{
  "abstract": "Renewables now dominate Great Britain's generation mix but rarely occupy the marginal price-setting position, which raises the question of which flexible technologies translate a renewable-rich system into real-time price formation. This study reconstructs the price-ranked edge of the eligible bid or offer stack in the GB Balancing Mechanism across 50,684 half-hourly Settlement Periods from 2023 to 2025 and attributes it to individual Balancing Mechanism Units, separating long-system bid-active from short-system offer-active conditions and retaining co-marginal ties. Batteries rose from 0.8% to 36.2% of bid-active and from 3.2% to 26.9% of offer-active marginality, displacing combined-cycle gas on the bid side and pumped storage on the offer side. Capacity-normalised marginal capture rose on both sides, and unit-quarter fixed effects show that an additional 100 MW of Balancing Mechanism active capacity was associated with a 0.55 and 0.48 percentage-point increase in quarterly bid- and offer-side marginal share. By 2025, battery actions were around £9 to 10/MWh more favourable than volume-matched non-battery alternatives drawn from the same ladder, yet batteries were under-represented by 12.9 percentage points in the highest-priced 5% of short-system periods. Individual batteries remain consistent with price-taking, while the fleet has become endogenous to routine balancing price formation.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2608.29818",
  "author_total": 2,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Robert Dalton"
    },
    {
      "name": "Aidan O'Sullivan"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0kf2vqcabr4r4.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2608.29818",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "0kf2vqcabr4r4",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.29818",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "econ.GN"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "q-fin.EC"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "stat.AP"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.29818",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-08-30",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0kf2vqcabr4r4.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:54Z",
      "native_id": "2608.29818",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.29818"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "mathematics",
      "origin": "arxiv:stat.AP",
      "subfield": "statistics"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Decarbonising price formation: unit-level evidence on battery storage and the imbalance price in the GB Balancing Mechanism",
  "title_text": "Decarbonising price formation: unit-level evidence on battery storage and the imbalance price in the GB Balancing Mechanism",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:54Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0kf2vqcabr4r4",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}