An overview of the Portuguese electricity market

Abstract

The electricity market in Portugal was recently opened to all consumers. However, it remains highly concentrated in terms of control of production and supply and the long-term power purchase arrangements still coexist with free market. This paper discusses the electricity market restructuring process in Portugal, presenting its main marks over the past years and the present situation. The evolution of the electricity prices in Portugal is analysed, and a comparison with EU-15 is presented. Special attention is given to Spain due to the possibility of cross-border competition in the future arising from the formation of the Iberian electricity market.

Residential electricity consumption in Portugal: Findings from top-down and bottom-up models

“…Although the electricity market for the final consumer in the residential sector has formally been liberalized in 2004, the individual consumer has not yet had the possibility to choose its provider freely before September 2006 (Ferreira et al, 2007). All the residential consumers were still under the regulated market for both years of analysis.…”

“…The value for Portugal was obtained without having other control variables in the model and is, therefore, a simple and possibly biased estimate. Ferreira et al (2007) provide an analysis of the Portuguese electricity market from a regulatory and economic perspective. They find that although the electricity market was liberalized in 2004 it is still strongly dominated by one player, Energias de Portugal (EDP).…”

Liberalization and customer behavior in the Portuguese residential retail electricity market

“…In this paper, we are interested in evaluating the performance of the liberalized retail electricity market in Portugal. Earlier studies on the Portuguese electricity market focused mainly on the competitiveness of the wholesale market (Ferreira et al, 2007). conducted one of the earliest studies on the restructuring process in Portugal's electricity sector.…”

Operational Efficiency Improvements in the Portuguese Electricity Sector

“…The liberalization of the Portuguese electricity market began in fits and starts in the 1980s. While some aspects of the reform are still ongoing, the market has moved much closer to full competition in electricity generation, supply and wholesale (Ferreira et al, 2007). The reform entered its final stage in 2006 (Amorim et al, 2013), with a process that consisted of the privatization of state-owned entities, the legal unbundling of the electric transmission network, the promotion of competition and switching opportunities for customers in electricity markets, the integration into the Iberian market and the phasing out of regulated tariffs, among others (Ghazvini et al, 2019).…”