Because it's the most expensive used generation almost always?
But I'd actually be interested in seeing the underlying market data, even say for a week ago. Actually seeing the underlying offers really helps you to properly understand what the future looks like.
For example, right now wholesale is about £70 per MWh. What did the underlying bids and offers look like to hit that price ? How much CCGT was available for less than £50 ? 10MW ? 100 MW? 1 GW ?
If it was the most expensive it wouldn't transact at that price, the price clears roughly to minimise excess demand i.e. gas is often the energy you can actually at a given time.
No, by definition the most expensive used generation did transact at that price because it's a clearing auction. You probably skimmed over what I wrote because it didn't conform to how you'd imagined this works and you mistakenly thought you understand.
I expect that you've modelled this as a sort of "All or nothing" situation but of course that's not how it works for electricity, which is why the underlying data would be interesting. That "guts" of a market help you understand the meaning of the surface numbers like a wholesale spot price or a week-in-advance price.
For example, you can see in the released data that spot prices can go negative without all the gas generation switching off. Some modest amount of CCGT will apparently pay money to the grid to stay running, sometimes for hours, despite lack of demand. Most of the gas goes away at negative prices, but some will still be there, so what's that about exactly ?
My guess (which the underlying data would help confirm) is that generators bid their "tick over" generation at a low price, perhaps even a negative price, so as to rarely need to switch off the generator and pay the considerable shutdown/ startup prices, but bid a lot more at a high price which covers their fuel and other expenses. Do they also have a further tier of pricing for running the generator at some sort of "red line" less efficient but more productive rate? I have no idea, and without the raw data or an inside knowledge of their companies there is no way to know.
See, this is where logic and experience would have helped.
Would burning more expensive gas during a gas price crisis have helped?
No, UCL research suggests that wind power saved over 100 billion (this is net of 45 billion in subsidies) from 2010 to 2023! And it continues to do so.
And that's after it got effectively banned from being built onshore for a decade in England, costing many billions more.
(Though, the world got lucky here as the CfD mechanism helped prove offshore wind was feasible, another British success story).
Gas current and futures price for just the gas that needs burned (nothing about plant maintenance or carbon price to compensate for pollution or cost for building the plant or paying loans taken to build it etc.) is at 100, 90 and 80 pounds per MWh over the next 3 years.
That is more than the cost to build entirely new solar and wind, about double the cost of the best current projects, maybe 50% more than the average.
So even if you waved a magic wand and instantly solved several major world crisis affecting the price of gas, it still would be cheaper to build renewables in the UK than to buy just the gas alone.
This is true in the UK and basically everywhere in the world except maybe Russia, some parts of the middle east and the US Shale regions, but even there it's a close thing!
This has led to these being nearly 100% of all new electricity capacity built globally. Which only drives prices lower, and displaces gas and so makes gas cheaper than it otherwise would be too.
Didn't you start this thread by complaining about expensive energy?
We have the solution and you don't like it because you read news from magazines owned by people who pretend climate change isn't real.
So what if it's a cold night with no wind? I'm not saying renewables aren't cheap, I'm saying that you can't fully construct a grid on them and that this has not been communicated.
Our energy is expensive and volatile because of this (and subsidies to implement it). You don't seem to be capable of following my argument. It's not a free lunch. Renewables are also slightly problematic for grid stability although I expect we will have enough fast storage / (possibly synthetic) inertia eventually.
Some of the most expensive fossil fuel energy in the world it's true. So, we should be striving to reduce that further, like Spain, right ?