electricity market Archives

Jun 06

Electricity Market Manipulation – Higher Costs, More Emergencies

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant No Comments

East of the Mississippi, we haven’t had a heat-induced stress test of the electric grid for a long time. I don’t remember names, but I remember weather events, places, and numbers well. The hottest summer of my life was 1988, with many days over 100F throughout the summer (every month). Many records fell, and several times on consecutive days. It was relentless. The next steamiest summer was 1995, while I was in graduate school in Madison. The temperature peaked at around 117F with a staggering dewpoint over 80F. It's bad when sunglasses and bicycles fog over when you take them…

Nov 14

Love0

Regulating Deregulation and Wind’s Other Big Subsidy

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant 3 Comments

Last week we examined the startup of deregulation, why a competitive market for electricity is difficult and early failures. This week, we look at the price impacts and some long-term implications of deregulation. It seemed to me that deregulation of the electricity market had been a disaster: bankruptcies, soaring prices, and most recently, stranded baseload assets. There was a lot of evidence in that, but lately, prices have improved, but other challenges are emerging. Deregulation’s Impact on Pricing I realized that searching for comprehensive data showing the impact on electricity costs for regulated versus deregulated is impossible. Lucky for you,…