For a while now, I have been saying that we are entering a world where energy (kWh) is cheap, thanks to dropping solar and wind costs, but power (kW) is expensive, needed as it is to balance renewables and peaking new uses, such as electric vehicle charging.[i]
There are not a lot of empirical evidence of this phenomenon, but Ontario offers one.
In 2005, Ontario decided to move to a “hybrid” deregulated generation market, with a “Global Adjustment” (GA) charge on customer electricity bill that is used to cover the difference between the energy market price (¢/kWh) and rates paid to regulated and contracted generators for providing capacity (kW). The energy market price was intended to reflect the marginal cost of production, with contracts meant to compensate fixed capacity costs. Over time, as contract volumes increased, more and more of the costs of generation became charged through capacity contracting rather than through energy market revenues. In addition, a significant number of zero marginal cost bidders (essentially renewables) were built, further depressing market revenues. As the chart below indicates, a growing portion of generator payments shifted from the energy market onto capacity contracts, which were then charged to customers through the Global Adjustment.[ii]
This is for Ontario, with its peculiar market structure. However, with the advent of renewables and increasing electrification of the economy, we will see the same trend across the world: the capacity-driven cost of the grid will be exposed. The underlying trend is:
Energy, in kWh or MWh, will get very cheap.
Power, in kW or MW, will be very valuable.
For stakeholders in the industry, it means that economic value will be created with services and tools that help manage power, such as shifting peaks. If you own a generation source with non-zero marginal costs and cannot play on a capacity market, you’re in trouble.
If you think that this is sort of crazy, think about what happened in the telecom market over the last couple of decades. It used to be that local phone connections were relatively cheap, but long-distance phone calls were extremely expensive (dollars per minute for some international calls). Nowadays, long-distance calls are effectively free, thanks to Skype and FaceTime, with video as a bonus. However, Internet access is expensive.
How will this affect your business?
[i] See my 2018 posts, https://benoit.marcoux.ca/blog/cea-tigers-den-workshop/and https://benoit.marcoux.ca/blog/a-perspective-on-canadas-electricity-industry-in-2030/.
[ii] Data for this chart was extracted from http://www.ieso.ca/en/Corporate-IESO/Media/Year-End-Data. Contact me is you want the underlying numbers.
