Power 101

Contents

25 chapters in 5 parts. The book teaches the universal problem first, then the three design choices, and only then the regions.

Part One

The Machine

  1. 01Why Electricity Is DifferentThe instantaneous balance constraint, frequency as the signal that balance is holding, and why power cannot leave the grid it was born on.
  2. 02A Brief History of Electric PowerEdison against Westinghouse, Insull and the regulated monopoly bargain, rural electrification, then PURPA, EPAct 1992, FERC Orders 888 and 889, and a restructuring wave that stopped halfway across the map.
  3. 03The GridTransmission against distribution, Kirchhoff and loop flow, losses and congestion, the three North American interconnections, and what HVDC changes.
  4. 04Generation TechnologiesCombined cycle, peakers, coal, nuclear, hydro, wind and solar, and the six numbers that decide when each one runs: heat rate, capacity factor, ramp rate, minimum run time, minimum load, start cost.
  5. 05Storage and FirmingBatteries, pumped hydro and duration. Why four hours became the standard, and why a battery shifts energy across hours rather than seasons.
  6. 06Inertia, Voltage and Grid StrengthSpinning mass, fault current and reactive power, and what changes when generation sits behind inverters. The Iberian blackout of April 2025, and why the popular explanation for it was wrong twice over.
  7. 07LoadShape, weather sensitivity, degree days, the duck curve, and the return of load growth after roughly two flat decades.
Part Two

How a Price Is Made

  1. 08Merit Order and Marginal CostThe supply stack, and the rule that surprises every newcomer: the last unit needed sets the price everyone receives. Where the book establishes that share of generation is not share of price-setting.
  2. 09Unit Commitment and DispatchDay-ahead against real-time, security-constrained economic dispatch, and the two-settlement system.
  3. 10Locational PricesEnergy plus congestion plus losses, and why the same megawatt-hour is worth different amounts a few miles apart.
  4. 11When the Price Goes NegativeMust-run units, subsidised renewables that earn more by generating than by stopping, and transmission that cannot carry the surplus out.
  5. 12Scarcity and the Missing MoneyValue of lost load, offer caps, operating reserve demand curves, and whether an energy-only market pays enough to build the plant you need on the worst day of the decade.
  6. 13Ancillary ServicesRegulation, reserves, frequency response, black start, and the voltage support whose absence took down Iberia. Stability is a product somebody must be paid to supply and obliged to deliver.
Part Three

The Three Choices

  1. 14Who DispatchesVertically integrated utility, independent system operator, transmission system operator, and why the operator’s perimeter determines what a price can mean.
  2. 15How Location Is PricedNodal, zonal, regional. PJM clears roughly 11,000 nodes while all of Europe clears roughly 40 bidding zones, and the German bidding-zone split fight is the live argument.
  3. 16How Capacity Is Paid ForEnergy-only against capacity markets against Europe’s remuneration mechanisms. Nobody has a clean answer, and the ones who claim to have moved the cost somewhere less visible.
Part Four

The Regions

  1. 17The United StatesThe seven ISOs, and the third of the country that never joined one. PJM, MISO, CAISO, NYISO, ISO-NE, SPP, with the regulated Southeast and West as a deliberate control group.
  2. 18ERCOTIts own interconnection, energy-only by conviction, the largest renewables build and the largest data-centre queue in the country, and Uri as the stress test everyone still argues about.
  3. 19EuropeZonal pricing, day-ahead coupling and EUPHEMIA, TSOs and ENTSO-E, the 2022 crisis when the political system discovered marginal pricing in public, and the regulatory aftermath of Iberia.
  4. 20Asia-PacificAustralia’s energy-only NEM with five-minute settlement, Japan’s JEPX, nodal Singapore, India’s exchanges, and China reforming toward a unified national market by 2030.
Part Five

Trading Power

  1. 21The Spark SpreadHeat rate as the exchange rate between gas and power, the spark and dark spreads, and why the gas curve drags the power curve. The bridge back to NatGas 101.
  2. 22Instruments and HedgingForwards and futures, on-peak and off-peak blocks, heat rate options, financial transmission rights and congestion revenue rights, virtual bids, and the corporate and virtual PPA.
  3. 23The Load ShockData centres, the interconnection queue as the real constraint, co-location and behind-the-meter, and who carries the risk when a fifteen-year grid asset is built for a five-year-old business.
  4. 24Nuclear and the SMR QuestionPalisades, Three Mile Island and Duane Arnold reopening for buyers who are not in the power business, and why SMR announcements are in gigawatts while operating reactors are in single units.
  5. 25What Firm Means NowCapacity value against nameplate, curtailment, and the difference between energy and the ability to deliver it at 6pm in January.