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Comment by kentonv | Hacker News Reader

It's so weird because I thought the whole point of ERCOT was to be a market and use market forces to solve everything.

So why are they paying bitcoin miners to turn off, rather than just charging them market rates at all times and letting them decide for themselves?

I feel like I'm missing something here.

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Electricity markets are not just spot prices. There's sub-markets for being available to respond to emergencies.

The UK system: https://www.nationalgrideso.com/industry-information/balanci...

It seems you'd be eligible for "quick reserve" if you could turn on or off >1MW of response within one minute. Ideal for batteries. Includes a "standby" fee paid hourly to cover having the system "armed".

(It seems unlikely that either the bitcoin operation or their electricity meter could manage sub-minute response times to changes in prices alone? I'm not exactly sure how metering and payment works at grid level and how granular it is)

It certainly could

The Texas and UK power market are actually very similar in construction and operation.

The last couple years of evidence suggests that keeping the grid up requires a certain amount of central planning. On one hand, the frequency must remain relatively stable, globally. On the other, consumers don't want to deal with every fluctuation of the price (as they found out when they were exposed to the spike prices during spring '21). On principle, Texas is going to make sure that the energy sector is taken care of financially, so we end up in the situation we're in: Advertise the grid as market-purely as you can, engage in just enough planning to keep it up and the money flowing.

The gap between actual unfettered market forces and what gets implemented in American capitalism is where the grift happens. IE, ostensibly set up a free market to satisfy the ideologues but make sure there are carveout deals so cronyism has room to hand out favors.

Don't forget the guy in 2021 who told investors he will keep the prices as high as possible for as long as possible during that winter storm.

You are missing something. That like all neoliberal idiots who claim to use "dur markets" as a catch all solution, they are dishonest bad faith actors looking to filter money and power to their friends, not make anything better for anyone. I imagine you'd find quite easily the tax payer money is filtered to companies they own or are friends of.

This is a pretty common scam among neoliberals that I don't know how it's still a mystery to people. "Dur freedum markets good!" or whatever populist lies to get elected then crank up subsidies to your friends. A tale as old as time.

Right up there with "defund state institutions and then point to their dilapidated state as evidence of their inherent failure". Nhs in the uk for an easy example.

Anytime government assets go to private hands there’s always some back room deals going on. Though it strange seeing neoliberal used when it’s usually the conservatives pushing this agenda in the US, that’s what it’s called.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

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