King of Power

The politics of the grid, the economics of the grid, and the engineering of the grid, are three circles with very very very little overlap.

Let's take a look at @pjminterconnect's capacity auction, shall we? This market is tighter than a pair of skinny jeans. Only 17 MWs of capacity [solar, it would seem] was offered but did not clear (out of 134,205 MWs). 🧵

The basic problem PJM has is that load flatlined from 2008 to ~2023, and the capacity market functioning as designed was trying to get old plants to retire, but state legs kept subsidizing them to avoid small town collapses. 15 years going in circles around overcapacity

Most of the resource adequacy issues facing RTO markets today can be explained by this simple graph:

I would add that to the extent externalities, positive and negative, can be incorporated into price (either of energy or AS), this should help the alignment.

The single most important issue in wholesale power is aligning system planning with operations

The most educated and intelligent people working on energy policy are the ones who agree with my priors. The ones who disagree with my priors? Abject morons, and probably bought and paid for by nefarious interests.

Getting missed in all the BBB debate but PJM dropped a masterclass on winter risk in their prelim ELCC update. 3 main points: 1- Gradual change in portfolio towards VRE + storage replacing 'unlimited resources' (fossil, nuclear) = higher winter risk 2- Higher winter risk means…

I really don't think that repealing PTCs/ITCs will slow down the deployment of renewables that much in the face of load growth. You might see less solar and more storage or wind on net but that's probably it. You still can't get a gas turbine right now.