Power Grid — Economic Dispatch Simulator

System frequency

50.00

Hz · balanced

Total demand

6,400

MW right now

Renewable share

31%

of generation

Clearing price

₹4,500

per MWh (marginal)

Battery

Idle

60% SoC

24-hour dispatch stack & the duck curve

Each bar is one hour. Stacked bottom-to-top in merit order: solar & wind (green), hydro (cyan), coal (amber), gas peaker (red). The white line is demand. Click any bar to jump to that hour.

1 PM — Solar peak: Solar is flooding the grid at near-zero cost, pushing coal and gas down the stack. Clearing price is low. But watch what happens at 6 PM when solar sets and demand peaks — that steep ramp is the "duck curve" belly-to-neck, and it's the hardest part of the day to balance.

The duck curve explained

The "duck curve" is the shape of net demand (total demand minus solar) across a day. As solar floods midday, net demand sags into the duck's belly. Then around 6 PM solar disappears just as people come home — net demand shoots up the duck's neck. The grid must ramp conventional generation extremely fast to fill that gap.

Midday net demand (belly)

2,900 MW

Solar covers most load

Evening ramp (neck)

+3,800 MW

in just 3 hours

Ramp rate needed

1,270 MW/hr

Stresses conventional plants

How AI + storage flatten the duck: ML forecasting predicts the ramp hours ahead so plants pre-position. Batteries charge during the cheap solar belly and discharge into the expensive evening neck — shaving the ramp and earning arbitrage. Flexible demand (EV charging, water pumping) is shifted into the belly. Together these turn a vicious ramp into a manageable one.

Merit-order market & clearing price

Generators bid into the market cheapest-first. The grid accepts bids until demand is met — and the most expensive accepted bid sets the price everyone receives. This is marginal pricing.

Source	Marginal cost	Dispatched?	Role
Solar / Wind	~₹0/MWh	Always first	Free fuel, must-run
Nuclear	₹2,800	Baseload	Runs flat 24/7
Hydro	₹3,200	Flexible	Fast ramp, stores water
Coal	₹4,500	Mid-merit	Often sets the price
Gas peaker	₹9,000+	Peak only	Sets high evening prices

💹 Why AI dispatch saves money — illustrative day

Optimised AI dispatch vs. naive "always run coal + gas" scheduling on the same demand.

Naive dispatch cost

₹4.82 Cr

Gas overused

AI-optimised cost

₹3.61 Cr

Renewables + battery first

Daily saving

₹1.21 Cr

25% reduction

CO₂ avoided

2,400 t

Less fossil burn

Economic dispatch simulator

24-hour dispatch stack & the duck curve

The duck curve explained

Merit-order market & clearing price

💹 Why AI dispatch saves money — illustrative day