Context: right now gas peaker plants with ~10% utilization have LCOE of about 20 cents/kWh, about 3-5x most other energy sources. I think in the proposed scenario here we’d be more like 20-40% utilization, since we’d also get some use out of these systems overnight night and in winter.
If this became much more common and people had to pay such variable prices, we’d also be able to do a lot more load shifting to minimize the impact on overall energy costs (when to dry clothes and heat water, using phase change materials in HVAC, using thermal storage in industrial facilities’ systems, etc.).
Context: right now gas peaker plants with ~10% utilization have LCOE of about 20 cents/kWh, about 3-5x most other energy sources. I think in the proposed scenario here we’d be more like 20-40% utilization, since we’d also get some use out of these systems overnight night and in winter.
If this became much more common and people had to pay such variable prices, we’d also be able to do a lot more load shifting to minimize the impact on overall energy costs (when to dry clothes and heat water, using phase change materials in HVAC, using thermal storage in industrial facilities’ systems, etc.).