To me it sounds like an energy company attempting to excuse lack of spending on infrastructure whilst paying out millions to C-suite in bonuses and millions more to shareholders whilst arguing prices have to rise because they can't afford to spend on infrastructure...
Electricity markets and electricity networks are designed by the regulator.
Incentives are planned by the regulator so that individual stations or companies have the correct incentives to have capabilities that the network grid needs.
One example is financial incentives to provide black start capabilities. Another example is incentives to provide power during peak loading (peaker plants). There are many more examples of incentives designed so that the needs of the whole network are met.
If an operator is incentivised to act selfishly in such a way that the grid will fail, then that is a failure of the regulator (not the individual operator).
Blaming individual people or companies for systemic faults is generally a bad thinking habit to form. There are too many examples where I see individuals get blamed. Fixing our systems is hard but casting blame in the wrong places is not helpful. It's difficult to find a good balance between an individual's responsibilities and society's responsibilities.
> Electricity markets and electricity networks are designed by the regulator.
Not quite. They are _influenced_ by the regulators.
And Europe has been incentivizing trash-tier low-quality solar and wind power, by making it easy to sell energy (purely on a per-Joule basis) on the pan-European market.
Meanwhile, there is no centralized capacity market or centralized incentives for black start and grid forming functionality.
> Meanwhile, there is no centralized capacity market or centralized incentives for black start and grid forming functionality.
There absolutely is. Look up terms like "Frequency Containment Reserve" and "automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve". The European energy market takes transport capacity in account, and there is separate day-ahead trading to supply inertia and spare generating capacity. Basically, power plants are being paid to standby, just in case another plant or a transmission line unexpectedly goes offline.
Similarly, grid operators offer contracts for local black start capacity. The technical requirements are fixed, and any party capable of meeting those can bid on it.
It's quite a lucrative market, actually. If during the summer a gas plant is priced out of the market by cheap solar, it can still make quite a bit of money simply by being ready to go at a moment's notice - and they'll make a huge profit if that capacity is actually needed.
No, there isn't. FCR market is not pan-European, and even where it's in place, it's basically in the name only. It's basically only countries that already use rotational generation, so it's not really a stretch for them to participate.
Spain and Portugal are not members, btw.
And the same applies to capacity markets. I believe, there is a plan to come up with a plan for it by 2027.
> Similarly, grid operators offer contracts for local black start capacity. The technical requirements are fixed, and any party capable of meeting those can bid on it.
And I don't believe there are ANY solar/wind plants that have black start capacity in Europe. The current incentives structure makes that a near certainty.
> there is no centralized capacity market or centralized incentives for black start
There certainly is in New Zealand, although the dollar amounts are quite small. If your countries regulator doesn't incentivise the capability, I believe that is a fault of your regulator.
Transpower (NZ) says:
We may enter into black start contracts with parties who can offer the black start service compliant with our technical requirements and the Code. Black start is procured on a firm quantity procurement basis (via a monthly availability fee and/or a single event fee for specified stations). Black start costs are allocated to Transpower as the Grid Owner (see clause 8.56 in the Code for details)
That sounds like someone explaining why the solution is so bad, before describing what the solution is.