You forgot the ICAP charge that is required to have the capacity there to provide the operating and supplemental reserve capacity to provide the energy. AWEA is foolish to imply that the long-term backup cost is equatable to the short-term operating reserve costs. And they are equally as foolish to assert that regulation capacity is procured by RTOs to meet day ahead VER uncertainty. There is a difference in the quantity of ancillary services that are procured in the day ahead planning and how such reserves are deployed in real time. AWEA knows that, but they still submit foolish comments to the FERC.

Reference resembles the average price for reserve services in NYISO. (To cite a random recent report, the MMU’s 3rd quarter 2009 report for NYISO indicates a real-time 10-minute spinning reserve price for East NYISO of $1.75, and a real-time non-spinning reserve price for East NYISO of $0.70 per MWh.)

Of course that price is the price paid to keep a unit on standby; if the reserve unit is dispatched for energy it will be paid a market price for the energy.

“Pakistanis Living on Brink, and Often in the Dark” by Sabrina Tavernise in The New York Times on April 27, 2010 at page A8.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/asia/27lahore.html

We are so boned.

I see reliability engineers struggling to get an analytical handle on wind generation’s ability to support reliability. Wind generation is a fact, and the possibility of much more is accepted, but it is going to take time (and price exposure) for solutions to emerge to physically accommodate wind’s variability, and then to optimize around it. Hiding or ignoring the price signals won’t help anybody.