Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "How Power Companies Profited From Italy's Lockdown" video.

  1. ENGINEER HERE - I wish I had seen this story when it first came out. What you have here is a variation of the Enron Strategy. Most people know that Enron collapsed after being caught doing various things. One of those things was market manipulation which they did by TURNING OFF power generating systems. The Enron Strategy relies on some basics of energy generation systems. 1) Most energy systems do NOT run at 100% and there's always some spare capacity in the system so that the next person to turn on a light doesn't collapse the system. So among the power supply companies there's reserve capacity and if its in a system that is already powered up and running then it costs very little to fuel that reserve capacity. So it can be very profitable to sell the reserve capacity if it can be sold. 2) There are 2 power spikes in every modern society every day. There's 1 in the morning when people wake up and start turning things on as well as business starting up and turning more things on. There's a second spike starting in the late afternoon when people start going home and turning stuff on. So if you can create a shortage of supply that's timed when people want more power not only can you sell the reserve capacity but you can sell it and any other energy you sell into the energy market AT HIGHER PRICES . Enron were caught DELIBERATELY TURNING OFF power generators claiming it was just faults and failures. That caused the energy markets to spike and Enron profited by sell energy at much higher profit margins. Its called market manipulation and its illegal and Enron got caught.
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