> Soon there is so much solar that you don't need the expensive gas most of the time.
In the EU (winters with weak solar radiation) this only works if you can store power over multiple months. Getting rid of gas means purchasing and maintaining a giant amount of batteries. Slow storage won’t save you from outages during peaks. We do have very cheap power from solar, during the hot months. In winter, its wind and offshore turbines that are prevalent, but they are as unpredictable.
So, solar and wind power is trivial. Storage is the issue. And consumers will pay that storage, in both grid cost, and spot prices.
I don’t understand why peak producers should dictate prices for all levels of service. Make an exception for them that’s adequate, like a second peak market, and done? Why should a solar producer (who doesn’t buffer!) get 3x the price only because Russia turns up gas prices and the big producers start panic buying expensive gas futures, poisoning their whole lineup in the process? Solar producers just pump whatever’s coming out of their panels into the market, with no regard for grid stability.
Right now providing grid stability is maximally rewarded because you get paid a lot when it's needed and little when there's a lot of electricity available. Storage providers can use this spread to make money and create grid stability.
I'm not sure what you mean by second peak market?
Let me turn around the question, why should a gas plant get more for its electricity when it's indistinguishable from solar electricity?
> why should a gas plant get more for its electricity when it's indistinguishable from solar electricity?
I already wrote it: levels of service. A gas plant powers up in minutes. A coal plant in hours. A nuclear reactor in years. Solar and wind isn’t controllable at all.
The cheaper suppliers actually bid with their prices, and why wouldn’t those prices be fair then? The EU then goes and gives them more than they offered. Make it make sense. Google „merit order“.
It‘s still a gamble for suppliers btw. The prices change every 15 minutes, and every cheap supplier is at the whim of more expensive suppliers.
Err, no, it's an actual system we built here to service an actual town to soak excess energy from midday solar and buffer an actual real town from blackouts.
The battery banks in Adelaide an elsewhere are real - you can kick them.
You can price these against gas peaker turbine plants, and then compare the robustness of mini distributed storage nodes against larger single point of failure fossil fuel gas plants.
I understand the Western Power link provided looks like media hype, it was put together years back at the start of the project with minal updates in the interim.
It's well out of date now that the Walpole project has been completed and is up and running for a few months now.
The point you appear to miss is that it works and can be easily distributed across a nation cheaply and robustly.
Single massive peaker plants Vs. many smaller battery parks and pumped hydro nodes.
It depends upon the population distributions, topologies, power grid, etc.
Adelaide is a state capital with massive battery banks and large amounts of renewable energy, they have long periods of self suffiency and export excess power to neighbouring states.
This is dull power infrastructure engineering reality, not woo woo imaginary hype.
In the EU (winters with weak solar radiation) this only works if you can store power over multiple months. Getting rid of gas means purchasing and maintaining a giant amount of batteries. Slow storage won’t save you from outages during peaks. We do have very cheap power from solar, during the hot months. In winter, its wind and offshore turbines that are prevalent, but they are as unpredictable.
So, solar and wind power is trivial. Storage is the issue. And consumers will pay that storage, in both grid cost, and spot prices.
I don’t understand why peak producers should dictate prices for all levels of service. Make an exception for them that’s adequate, like a second peak market, and done? Why should a solar producer (who doesn’t buffer!) get 3x the price only because Russia turns up gas prices and the big producers start panic buying expensive gas futures, poisoning their whole lineup in the process? Solar producers just pump whatever’s coming out of their panels into the market, with no regard for grid stability.