Is Wind and Solar Industries Lying, Manipulating or Just Too Greedy?

The wind and solar ‘industries’ produce plenty of power when no one needs it and often fail to produce it when everybody does.

The fact that they can’t deliver as and when power consumers demand electricity, means that power consumers pay – whether in the form of massive subsidies, Feed-in-tariffs, soft loans and government guaranteed contract prices (to account for the fact that erratically delivered wind and solar power have no commercial value) and paying over the money for dispatchable power whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in.

Then there’s the gamesmanship that’s required to encourage grid managers to take the skittish wares they occasionally bother to deliver.

In 2009, after pressured lobbying from the wind industry, Australia’s National Energy Market (NEM) disptach rules were changed so that wind farm operators did not need to qualify as scheduled generators to dispatch into the NEM and became known thereafter as ‘semi-scheduled’ generators (a linguistic nonsense, if ever there was one). From March 2009, there was no need for wind power outfits to build any more backup power capacity and they didn’t.

Chaos followed, leading to Australia’s present power pricing and supply calamity.

Donn Dears takes a look at the situation in the USA, where the wind and solar industries have managed to rig the power market entirely to their advantage and all to the power consumers’ cost.

The minimum offer price rule (MOPR) is symbolic of a struggle that’s going on behind the scenes where Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) are surreptitiously forcing the use of wind and solar onto the grid.

It’s hidden from the public because it’s part of a complex system involving regulators and RTO organizations, where a multitude of complex rules are established behind the scenes. While the legal rulings are posted for all to read, which technically makes them transparent, they are, to the average person, like reading Sanskrit.

MOPR is one of these rules.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently issued a new ruling about MOPR, in response to questions raised by PJM, an RTO.

MOPR relates to capacity auctions where RTOs attempt to ensure the availability of electricity in future years, across the region for which an RTO is responsible. The bidders supposedly guarantee that new capacity will be available for supplying electricity during the contracted period.

(Wind, which can’t supply electricity when the wind doesn’t blow, and solar, which can’t supply electricity at night or on cloudy days, are assumed to be able to guarantee they can generate electricity at any time in the future covered by the capacity auction.)

The MOPR issue relates to whether suppliers that receive subsidies, such as wind and solar installations, could participate in the bidding for future capacity.

There is the danger that suppliers that receive subsidies could enter very low bids in comparison with bidders who are not subsidized.

RTOs only cover about two-thirds of the country, as shown by this map, with FERC being the regulatory authority that pulls everything together.

As described in an earlier article, The Market for Electricity is Rigged, the day ahead and realtime auctions conducted by RTOs are rigged to ensure that wind and solar always win the bid if wind and/or solar is available.

The capacity auctions would also be rigged in favor of subsidized suppliers, such as wind and solar, if it weren’t for the FERC, MOPR ruling.

As a result, organizations, such as the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, are campaigning to revise the ruling.

It should be noted that there are additional complex manipulations in the capacity market to make it appear as though wind and solar can be counted on to guarantee the availability of electricity even though both sources are unreliable. As a result, wind and solar are assumed to be ready and able to provide electricity to the grid even though they may not be able to do so.

One-third of the country continues to rely on regulatory commissions, as opposed to RTOs, to establish fair pricing and ensure reliability within their territories, and don’t use rigged auctions for this purpose.

Few people are aware of what’s going on behind the curtains which is why you are not alone if you never heard of MOPR.

The system for ensuring reliable and low-cost electricity is being manipulated, at least in those states covered by RTOs, by people with a political agenda that may not be in the best interests of all Americans.

It’s clear that RTOs are manipulating the system, with the end result that the cost of electricity will be higher while reliability is lowered.

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