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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (857278)	5/15/2015 2:40:09 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575771

If a utility buying electricity from a provider is subsidizing it, sure. A utility buying power from a provider isn't subsidizing the provider. Forcing the utility to buy from the provider at higher then market prices is. (In a certain sense forcing it to buy from a provider at any price is, but that point would be better covered by "interference in the market" then by "subsidy"). Electricity is never worthless. That isn't true. In fact in some cases spot prices have been negative. Negative prices are unusual, but there are plenty of times when extra production just isn't needed at the moment but a strong wind comes through or whatever and "alternatives" produce more. Electricity that you are forced to buy (even when you don't need it), that can't be relied on as either base load or peaking power, can be worthless when you can't shut down your baseload economically. If you have a dam and its reservoir is full, your going to dump water over the dam. You can generate electricity with that water you get the electricity at a marginal cost of zero or near zero. If instead your forced to buy solar or wind generated power, you just dump the water, get no electricity from it, and pay for what you could have had for free. If your baseload is coal, it doesn't make sense to shut down the plant for some tranisent boost from other sources that might go away with little warning leaving you without enough. So you might keep burning coal, paying that cost plus the net metering cost, all without reducing CO2 emissions. You could instead run with less base load and more peaking production. Then you could turn gas turbines on and off rapidly as solar and wind go up and down, but then your paying extra for more expensive peaking generation.