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In Defense of Electricity Markets

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Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets

#101

Post by mschaef »

andromeduck wrote: post #20
Animats wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PJM does have pricing for reliability. The first California deregulated electricity market had an auction every half hour and all pricing was spot. This caused blackouts and the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas and Electric, even though it was what PG&E had lobbied for. Today, most markets (at least PJM and CAISO) have a "day ahead" auction, and a current auction to fine-tune. Most of the market is in the day-ahead auction.…

Day ahead isn't enough. Need capacity markets & year ahead futures from what I remember last time I read up.

IIRC, the only US ISO without a capacity market is ERCOT (TX). They let the marginal rates go higher on the theory that it will create an incentive for construction of generation to address anticipated capacity constraints.

Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets

#102

Post by kwhitefoot »

cyberax wrote: post #47
asynchronous wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since they’re small they can be placed far closer to urban hubs and other places that suck electricity. The last design plans I saw one could fit within a single city block, buried under ground with only 1 story exposed.

> The last design plans I saw one could fit within a single city block, buried under ground with only 1 story exposed. This is a completely unrealistic plan, designed to lure investors. An SMR meltdown will produce enough radioactive contamination to make a small city unlivable, at least for a while. So you'll need a full containment building. You'll need emergency generators, coolant pumps, etc. Then you have a ques…

There are designs for modular reactors that are inherently safe. Using subcritical reactors and a particle beam. See Aker Solutions: https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featureaker-s-ads-uses-...

Haven't seen any news from them recently though.

Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets

#103

Post by kwhitefoot »

cinntaile wrote: post #87
fodkodrasz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true.

You really refuted my argument there.

You didn't make an argument, you merely stated something that the respondent disputes. There is a very stable base load in most countries that can be well provided with nuclear. This is especially the case when there are good interconnections between neighbouring countries.

Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets

#104

Post by vegardx »

baq wrote: post #38
guappa wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the offices are all on at night. No worries there.

Can’t for the life of me understand that particular Scandinavian peculiarity in what would seem otherwise very rational society. I assume it must have been logical or still is?

For most homes and offices the primary source of heating is electrical, so in the winter it doens't really make much difference whether you turn the lights off or not, heat is heat. In the summer there's no excuse though. Old habits die hard, or something like that.

That said, modern LED-lighting doesn't really use that much electricity, all lights in my apartment use a total of 100Wh, or 75kWh per month. I could turn off all lights in my apartment for a year and it still wouldn't be close to the energy needed for a single transaction on the bitcoin blockchain. But clearly some speculative investment has more utility than me not stumping my toe when going to the bathroom at night.

Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets

#105

Post by rgmerk »

mythhabit wrote: post #94
rgmerk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMRs are going to have relatively high capital costs and (hopefully) low but non-zero operating costs. They will probably have similar ramping characteristics to coal. As such, they will probably operate like coal - generating most of the time when able to and get their lunch eaten by zero-marginal-cost solar in the middle of the day. One thing SMRs will absolutely not be used for is as peakers, which is where market…

Both France and Germany have nuclear plants with load following capabilities to the tune of 5% change per minute. That is 50-100MW change every minute for a single powerplant. It might not be peak-peak, but it is certainly going to handle the vast majority of all electricity generation with very small delay.

Sure, I get that you can ramp nuclear plants, technically, but it’s highly unlikely to be economically attractive to build new ones with the intention of ramping them a lot.

If SMRs are built, I’d expect many of them to be accompanied by batteries (either co-located or elsewhere on the grid) to be used as an alternative to ramping.

Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets

#106

Post by infecto »

I am still a fan of the way Texas handles its energy markets. The failures that happened a couple years ago was terrible and Texas screwed up big time but I still think its markets are better.

This is of course anecdotal but it always seems like most other markets in the US are not as efficient in terms of infrastructure and pricing. In Texas you have what I consider the more public utility piece, the transmission that is split between two companies. I am sure there are areas in Texas that struggle but I found Texas transmission builds and maintenance to be a lot further ahead then the other states I have lived in.

I always really appreciated picking my retail energy provider. There are some shenanigans here so customers need to pay attention to the pricing BUT I appreciated how this allowed more transparent pricing on a whole for everyone. I am paying a separate company for the transmission piece and then paying the generation through a retail provider who is setting a price for me and then essentially buying that capacity on the market. In other states it always feels like a struggle for the single "public utility" company to argue their way to increase or decrease rates. So instead of having many different energy generation plants which can include solar, wind, battery storage etc, I am stuck with a single company that is publicly traded. Maybe they do need to bump up rates to serve demand or maybe they are trying to also get some more profit out of it.

I also always appreciate the amount of data you could get in Texas.

https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards - Live statewide dashboard of the grid

https://www.smartmetertexas.com/home - You can signup can get data from your meter I think delayed 15mins.

Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets

#107

Post by throwaway50182 »

dukeyukey wrote: post #97
throwaway50182 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The western neighbours have outsized influence on EU policy compared to the east, of course they have to take part of the blame. EU energy policy made visible changes on the markets and landscape of the eastern republics - and the people here hate the EU for it. For example, it created a whole class of "solar barons" who used the EU regulation to get free money that now everyone has to pay for, and for the necessary…

Specifically what EU policies that the more renewable-and-nuclear friendly countries voted for do you have in mind?

The EU green deal was specifically anti-nuclear until very recently. What I'm talking about started in 2008 and finished around 2012 (though we're going to be paying for it for many decades).

Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets

#108

Post by username332211 »

devjab wrote: post #35
Roark66 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If anything the electricity markets in Europe prove the point they can work.

It sort of depends on what you mean by markets. In most places in Europe the production of power is on the market, but the actual power grid is not freely traded. The grid is instead handed out to semi-permanent monopolies that are heavily regulated and controlled by governments and/or non-profit NGOs that are essentially a way we do efficient government in the supply sector. It works, but the benefit isn’t usually t…

> It works, but the benefit isn’t usually to the consumers despite that being the intention.

That was never the intention. The intention of the current iteration of EU electricity markets is to allow wind and solar electricity to be sold at the same price as power-plant electricity.

Wind and solar producers have virtually 0 marginal costs and make electricity at an unpredictable schedule. If there was no market and they had to negotiate long-term contracts with utilities and consumers, the price of their electricity would have been quite a lot cheaper than thermal and hydroelectric plants that produce electricity on demand.

Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets

#109

Post by londons_explore »

cyberax wrote: post #5

Counterpoint: electricity markets are terrible for reliability. Markets are great, but there are no pricing signals for reliability. You won't know that your grid will collapse at the first strong breeze, until it happens (see: Texas). Theoretically, it can work because companies might invest in reliable generation, in the hopes of getting $$$$$$$$$ when the spot price goes up through the roof. But in practice, prett…

> pretty much nobody wants to wait 5-10 years between "income events".

Insurance is a similar market - and big earthquakes might wipe out a whole decades profits.

Yet there are still plenty of players in that market.

Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets

#110

Post by londons_explore »

Animats wrote: post #13
cyberax wrote: post #5

Counterpoint: electricity markets are terrible for reliability. Markets are great, but there are no pricing signals for reliability. You won't know that your grid will collapse at the first strong breeze, until it happens (see: Texas). Theoretically, it can work because companies might invest in reliable generation, in the hopes of getting $$$$$$$$$ when the spot price goes up through the roof. But in practice, prett…

PJM does have pricing for reliability. The first California deregulated electricity market had an auction every half hour and all pricing was spot. This caused blackouts and the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas and Electric, even though it was what PG&E had lobbied for. Today, most markets (at least PJM and CAISO) have a "day ahead" auction, and a current auction to fine-tune. Most of the market is in the day-ahead auction.…

> I've read that the overall effect of electricity deregulation is that prices are slightly lower, and reliability is down.

One interesting option is the option to let customers choose where they want to be on the reliability vs price scale.

Typically, in times of crisis due to undersupply, an electricity network cuts off customers (blackouts).

However, this needent happen at the district/region level. It could just as easily be implemented by your own electricity meter - effectively a breaker which opens when it detects crisis.

Crisis can be fairly easily measured from the power itself - when the supply of electricity is tight, the frequency and voltage drop.

That means a supplier could theoretically have customers choose what reliability they wanted, and set a switch on the back of their electricity meter to give them the reliability they had paid for.

The downside is that this system only works if the majority of electricity meters behave this way.

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