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Originally Posted by Tron_fdc
Hahahaha whose idea was “economic withholding”???
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Economic withholding seems to be the new boogeyman word. In a market-based system like Alberta's, a participant can bid any price they want. A baseload generator like coal (or nuclear) for maximum efficiency usually wants to run 24/7 and will bid a low price so they are always dispatched. A peaking unit like a simple cycle gas turbine or a diesel turbine have much higher operating costs and so will only bid prices that are high enough to earn a return.
There are also much complicated matters involved, sometimes there are constraints on supply at a power plant, or bottleneck in the the transmission lines so that the system has to use a more expensive power plant. There's an Australian website that covers their electricity system and markets and they go into detail about the various factors that goes into deciding how electricity is dispatched from various suppliers.
https://wattclarity.com.au/articles/...x5-constraint/
Economic withholding is bad and is still illegal if there is collusion between multiple participants or one participant is so big it dominates the market.