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The market also provides incentives to use power when it is cheapest to generate.
该市场还激励人们在发电成本最低的时候使用电力。
Currently, prices are lowest at lunchtime and in the night.
目前，午餐时间和夜间的电力价格最低。
The transition to renewable energy means that prices will become more volatile.
向可再生能源的过渡意味着价格将变得更加不稳定。
But that volatility is what drives innovation and investment in storage, smart meters and hydrogen.
但正是这种波动性推动了电力储存、智能电表和氢能发电领域的创新和投资。
A high-capacity battery, and the storage it provides, will be most useful when prices oscillate between extremes.
当价格在两极之间波动时，大容量电池及其提供的电力储存技术将最为有用。
For a while, it looked as though the problem with Europe’s market was that prices were too low.
有一段时间，欧洲市场的问题似乎是电力价格太低。
With more and more renewable energy entering the market, the price of electricity sometimes fell to zero and even turned negative.
随着越来越多的可再生能源进入市场，电价有时会降至零点，甚至转为负值。
The question was how marginal gas power plants—that might be needed to cover a windless, cloudy winter day—could make enough money during the rest of the year to survive.
问题是，在今年剩下的时间里，（无风多云的冬日可能会需要的）边际燃气发电厂如何才能赚到足够的钱来存活下去。
Some countries opted to add a capacity market; that is, they auctioned off payments to generators just for being there.
一些国家选择增加容量市场；也就是说，他们拍卖掉了仅仅为了让发电商留下来而对其支付的费用。
Others stuck with an “energy-only market”.
其他国家则坚持“单一能量市场”。
The question now is very different.
现如今，这个问题与之前有很大不同。
Europe’s markets face sky-high prices for electricity, as the result of a war.
由于一场战争，欧洲市场面临着天价电价。
It is a situation for which they were not designed.
这是一种他们设计时没有考虑到的情况。
Thus policymakers face three challenges.
因此，政策制定者面临着三个挑战。
The first is to preserve the marginal-price signal, for both generators and consumers, in the face of political pressure to weaken it.
第一个挑战是，面对削弱边际电价的政治压力时，为发电商和消费者保留边际电价信号。
Lowering prices, for example by subsidising gas used in electricity generation, as Spain and Portugal have done, would elsewhere require some other form of rationing to allocate scarce energy.
像西班牙和葡萄牙所做的那样，通过补贴用于发电的天然气来降低价格，这将需要其他形式的配给来分配稀缺的能源。
(Spain and Portugal can get away without rationing because Spain is an important gas hub, so can easily import more.)
(西班牙和葡萄牙可以在没有配给的情况下幸免于难，因为西班牙是一个重要的天然气枢纽，因此很容易进口更多天然气。）
The second is how and if to redistribute profits.
第二个挑战是如何以及是否要重新分配利润。
The German government has recently decided to grab those it considers excessive, while leaving the price signal alone.
德国政府最近决定抓住那些它认为的超额利润，而不去理会价格信号。
(The European Commission may advise countries to do something similar.)
(欧盟委员会可能会建议各国效仿。）
It will do this through what is essentially a windfall tax that limits the share of the spot-market price that suppliers can keep.
它将通过本质上是一种暴利税的措施来实现这一点，该措施会限制供应商可以保留的现货市场价格份额。
The problem is that generators have hedged their exposure to differing degrees, meaning the true recipients of the windfall profits may prove hard to find, and may in fact sit outside the energy market.
问题是，发电商对自己的风险敞口进行了不同程度的对冲，这意味着可能很难找到暴利的真正接受者，而且这些接受者实际上可能都不在能源市场内。
The third is to ensure that Europe’s energy market is ready for the next crisis, and to do so without sacrificing its advantages.
第三个挑战是，确保欧洲能源市场为下一场危机做好准备，并且在这样做的同时不牺牲自己的优势。
At present, the spot market efficiently allocates capacity and provides signals on energy scarcity, offering an incentive for investment in renewables.
目前，现货市场有效地分配了产能，并提供了能源稀缺的信号，从而激励了对可再生能源的投资。
But to guard against sustained shortfalls in capacity, and thus another price crunch, Europe’s energy markets must adapt.
但为了防止产能持续短缺，从而引发另一场价格危机，欧洲能源市场必须做出调整。
Long-term hedging markets are not very liquid, because consumers used to see little need for price security.
长期对冲市场的流动性不是很强，因为消费者过去认为价格保障没有什么必要。
In the future, they will probably see more.
在未来，他们可能会发现价格保障的必要性。
Regulators could help.
监管机构可以提供帮助。
A proposal by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology advises them to buy “affordability options” from generators, a form of insurance that would return profits from excessive prices to consumers, in effect creating an automatic windfall tax.
麻省理工学院研究人员的一项提案建议他们从发电商那里购买“可负担性期权”，这是一种将过高价格的利润返还给消费者的保险形式，这实际上创造了一种自动的暴利税。
How politicians would love to have something like that in place now.
政客们多么希望现在就能有这样的东西啊。
