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Jacob Mays

@jacobmays.bsky.social
3.1K followers 326 following 55 posts

Assistant Professor, Cornell Civil and Environmental Engineering, working on energy systems and decision making under uncertainty. Tweeting in a personal capacity.

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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
New paper on non-convexity, uncertainty, and uplift in wholesale electricity markets: in our NYISO simulations, operational policy mattered more than the pricing rule, and uncertainty + look-ahead price inconsistency drove most make-whole payments. doi.org/10.1109/TEMP...
doi.org
Price Consistency and Uplift in Wholesale Electricity Markets
The non-convex technical constraints governing power production have led wholesale market operators to implement alternative pricing schemes intending to ensure that market participant incentives are ...
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
New paper: as power systems add more wind, solar, and storage, prices depend more on uncertainty and storage opportunity costs. We show deterministic production cost models can misvalue flexibility and understate real-time price dynamics. doi.org/10.1088/2753...
doi.org
Price formation and flexibility valuation in production cost modeling
Price formation and flexibility valuation in production cost modeling, Smith, Kaleb, Santarém de Araújo, Hugo, Mays, Jacob
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Our article "Operational Uncertainty and the Missing Money Problem" is now in Energy Economics (authors.elsevier.com/c/1lxeFW3fd1v69). The paper investigates capacity markets and operations, finding that current configurations in the US slightly undercompensate baseload plants relative to peakers.
authors.elsevier.com
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
Did not see that coming!
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Will Gorman @wfgorman.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
💡 New Transmission Paper alert 💡 “Electric transmission value and its drivers in United States power markets” just went live in Nature Communications! Kudos especially to Julie Mulvaney Kemp for getting this work to the finish line. doi.org/10.1038/s414...
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
Our paper "Rethinking capacity market fundamentals," about several issues in accreditation and non-performance penalties in capacity markets, is now published in Energy Economics and is open access for the next 50 days at this link: authors.elsevier.com/c/1ldcmW3fd1...
authors.elsevier.com
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
New working paper, "Operational Uncertainty and the Missing Money." Here we argue that competitive electricity markets probably overcompensate peaking resources relative to those whose production is spread over more hours of the year (e.g., nuclear and hydro) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
Operational Uncertainty and the Missing Money Problem
This study investigates how algorithmic choices in power system operations affect the total compensation available to different technologies participating in wh
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
We are recruiting for an undergraduate summer research opportunity in electricity market modeling, through Cornell's Office of Inclusive Excellence (sites.coecis.cornell.edu/lsampreu/). If you or someone you know wants to spend the summer in Ithaca and get into this area, check it out!
sites.coecis.cornell.edu
Cornell LSAMP Summer REU
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Lynne Kiesling @knowledgeproblem.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
I'm starting off 2025, a year when I'll write a lot about the role of markets and innovation in enabling our future power systems, by writing a series about RTOs as wholesale market platforms. Part I: economic history. 📉📈 and 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/regional-t...
knowledgeproblem.substack.com
Regional Transmission Organizations as Market Platforms I
What's the origin story of wholesale power markets?
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
🔌💡 Our new study led by @fnbillimoria.bsky.social, "Hedging and tail risk in electricity markets," is now out in Energy Economics. 50-day access link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Hedging and tail risk in electricity markets
One of the persistent concerns in scarcity-based electricity market designs is that markets for long-term contracts are highly illiquid or ‘missing’. …
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Grid Status @gridstatus.io · 20/12/2024
Nationally, winter grid operations vary from summer While summer risk tends to be concentrated in the evening hours, winter risk is bimodal, split between evening and morning across a wider range of hours. #energysky 🔌💡
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Published 43 years ago:
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
New in Energy Economics, our paper on the challenge of allocating the cost of transmission in a manner "roughly commensurate with benefits" when nobody can agree what the benefits are. 50-day share link: authors.elsevier.com/c/1kB0SW3fc~...
authors.elsevier.com
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Thread summarizing our new paper on transmission cost allocation #EnergySky
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Josh Macey @joshuamacey.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
I am happy that my paper on transmission line cost allocation with @jacobmays.bsky.social is now out in the energy law journal. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... The paper is a deep dive on the law and economics of transmission lines. Full disclosure: I am a transmission line enthusiast.
papers.ssrn.com
THE LAW AND ECONOMICS OF TRANSMISSION PLANNING AND COST ALLOCATION
This Article considers how to allocate the costs of transmission when states, utilities, or other classes of customers adopt different clean energy policies. It
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Ariel Ortiz-Bobea @arielob.bsky.social · 04/10/2024
Cornell is hiring an environmental/energy/resource economist (open-rank). Join our vibrant academic community working on the major sustainability challenges facing the world today... & have the option to make this part of your daily commute :) Plz share! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/28657
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 17/12/2023
One nuance here is that compensating people who had contracted for energy and were not supplied energy is completely consistent with efficient markets.
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 05/12/2023
I understand the motive, but it doesn't seem like MISO has really thought this proposal through.
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Jacob Mays @jacobmays.bsky.social · 12/10/2023
Making my Bluesky debut with a new working paper, “Sequential Pricing of Electricity,” on price formation and resource remuneration in electricity markets with significant storage: optimization-online.org/2023/10/sequ...
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