Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

Re:Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil ... by kragen on Saturday July 13, 2019 @12:38AM (#20426530)

We're talking about an average net-metering cost of about US$0.12/kWh, right? That's 3.3¢/MJ in SI units, US$120/MWh in the units used in most real-time electrical markets. LMPs do sometimes get as high as US$120/MWh and even higher — I've seen US$160 at times — but never anywhere close to US$12000/MWh, as your "cost thousands of times that" comment suggests. (US$40 is more typical, and sometimes prices go negative, so you can get paid to burn energy.)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil ... by astanway on Saturday July 13, 2019 @12:49AM (#20426562)

RTM prices in ERCOT can easily spike to the price cap of $9000/MWh during bad days: https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-ne...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil ... by kragen on Saturday July 13, 2019 @01:03AM (#20426595)

Interesting! So even if the demand would justify paying $12000/MWh, ERCOT just permits brownouts or blackouts instead of paying that much? (I can't load the article you linked.)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil ... by astanway on Saturday July 13, 2019 @01:05AM (#20426602)

Realistically a price higher than that wouldn't really have any effect on incentivizing generators any more, since there is a limit to how fast they can ramp up, how much spinning reserve capacity they have etc. So, it mostly just serves to protect the market from falling off the rails. The grid operation itself is actually largely disconnected from the market - the ISO primarily calls the shots with scheduling regardless of what the market is doing.

[ Parent | on HN ]