Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by leftbit 383 days ago
Had. Now we have the "Merit Order Principle". Cheap energy (i.e. renewables) are used first but the price is determined by the most expensive energy source running. (See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit-Order)

So if you're running a solar park you have production costs of about 5ct/kWh. But if there's also a gas plant running you get maybe 20ct/kWh. Instaprofit.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromgestehungskosten

1 comments

Uniform pricing creates huge windfall profits for those cheap generators too, which incentivizes more investment. I‘m not saying there‘s collusion but the incentive to keep a gas turbine in the stack is clearly given.