Quack, quack, quack: A duck curve emerges in New York

Explosive growth in distributed solar has created New York’s first duck curve and begun to change the NYISO market in meaningful ways. Distributed solar has shifted the timing of peak load, ramping patterns and daytime wholesale energy prices. With continued solar growth to support NY’s clean energy goals, these effects will become more pronounced and dramatically change distributed solar’s grid value. Under the state’s Value of Distributed Energy Resources (VDER) scheme, distributed solar compensation is tied to wholesale value. However, VDER is based on today’s grid, not the future grid where reliability risk will be focused outside of daylight hours and in winter months. Of the components of the VDER value stack, the energy component will closely track changing grid value (and incentivize hybridization), but other components – such as the capacity component – will not and may even offer counterincentives to the energy component.