If large consumers of power are able to sell back prepaid energy at a premium, passing the buck to the average consumer, is this a new form of legal corporate welfare to help some businesses cover their losses?
Source: a_purple_string
If large consumers of power are able to sell back prepaid energy at a premium, passing the buck to the average consumer, is this a new form of legal corporate welfare to help some businesses cover their losses?
Source: a_purple_string
3 Comments
We need more demand response, not less. Bitcoin miners are the ultimate price responsive demand – they should just drop off the grid when power prices get unprofitable for them. They should not be eligible for separate payments for that IMO because it should just be in their economic interest.
When it comes to other large loads, payments can make a lot of sense, if they are cheaper/more reliable than building new supply to meet peak demand. It’s not just large customers that can offer grid services – this more recent article highlights one offering in the Texas market for residential customers to benefit from the same “subsidies” – [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nrg-renew-home-google-cloud-213200958.html](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nrg-renew-home-google-cloud-213200958.html)
No, this is just simple hedging and trading. Any decently sized business does this.
No. You can buy power at a lower average rate if you agree to buy it over the whole 24 hours. Sometimes that rate will be higher than the market rate, and sometimes lower. So you could give up taking that power at the times the price peaks. You get paid well for that, it helps hold down the peak price. You can still get a good price for the other times, and producers are incentivised to build more efficient base load power plants, which is good for everyone.