Imp lementa tion of renewable ene rgy sup port poli cies in many countr ies for the sake of energy sec urity an d climate chan ge mitiga tion worldw ide raises the im portanc e of renewable energy power plants ( REPPs) in analyzing power market features. In this article, an ana lytical metho d is introduced to exa mine the effect of RE PPs on locati onal ma rginal price (LMP ). To thi s end, taking into account REPP s, ac cording to the social welfare maxi mizatio n problem of the in depend ent system operator (ISO), a new de compositi on for LMP is proposed to analytically express the impac t of the strategic be havior of conventional generation companies ( GenCos) and the power system structu re on LMP. The str uctural section of LMP is decom posed into four compon ents to differentiate between the effect of Gen Cos and REPP s. The well-known Q-Lea rning (QL) algorithm model s the G enCos’ decisio n-making process. The results prove t hat RE PPs can change both the structu ral and be havioral compon ents of t he LMP and highlig ht the si gnifi ca nce of GenCos’ strategic behavior. The results demon strate that not conside ring t he featu res of t he power system in the design of supp ort polici es might raise the likelihood of congestio n or the probability of strategic be haviors from Gen Cos, agai nst the obje ctives of these polici es.

Keywords