Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Jon Wellinghoff agrees and believes that value should be compensated with higher payments than the peaker plants receive.
Duke did this with a pair of "peaker" plants it built in Indiana and Ohio, locking in the first year's expected profits before construction was completed.
That way grid operators could, say, automatically lower the cost of transmitting power from a region with excess to capacity to one with a shortage, instead of letting the problem fester until the peaker plants turn on and phone calls and faxes fly.