You can calculate the real-time price of electricity just by measuring how fast the power grid is vibrating.
Traditionally, electricity prices are set by slow, bureaucratic markets that lag behind reality. This method uses the physical frequency of the grid itself as a financial signal, allowing for instant pricing that reacts to demand at the speed of light.
Online Electricity Pricing from Frequency Measurements
arXiv · 2604.09931
Frequency dynamics in power systems reflect active power imbalance in real time, thereby providing an instantaneous signal to inform electricity pricing. However, existing real-time markets operate on much slower timescales and fail to exploit this signal. In this letter, we develop integrated market--frequency dynamics that enable online pricing directly from frequency measurements. Representing the real-time market as a dynamic price-discovery process, and integrating this process with the gri