3 ms·
My understanding was that it sometimes happens in the commercial market - there's some inertia in large power systems and so sometimes it can help balance thing
by hotpotamus 3y ago
My understanding was that it sometimes happens in the commercial market - there's some inertia in large power systems and so sometimes it can help balance things out to pay someone to sink electricity. I read something about this in a paper discussing the economics of grid-scale batteries - basically they can potentially make lots of money by playing both ends of the market and can switch on/off with incredible speed compared to other generation.
- londgine 3y agobut how can sending power through the lines, and then paying someone to accept it really be cheaper for the power company than simply sending it to ground?
- dragontamer 3y agoYou know that when you send 10MW of power to ground, all the wires will just melt.... Right? Maybe not even melt. The copper might skip the liquid phase and just vaporize to gas at those temperatures. -------- Power to ground doesn't just mean wasting electricity. It also means perfectly turning that energy into heat. We are screwed by thermodynamics. Energy is never wasted, just converted to different forms. We usually call heat waste but in utility scale power design (Megawatts+) it's not easy to find energy sinks in practice that can absorb excess energy generated. ------- In practice, you want the generators to stop making electricity (at least, the generators that __can__ stop in time). But some equipment cant stop in time to respond to the hourly electricity market.
- caminante 3y agoContractual obligations and grid security trump counterparty economics. You have traders taking/offloading risk. I'm not familiar with this micro-market, but power prices go negative in the US frequently where tax incentives make it profitable to operate renewables plants at prices < -$20/MWh.