Electricity auctions in the UK are for 30 minute blocks, done 30 minutes ahead.
Do you think there are benefits to making that 1 minute blocks, or even 1 second blocks now that all trading is automated?
It would have the benefit that solar producers no longer have to guess how many clouds there will be in an hour (and waste energy or money if they're wrong). It would mean big companies don't need to decide an hour in advance of switching on or off their equipment. It would mean pricing can represent fine-grained demand, such as surges exactly on the hour as scheduled things turn on.
30 minutes is already reasonably fine-grained- enough time for a gas turbine to spin up. Shorter-scale fluctuations are usually handled by reserves and even just the momentum of spinning generators. Its certainly possible that going shorter could help, but I haven't seen enough variation on 5 or 15 minute timescales, except when a power plant goes offline unexpectedly, to see a huge benefit.
Now, one could try to replace the existing reserve mechanisms with the shorter-scale market you describe, but given the resistance to change in the grid operators, I think this is a difficult fight.
Do you think there are benefits to making that 1 minute blocks, or even 1 second blocks now that all trading is automated?
It would have the benefit that solar producers no longer have to guess how many clouds there will be in an hour (and waste energy or money if they're wrong). It would mean big companies don't need to decide an hour in advance of switching on or off their equipment. It would mean pricing can represent fine-grained demand, such as surges exactly on the hour as scheduled things turn on.