Frank Wolak:

About

Frank Wolak is the Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. He is also the Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford. His research and teaching focus on the design, performance, and monitoring of energy and environmental markets. Wolak has served as Chair of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator and was a member of the Emissions Market Advisory Committee for California’s Market for Greenhouse Gas Emissions allowances. He holds positions as a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and at the Precourt Institute for Energy.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Environmental economics
• Engineering
• Natural resource economics
• Business
• Economics
• Microeconomics
• Marketing
• Industrial organization

Selected publications

• Long-Term Resource Adequacy in Wholesale Electricity Markets with Significant Intermittent Renewables

  Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy · 2022 · 34 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Growing amounts of intermittent renewable generation capacity substantially increase the complexity of determining whether sufficient energy will be available to meet hourly demands throughout the year. As the events of August 2020 in California and February 2021 in Texas demonstrate, supply shortfalls can have large economic and public health consequences. An empirical analysis of these two events demonstrates that similar supply shortfalls are likely to occur in the future without a paradigm s…

  DOI

• Market Design in an Intermittent Renewable Future: Cost Recovery With Zero-Marginal-Cost Resources

  IEEE Power and Energy Magazine · 2021 · 34 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  The basic features of an efficient short-term wholesale market design do not necessarily need to change to accommodate a significantly larger share of zero-marginal-cost, intermittent renewable energy from wind and solar resources. A large share of controllable zero-marginal-cost generation does not create any additional market design challenge relative to a market with a large share of controllable positive marginal cost generation. Regardless of the technology, generation unit owners must reco…

  DOI

• Estimating cooling demand flexibility in a district energy system using temperature set point changes from selected buildings

  Applied Energy · 2023-02-16 · 32 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• (Machine) learning from the COVID-19 lockdown about electricity market performance with a large share of renewables

  Journal of Environmental Economics and Management · 2020 · 28 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Quantifying the benefits of a nodal market design in the Texas electricity market

  Energy Economics · 2022-07-01 · 26 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• James Bushnell

  25 shared

• Mark C. Thurber

  Stanford University

  16 shared

• Matthew S. Lewis

  Clemson University

  15 shared

• Severin Borenstein

  15 shared

• Robert H. Patrick

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  14 shared

• Robert W. Staiger

  13 shared

• Charles D. Kolstad

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  12 shared

• Ognen Stojanovski

  11 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Stanford University

  1985

• M.A., Economics

  University of California, Berkeley

  1980

• B.A., Economics

  University of California, Berkeley

  1977

Awards & honors

• Zale Lecture and Award

Similar researchers at Stanford University

• Eric Hanushek:h-136
• A Polinsky:h-79
• WalterW. Powell:h-62