579-node representation; (2) constructed a set of zonal and nodal pricing schemes reflecting changes in market-clearing models and pricing mechanisms; and (3) performed quantitative analyses through simulations for each scheme. Under the current system marginal price (SMP)-based uniform pricing, the schemes with least market impact are SMP-based zonal pricing with two bidding zones and extended locational marginal pricing. These results can guide the development of an appropriate pricing transition pathway, although a market price reduction of 4.8–7.0% appears inevitable. Within the Korean electricity market, wherein Transco is a monopoly retailer, we identified potential conflicts of interest for Transco in zonal and nodal pricing. By focusing on South Korea, this study offers valuable insights into any electricity market considering the transition to zonal and nodal pricing.