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I heard the following quote in a youtube piece† outlining what happened, and thought it was interesting and relevant to this disaster: "Energy providers are pai

I heard the following quote in a youtube piece† outlining what happened, and thought it was interesting and relevant to this disaster: "Energy providers are paid for what they produce, not how reliable their production is." This kind of policy benefits solar and wind power, which are not reliable (without storage), but it hurts the consumers when abnormal weather hits. And with how the Ercot energy market works, being unreliable can actually be profitable, since it drives the prices of what you are producing up past the generation shortfall. Quite the mismatch between what behavior is needed, and what is rewarded. † https://youtu.be/08mwXICY4JM https://youtu.be/08mwXICY4JM EDIT: Accuse wind and solar of not being reliable on HN (even with the storage caveat), and you're punished. But it's true. It happened here. Wind turbines were shut down. Solar panels were covered in snow. They didn't have storage attached to make up for these shortfalls. Even a nuclear power plant went down due to problems with its water supply.

imtringued 5y ago
>And with how the Ercot energy market works, being unreliable can actually be profitable, since it drives the prices of what you are producing up past the generation shortfall. If the generator can profit off unreliablity it also means a grid storage provider can profit off reliability and undercut the generator.
- falcolas 5y ago
  I did not mean to say that producers were doing this intentionally. Energy storage entities would only really profit in extreme circumstances where the prices are driven up so high - where production has decreased to the point where the grid is in danger of destabilizing. The rest of the time they'd be operating in the margins, picking up the solar and wind excesses to sell later. Given the investment and operating costs (battery farms, taking over hydro (or constructing new hydro), etc), I doubt it would be worth picking up given the current incentives.

imtringued 5y ago

>And with how the Ercot energy market works, being unreliable can actually be profitable, since it drives the prices of what you are producing up past the generation shortfall. If the generator can profit off unreliablity it also means a grid storage provider can profit off reliability and undercut the generator.

falcolas 5y ago
I did not mean to say that producers were doing this intentionally. Energy storage entities would only really profit in extreme circumstances where the prices are driven up so high - where production has decreased to the point where the grid is in danger of destabilizing. The rest of the time they'd be operating in the margins, picking up the solar and wind excesses to sell later. Given the investment and operating costs (battery farms, taking over hydro (or constructing new hydro), etc), I doubt it would be worth picking up given the current incentives.