Your ass-umptions and conclusions are wrong, but you see what you want to see.oxothuk said:These graphs really make my point.
Giving preference to the VRE providers means that the other providers have to be unnaturally variable in order to balance them out - which then makes them appear "expensive" relative to VRE.
VRE is curtailed in CA, and as the graphs show it is not due to VRE > demand. It happens even though VRE is cheaper than the energy being bought. Even though the CAISO utilities nominally buy the cheapest available, that only holds true for spot purchasing. The long term fossil contracts take precedence over the VRE PPAs. This is ass backwards, and reflects simple economics: it is cheaper for the utilities to curtail VRE than it is to curtail fossil production.