Michael Giberson
Only after posting my earlier examination of the interaction of wind power, the production tax credit (PTC), and negative power prices in ERCOT did I discover a related analysis, “Curtailment, Negative Prices Symptomatic of Inadequate Transmission,” by Michael Goggin, an American Wind Energy Association analyst, that appeared in September at Renewable Energy World. If you are reading along at home, you may want to take a look.
Also, in October the New York ISO issued a white paper, Integration of Wind into System Dispatch. The NYISO reports that sometimes it has experienced the sudden shut down of wind power during times of negative prices, with in some cases more wind power dropping off the system than would be necessary to relieve the congestion constraint (and so to allow prices to return to positive levels). When “too much” wind power suddenly drops off the system, that drop off puts additional strain on the system operator and the balancing resources available to the market.
The solution that NYISO is pursuing is to better integrate wind power into the system operator’s “security constrained economic dispatch” market model, with a goal of better coordinating wind and non-wind generation along with available transmission capability.