Thank you all for your comments.
The auction is done by computer, not by a guy with a hammer saying "going once, going twice."
It runs through tomorrow
and I think they'll announce the clearing price next week. The price is
in the form of dollars per megawatt-day. With some of the more casual
generators (the gas-fired plants that don't have firm gas transmission
capacity booked with the pipeline companies) scared off, prices will be
firmer than last year. Those companies could sign firm contracts with
the gas transmission companies, or put in oil backup, but that would
raise their costs, and probably raise the clearing price for
megawatt-hours on the spot market, which is not a bad outcome for
reactors.
Also
scared off: the demand-side-management folks who aren't confident they
can produce quite as much demand reduction as they've promised.
I don't think the auction is "rigged," but it is something of a poker game.
Income
from capacity payments is usually a modest fraction of total income,
but it starts to level the playing field, to pay more for the services
nuclear is good at --- Delivering middle-priced electricity 24/7, as
opposed to cheap electricity in the dead of night. It's not the
production cost that's in play here, it's the size and dispatch-ability
of the machine.
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