🚀 go-pugleaf

John Higdon wrote:
> Truly amazing ethical behavior on the part of power generators considering
> the intense economic incentive to do the opposite. After all, anyone who can
> withhold product from the market and more than make up for the revenue loss
> by re-pricing the remaining product would be very stupid to run out his
> product at capacity, no?

Except that, unless there is too much concentration in the market (which
there isn't; one thing that the deregulators did right is make sure that
no generation company owns too large a share of the capacity), it
doesn't work that way.  A producer which shuts down its own plants to
boost the price helps *other* producers, but loses out on the revenues
from the energy it would sell itself.

Silus's explanation is more logical.  If plants are being shut down
deliberately, it is too sell of the gas they could otherwise use to
produce electricity.  As unregulated, private businesses they are
entitled (indeed, obligated) to maximize their profits by doing so.  

It is nonsensical to expect electricity prices to not rise given that
the price of the primary commodity used to produce it (natural gas) has
increased several times in price.