As you aluded to though, no one is going to build solar w/o a PPA due to the loss of revenue at high output hours, but who in their right mind is going to issue a PPA unless they can both control entry to manage how much excess they have to deal with or dispose of, and rate set to recover the fixed overall costs?
Overall I think its more that storage as a whole has not been figured out yet. I think the issue may be they are trying to treat storage as a generator rather than a grid asset.
Someone has to figure out a business model in which people pay for energy at a volume and at a time…that isn’t high-risk Wolf o’ Wall Street trading on the real time market.
Broadly, I don't think a market oriented system can either deeply decarbonize or get high reliability using intermittent or negligible marginal cost resources...
This is my most 'market' version I think could work. Or you could just be Hydro Quebec...
2. ISO-NE would be very skittish about running RFPs for new generation, though. They're ideologically committed to managed markets, even if those markets are managed to absolute absurdity. See the new Day-Ahead Ancillary Services market, which is computers bidding to computers based on pre-determined bids, but it's still "technically a market."
I'm not expecting 'market' based systems to even think about going over to my suggestion until they run headlong into a brick wall of failure.
Or get stuck in the morass of the 'default plan' ( https://x.com/Ember421/status/1765555884309053538?s=19 ), and decide that a predominantly natural gas firm system has a bunch of common-cause failure risks that they get caught pants down by...
If this does happen, it will be by nationalizing the utilities one bankruptcy at a time.
On the staffing, yes an issue, but in some ways maybe it helps on staffing. For connections they don't have to try to manage everyone who randomly drops an application, but instead do it by RFP round and batch studies of the whole round at a time. And give credit / penalty to the bid costs based on the connection and other reosurce requirements for them. Put some real financial teath for anyone who submits a bid, is selected, and then fails to follow through.
I’m less optimistic of that structure of financial teeth…next week I’ll talk about capacity market reforms ISO-NE is trying and why…there are problems.
Ultimately, the issue is that the business models for pairing storage with intermittent renewables aren’t built yet. An ISO-NE-run RFP might procure the electrons, but at what price and risk profile?
And on nationalizing utilities—the profit motive isn’t the reason they suck. The munis don’t necessarily have good management either.
As you aluded to though, no one is going to build solar w/o a PPA due to the loss of revenue at high output hours, but who in their right mind is going to issue a PPA unless they can both control entry to manage how much excess they have to deal with or dispose of, and rate set to recover the fixed overall costs?
Overall I think its more that storage as a whole has not been figured out yet. I think the issue may be they are trying to treat storage as a generator rather than a grid asset.
Storage just loves in time, rather than space.
Someone has to figure out a business model in which people pay for energy at a volume and at a time…that isn’t high-risk Wolf o’ Wall Street trading on the real time market.
Interesting!
On what might replace PPA's:
https://x.com/Ember421/status/1720198113393070287?s=19
Broadly, I don't think a market oriented system can either deeply decarbonize or get high reliability using intermittent or negligible marginal cost resources...
This is my most 'market' version I think could work. Or you could just be Hydro Quebec...
Ok so more serious answer:
1. ISO-NE is already doing this for transmission: https://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/100021/2025lttprfp_postingannouncement.pdf
2. ISO-NE would be very skittish about running RFPs for new generation, though. They're ideologically committed to managed markets, even if those markets are managed to absolute absurdity. See the new Day-Ahead Ancillary Services market, which is computers bidding to computers based on pre-determined bids, but it's still "technically a market."
3. ISO-NE ain't got the staff dude, it's real bad over there: https://www.energycrystals.io/p/bonus-iso-ne-is-still-terrifyingly
Interesting on doing that for the TX!
I'm not expecting 'market' based systems to even think about going over to my suggestion until they run headlong into a brick wall of failure.
Or get stuck in the morass of the 'default plan' ( https://x.com/Ember421/status/1765555884309053538?s=19 ), and decide that a predominantly natural gas firm system has a bunch of common-cause failure risks that they get caught pants down by...
If this does happen, it will be by nationalizing the utilities one bankruptcy at a time.
On the staffing, yes an issue, but in some ways maybe it helps on staffing. For connections they don't have to try to manage everyone who randomly drops an application, but instead do it by RFP round and batch studies of the whole round at a time. And give credit / penalty to the bid costs based on the connection and other reosurce requirements for them. Put some real financial teath for anyone who submits a bid, is selected, and then fails to follow through.
I’m less optimistic of that structure of financial teeth…next week I’ll talk about capacity market reforms ISO-NE is trying and why…there are problems.
Ultimately, the issue is that the business models for pairing storage with intermittent renewables aren’t built yet. An ISO-NE-run RFP might procure the electrons, but at what price and risk profile?
And on nationalizing utilities—the profit motive isn’t the reason they suck. The munis don’t necessarily have good management either.
I might write a longer reply to this—this is a compelling idea that have nuanced, weedsy, and serious disagreements on