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stymaartoday at 7:25 AM2 repliesview on HN

Unfortunately, the article misses the forest for the tree: it points the shortcomings of one particular electricity market model, but never acknowledge that the whole endeavor is doomed to fail: the way electricity works physically (coupled with the way societies have been built around it being readily available) makes it fundamentally impossible to manage through market forces. And as a result, every attempt results in an apparently nonsensical failure (see also how the European electricity market's "copper plate" model leads to the insanely high re-dispach costs).


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Mvandenberghtoday at 8:56 AM

Not all markets, and not even all European markets, assume a single trading zone (i.e. a copper plate network). Re-dispatch costs are high because policy choices have created a physical reality that drives high constraints.

That could have been prevented by simply not permitting connections in certain parts of the network. Yes, theoretically it could also have been prevented by forcing generators to directly bear re-dispatch costs which would have led developers to build a different set of generating assets. This would have been a different set of market mechanisms.

However, if generation decisions had been made centrally, they would have been made by the same system operators, regulators, and governments that mandated the construction of the current system and they would have therefore built the same system more or less. Do you really think that if e.g. Germany or the GB network had been centrally planned by their respective government mandated regulators and system operators, they wouldn't have put all those windfarms exactly where the market-led model we actually have has put them?

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logicchainstoday at 7:56 AM

>the way electricity works physically (coupled with the way societies have been built around it being readily available) makes it fundamentally impossible to manage through market force

This is anti-scientific woo. Both theoretically and empirically market-based electricity systems are much more efficient, that's why even China is adopting one: https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/chin...

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