Greg Jackson

And it started in the UK.

And the UK has got a half-hourly electricity market.

So every half-hour, the national price of electricity is set by the most expensive generator anywhere in the country that's needed to meet demand.

Yeah.

Well, it used to work very well when essentially you had coal power stations and maybe a few oil and gas, where the input cost was very similar between all of them.

So they would all bid in a very, very similar price, which meant even though you were paying everyone the most expensive price, it wasn't that much more than the cheapest.

Whereas in today's world, when you have renewable energy, there is no input cost.

So you can achieve a very, very low price for energy from those units.

But in a market where the price is still set by the final unit of generation, which will be gas, and has a very, very high input cost, typically in recent times, you're paying a fortune for stuff that should be cheap.

That's the kind of broad issue.

I think really getting your head around why the system used to work and now it doesn't is so key.

And it's because there's much more heterogeneity, much more diversity of generation.

than there ever used to be.

Um, and by the way, it goes geographically as well.

Cause you know, in the old days, you've got a coal power station in a particular county.

Whenever you want electricity in that county, you fire it up.

Whereas in today's world, it might be windy in one part of the country, not another.

It might be sunny in one time in one part and so on.

And we've got to handle that much more dynamic backend.

But actually this thing was my mom, right?