Imagine that you are a generator selling electricity in the day-ahead market. What offer price should you post in the auction? Why did you select that price? You don't need numbers to answer the question, but it might be easier to think through if you have some specific figures. So imagine that you are running a natural-gas fired plant. Your capital charge is $18 per MWh. You have fixed O&M costs that average $9 per MWh -- but remember, fixed costs are costs you have to pay whether or not you generate any electricity. You have variable O&M costs around $5 per MWh; that is, you only pay them if you run the generator. Finally, you need to burn $62 worth of natural gas to generate one MWh of electricity.
If you want to make a profit, you will need to charge more than your variable costs. In this example, that means you need to charge at least $5 per MWh just to cover the cost of the gas. But you also have fixed costs, which you have to pay even if you don't generate any electricity. So you need to charge enough to cover those costs as well. In this example, that means you need to charge at least $18 per MWh. Putting those two together, we can see that in order to make a profit in this example, you would need to charge at least .............
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