The UK is wasting a lot of wind power • Hacker News Board

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#111

Post by grey-area » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

archydeb wrote: post #10

nateguchi wrote: post #3

One thing that I find hard to understand is how the electricity prices in the UK have gone up so dramatically (blaming gas prices) when a large amount of the electricity is not generated from gas. Is the price being artificially inflated?

Author of the article here Electricity prices in the UK (and most other places) are set by the marginal unit, which is the most expensive unit that needs to be turned on to meet demand. All other generation for that time period gets paid the same price. The marginal unit in the UK is usually gas, hence the sensitivity to gas prices

Is that a good idea? It doesn’t sound very sensible to price everything at the cost of the most expensive unit, why do they do that?

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#112

Post by Zamicol » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

singhrac wrote: post #43

Zamicol wrote: post #31

TL;DR: "The UK is wasting a lot of wind power" because of high long distance transmission costs.

That's not an entire summary, I think. The lack of local (or nodal, as it's often called in the US) pricing means that there's comparatively little incentive to build new transmission. The UK is not a large country, and we routinely build much larger transmission lines (if I'm not mistaken, the UK is the geographic size of Texas, where the exact same problem is being solved effectively).

My comment was somewhat of a critic of the terse headline. Adding a small amount of information to the cryptic headline removes a lot of perceived mystery.

Your statement answers the question, "why is long distance transmission price high?"

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#113

Post by chris222 » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

Very good article. As far as the options presented I think transmission lines are still the best bet, along with storage.

Storage can come in many forms including at a customers residence via batteries or thermal storage. Not all of these options need to be cycled daily to make financial sense. In the U.S. we have an insane number of people that maintain days worth of storage as fuel for their generators only to be used infrequently when the power goes out.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#114

Post by grey-area » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 9:24 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #14

nateguchi wrote: post #3

One thing that I find hard to understand is how the electricity prices in the UK have gone up so dramatically (blaming gas prices) when a large amount of the electricity is not generated from gas. Is the price being artificially inflated?

The marginal price of electricity (i.e. the price of the most expensive source) is what drives the retail cost, because it's a liquid commodity that can't (to a first approximation) be stored. Imagine 90% of your electricity comes from wind and the last 10% has from gas because there is nothing else - the price of electricity is going to equal the price of gas because the wind providers can raise prices until they're…

Sounds like a dysfunctional market that would be better nationalised and run for the public good.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#115

Post by scrlk » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 9:27 PM UTC

zabzonk wrote: post #96

TylerE wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the UK not a unified grid? Most of the US is. A kwh is a kwh.

england and wales are run by national grid, who also have a huge us operation - scottish operations a bit less clear

National Grid ESO are the system operator for the GB grid.

National Grid Electricity Transmission operate the transmission network in England and Wales. The transmission network in the south of Scotland is operated by SP Transmission; in the north of Scotland, it's SSEN Transmission.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#116

Post by archydeb » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 9:28 PM UTC

jonatron wrote: post #108

KaiserPro wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which supplier are you with?

Octopus energy, on the agile octopus tariff: https://octopus.energy/agile/

For the brave!

But seriously (author of article here) I think that agile tariffs and more demand flexibility are probably a big part of the solution

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#117

Post by grey-area » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 9:29 PM UTC

dclowd9901 wrote: post #56

I have a tangential question (and I truly do not mean to be provocative with it, just curious): Has anyone put any effort into figuring out how much impact we have on air movement in general with windmills? Like, is there a scenario where we could negatively impact the environment by capturing "too much wind"?

This is an interesting study in that topic, I would have thought the answer is no to your question, but possibly a very large wind farm could change wind velocity/temp and thus have a knock on effect.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0406930101

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#118

Post by KaiserPro » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 9:30 PM UTC

archydeb wrote: post #116

jonatron wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Octopus energy, on the agile octopus tariff: https://octopus.energy/agile/

For the brave! But seriously (author of article here) I think that agile tariffs and more demand flexibility are probably a big part of the solution

I have the luxury of a 13khw battery, so it might make sense. But I suspect that when I need to use the grid will be uber peak £1.04 per kwhr.

Edit: for those who are curious, here is some data on prices over the last month: https://agileprices.co.uk/

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#119

Post by scrlk » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 9:31 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #59

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #4

Curtailment, like negative prices, seems like something that it is hard for people to have constructive conversations about. Probably the cheapest and best option is to build more wind and not care too much if it increases curtailment. Yes, all the things mentioned should be looked into and done when it makes financial sense but "wasting wind" is much less a thing to worry about than "burning gas", and I'd rather was…

The solution is to upgrade the national grid. This is needed anyway because it is already maxed out and demand will dramatically increase with the transition to EVs.

Tell that to Ofgem. The latest price settlement for electricity transmission and distribution networks (RIIO-T2 and RIIO-ED2) has cut the amount of investment the networks are allowed to carry out.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#120

Post by HPsquared » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

alkjsdlkjasd wrote: post #79

jthirkle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK government? Owning things? Surely you can't be serious...

They seem to be re-nationalising the railways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_British_Railways Maybe not: "The Transport Secretary announced on 19 October 2022 that the Transport Bill which would have set up GBR would not go ahead in the current parliamentary session."

The actual railways (that is, the tracks and the stations) are already government owned anyway (Network Rail).

Network Rail sells access to the network to train operating companies, which are private (though often state-owned by other countries).

The network was originally built by private companies until nationalisation in 1947 (railway companies were bankrupt after WW2). It was private for a while in the 90s, then went bankrupt and renationalised in 2002. Seems to be quite the money pit!