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I think many energy companies would love (or at least not be opposed) to get a large amount of renewables and energy storage...etc. The problem is that doing so

I think many energy companies would love (or at least not be opposed) to get a large amount of renewables and energy storage...etc. The problem is that doing so costs money (a lot of it) which means raising customer rates which are highly regulated. Many of those companies are still paying off coal assets and aren't allowed by regulators to retire those units until they're paid off even though they aren't economic anymore due to falling gas prices and the prevalence of renewables. I'm not saying that the system is perfect, rather there are so many many factors at play here and it isn't nearly as simple as people think. Make no mistake that transitioning to 100% renewables is a monumental task, but we're getting closer all the time. With that being said, we're starting to see coal being retired at a very fast pace Nationwide and no new ones are really expected to be built. Change is happening every day in this industry which has traditionally moved at a glacial pace. Please do keep up the interest and spirit. One of the key industry drivers here are the production tax credits (wind and now solar + storage) that come from government and make wind so crazy economical right now to where they can have extremely negative offers (think corn and ethanol). This is why it is painful to me to hear about politicians being bought out (ok, I'm sure some have fallen to for lobbyists) as the production tax credits have done so much for clean energy. Public opinion is also important in this space as many utilities are making green investments because it is good for PR.

jabl 7y ago
In deregulated power markets, which AFAIK covers a fairly large fraction of US electricity supply (including Texas) power generators are businesses like in any random industry. The transmission grid, otoh, is a natural monopoly and is tightly regulated (or outright publicly owned). In such markets, uneconomical units tend to be shut down fairly quickly. Which in the absence of a some type of price on carbon (be it a carbon tax, cap and trade, clean portfolio standards or whatever) unfortunately can mean replacing clean energy with dirtier but cheaper.
- 6thaccount2 7y ago
  You're correct that most of the US is in a power market. I'd still call it regulated though. There are some regions like TVA, Colorado area, and BPA that do their own thing, but BPA is joining CAISO's secondary market (energy imbalance) which is a step towards a full day ahead market which does commitment and dispatch instead of just dispatch (commitment and the sharing of reserves is where the majority of cost savings occur). The other parts of the US participate in either ERCOT, CAISO, MISO, SPP, ISO-NE, PJM, or NYISO which all do commitment and dispatch. ERCOT is a little unusual as they don't co-optimize reserves in their real-time 5-minute market. Each of these markets has an independent market monitor that looks for participant gaming and other market anomalies. FERC mandated this after some heavy abuse in the north east from a utility where the fine was divided up and went to funding the market monitoring groups. Either this group or sometimes the market software itself looks for instances of market power being demonstrated. For example, if you're unit is sitting right on top of a congested area and your offer jumps up a certain percent, the software pushes you back to the approved offer that the market monitor verified is your true marginal cost. So the market is deregulated, but there is still plenty of regulation of a sort. In a perfect market, yes you would have uneconomical units shut down quickly, but this isn't the stock market and there are many reasons why this doesn't happen all the time. Maybe you need it for capacity reasons (markets have rules on how much you need to reliably serve load or they even have capacity markets) as wind and solar aren't as reliable as thermal generation.
  - jabl 7y ago
    In this case with regulated vs deregulated I meant whether there is some kind of open access scheme for generators, or whether there is a utility with both power generation and transmission in a monopoly position. Of course, even in such a deregulated market there are laws and regulations that apply to generators. > ERCOT is a little unusual as they don't co-optimize reserves in their real-time 5-minute market. ERCOT has their ORDC which IIUC they are happy with.

jabl 7y ago

In deregulated power markets, which AFAIK covers a fairly large fraction of US electricity supply (including Texas) power generators are businesses like in any random industry. The transmission grid, otoh, is a natural monopoly and is tightly regulated (or outright publicly owned). In such markets, uneconomical units tend to be shut down fairly quickly. Which in the absence of a some type of price on carbon (be it a carbon tax, cap and trade, clean portfolio standards or whatever) unfortunately can mean replacing clean energy with dirtier but cheaper.

6thaccount2 7y ago
You're correct that most of the US is in a power market. I'd still call it regulated though. There are some regions like TVA, Colorado area, and BPA that do their own thing, but BPA is joining CAISO's secondary market (energy imbalance) which is a step towards a full day ahead market which does commitment and dispatch instead of just dispatch (commitment and the sharing of reserves is where the majority of cost savings occur). The other parts of the US participate in either ERCOT, CAISO, MISO, SPP, ISO-NE, PJM, or NYISO which all do commitment and dispatch. ERCOT is a little unusual as they don't co-optimize reserves in their real-time 5-minute market. Each of these markets has an independent market monitor that looks for participant gaming and other market anomalies. FERC mandated this after some heavy abuse in the north east from a utility where the fine was divided up and went to funding the market monitoring groups. Either this group or sometimes the market software itself looks for instances of market power being demonstrated. For example, if you're unit is sitting right on top of a congested area and your offer jumps up a certain percent, the software pushes you back to the approved offer that the market monitor verified is your true marginal cost. So the market is deregulated, but there is still plenty of regulation of a sort. In a perfect market, yes you would have uneconomical units shut down quickly, but this isn't the stock market and there are many reasons why this doesn't happen all the time. Maybe you need it for capacity reasons (markets have rules on how much you need to reliably serve load or they even have capacity markets) as wind and solar aren't as reliable as thermal generation.
- jabl 7y ago
  In this case with regulated vs deregulated I meant whether there is some kind of open access scheme for generators, or whether there is a utility with both power generation and transmission in a monopoly position. Of course, even in such a deregulated market there are laws and regulations that apply to generators. > ERCOT is a little unusual as they don't co-optimize reserves in their real-time 5-minute market. ERCOT has their ORDC which IIUC they are happy with.