Many are concerned with the rise of power prices and stimulus blackouts, and many have fed a system that leads to the ideological and utility priority of reliability. Our electric grid is the backbone of modern life – Powering hospitals, houses and businesses – but it is lowered by flawed policies in our organized electricity markets.
Regional Transmistration Organizations (RTOS), reliable, cheap electricity, are tied to an anti-competition altered with reliable power. This is not an evil economy; This is a recipe for disaster. We need the brave reform of the innovation of the inn, protect consumers and keep the lights.
RTOS handling several electrical grids, balance supplies and demands to prevent blackouts. They get electricity through competitive bidding, where generators submit offers to empower. Here’s to arrest: Most use a model “clearing price”, which pays all accepted generators to be the highest bid winning generators, not their real bids.
Other industries do not pay the highest bid accepted by all suppliers. They pay the price offered in each supply they accept.
A carbon or gas plant with an uneven rules that prevent them from using their real expenses, including profits, paying the same changes that are reduced. They all paid the maximum cost taken in RTO. This system is “predecessor”
The wind and solar, while our energy mix, rot, produces power only when working with time. Their causes of capacity – how much power they produce compared to their potential – from a bit of 18% to 40. However, portfolio substances with roto markets.
Too bad, RTO bidding rules often prevent released plants – natural gas, coal and nuclear – from incorporating facility costs, without it useful. Many closed, leaving us vulnerable to blackouts when changes cannot survive.
See Europe, where heavy confidence brings power three to four times higher than ours and frequent grid failures. Spain blackout in Spain, affecting 55 million, shows what happens when the grids are very stressed by the power that is relying on time without enough generation that has been developing the time without sufficient generation that has been developing in the period without enough generation to enhance. We’re on the same road unless we work.
First, RTOS must pay the generators of their actual bid price, not the highest accepted bid. Second, we need to discuss the unfair advantage of uninterrupted sources. Wind and solar should receive discounted payments showing their lowest value for maintaining our lights.
In the end, we need to pay the sending plants for their capacity and grid inertia. This will make sure they remain viable to meet the demand when air and solar air. Which is always.
These changes are not anti-wind-and-solar; They are pro-reliable and pro-consumer. The wind and solar can still compete, but not at the cost of grid stability or beauty. Without reform, we gamble with our energy, inviting blackouts, and skyrocketing rates.
Frank Lasee is the President of Energy and Climate Truth
