Analysis of Long and Short Term Influencing Factors on Electricity Prices in the Japanese Electricity Market: A Case Study at Kyushu Region

The dynamic changes in retail and wholesale electricity prices in the power market are one of the core means in demand side management of the power system. Analyzing and predicting the influencing factors of these electricity prices helps to understand the fluctuation patterns of electricity prices, and is an important basis for both supply and demand sides in the electricity market to participate in transactions. This study is based on actual electricity price changes in the Kyushu region of Japan, and investigates the impact of energy structure, climate, and other key factors. Firstly, through regression analysis, the effects of long-term factors such as energy structure and economic and demographic changes on retail and wholesale electricity prices were studied. Subsequently, through correlation analysis, the impact of short-term factors such as climate on electricity prices was studied. Finally, using a prediction algorithm based on moving windows, the changes in the influencing characteristics of the above influencing factors were studied through regression analysis. The results show that there is a significant negative correlation between total electricity consumption and population and electricity price (correlation coefficient of −0.8 or above), while there is a significant positive correlation between thermal power generation and electricity price (correlation coefficient of 0.714). This indicates that Japan's market-oriented electricity prices have high flexibility with changes in demand and are still dominated by thermal power generation.