Comment by belorn

The point of doing simulations is that you will want to avoid to repeat that which happen in EU. During the worst month of the energy crisis, the price started circulating around 10x of the average month, or phrase it in a different way, a single month costed about the same as a usual whole year. Market prices can easily spike when demand start to exceed supply, even if it only occur for a few weeks.

Having a massive fleet of gas plants available do help with keeping the prices down, but it has it own problems. They need to be built, maintained and staffed, which is independent on how much energy they sell. Where I come that means government subsidizes, paid through taxes and grid fees. Those fees can quickly become bigger than the actually consumption cost for some households. Natural gas power plants also natural gas which contribute to global warming, and unless they use expensive filtering, they also contribute to pollution. When you see the pitch black smoke being released, you know they are burning up the build up of contaminants and imperfectly burned fuel, releasing it into the environment.