Earlier this month the government put forward a number of proposals to reform the capacity market, including increasing the target capacity for the four-year ahead (T-4) auctions by around 1GW. It said the change was in response to “increased non-delivery risks”.
“ want to make sure that never, ever under any circumstances will the lights go off because they think they’ll lose their job over it,” Sandbag policy analyst Dave Jones told Utility Week.
“But if we’re going into the kind of future of a lot more intermittent generation … then it’s clear that gold-plating the system becomes more and more expensive.”
“It’s a bit of a slippery slope if goes down this route,” he added. “The more you want to gold-plate it, the more gas capacity you need to build which is going to sit there idle for a lot of the year.”
Last October it was reported that Carlton Power’s Trafford combined-cycle gas turbine plant being built in Greater Manchester would not be ready in time for the first delivery period, after struggling to secure financial backing.
Last week Haven Power slammed the government for its proposal to end the Contingency Balancing Reserve (CBR) a year early, and instead secure capacity for the winter of 2017/18 through an extra capacity market auction. It said the cost of the auction could make up 7 per cent of consumers’ total bills.
The week before shadow energy minister Alan Whitehead called for a “basic redesign” of the capacity market, adding that the reforms were beginning to look like “flogging a dead horse”.