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>Another distinction is that most people will trade the average price of power over a given area called a "zone." But there are thousands of physical busses tha
by DavidPeiffer 5y ago
>Another distinction is that most people will trade the average price of power over a given area called a "zone." But there are thousands of physical busses that people connect to, each of which has its own power price, and you can trade those via nodal trading (with instruments like FTRs and ARRs, again not worth going into).
This is really an interesting concept. It looks like nodal trading is available in the northeast - is it dependent on the RTO and how it is run? I'm passively familiar with some utility policies in Iowa but hadn't heard that brought up on the consumption side.
To the extent you can discuss, I'm curious what your saw during the Texas energy crisis about a year ago?
I spent a couple years on the buying and forecasting side for a very large manufacturing facility mostly on natural gas but heard some of the electricity discussions. Force Majeure conditions could lead to very large penalties if we exceeded our forecasted demand. I also sat in on some meetings discussing the massive electricity consumption and strategies to minimize total cost.
The biggest thing most consumers don't realize is how variable the production costs are. On the hottest days when everyone is using their air conditioners, special power plants come online to cover the added load. These peaker power plants may only run a handful of days per year, are cheap to build, but are very expensive to operate. Residential consumers often pay the same electricity cost per kWh despite the utility paying a highly variable cost.