On Wednesday evening, spot electricity prices topped $5,000 per megawatt-hour, up more than 200 times from Wednesday morning.

Texas power prices soar 20,000% as brutal heat wave sets off emergency::On Wednesday evening, spot electricity prices topped $5,000 per megawatt-hour, up more than 200 times from Wednesday morning.

  • Ocelot@lemmies.worldEnglish
    24·
    10 months ago

    Contrary to what clickbait articles lead you to believe these spikes are incredibly brief. https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/systemwideprices

    I’m really not sure how else an electrical grid is supposed to artificially encourage lowering demand than to fluctuate pricing. Lots of new appliances now can connect to the grid and shut themselves down temporarily when costs are high, this is an opt-in system that without pricing tied to it most people would ignore. If you need to use electricity at high demand time it had better be important.

    And yes I realize in an ideal world every electrical grid would be 10,000% oversized and be able to handle infinite demand. That is unfortunately not the world we live in.