Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

climate.benjames.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 353 posts

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#241

Post by tom_ »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #106
bfmalky wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bizarre thing to say. I guess there are some examples of self sabotage, such as Brexit, but no, on the whole people in the UK do not choose to be poor. Like any nation we are at the mercy of the outcomes of the decisions of our politicians and larger global effects that are out of our control. Also, there are plenty of wealthy people in the UK. You do know that right? The UK is still around 6th in the nominal…

It isn't bizarre. The UK has many policies in place that are designed to limit output. These policies are not only not unpopular, they are wildly popular and are basically impossible to change. Housing is one, infrastructure is another. Like people say we aren't choosing to poor...HS2 is the most expensive rail project ever per mile, double the cost of the outrageously expensive one in California. Why? Because our sy…

But what if Britain was the people inside the system all along? The fact this stuff is so popular suggests this might actually be the case!

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#242

Post by olejorgenb »

edent wrote: post #210
dfawcus wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that is pretty much an irrelevance here in the UK. We don't even get that much sun in summer, today sunrise was at 0842, sunset at 1540 - so not even 7 hrs of daylight. Even then it was a very dull day. So in the period (winter) when we most need power, local solar is essentially useless. Local wind may be better, but the economics for it don't really work - requiring 100% gas turbine backup, and high costs…

Sorry, that's not true. I have (non-optimal) solar panels in the UK. I generate 100% of my annual electricity usage from them across the year. In summer, I can easily get over 20kWh per day - against a daily usage of 10kWh. I release all of my data at https://gitlab.com/edent/solar-data/ Today, in the dead of winter, I got 2.8kWh - https://bsky.app/profile/solar.bots.edent.tel/post/3ldqqrvkw... - a not insignificant…

> My battery charged overnight, so I only drew about 4kWh from the grid during the day.

You are in large part confirming what GP is saying, no?

The 100% annually is of limited use when it's so skewed. Sure having local batteries are a good thing but also costly.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#243

Post by jayceedenton »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #217
Maken wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to know what "fastest rate of grid decarbonisation" even means, because the UK is definitely not the nation with the largest share of renewable electricity production. I guess it measures how much energy production has transitioned from non-renewable to renewable sources in recent years.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric... They mean the rate of reduction in the metric graphed above.

Why was Poland so high?

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#244

Post by Xelbair »

threeseed wrote: post #215
graemep wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overestimate the importance of what the West does. The West no longer dominates the world economically. Things no longer filter down the rest of the world as simply as you think. China is a bigger economy than any Western economy than the US, and is growing. India is about as big as any European economy. Both, and many other countries are doing more and more of their own R & D and have their own agendas.

a) China is third to US and EU in terms of GDP. And their economy is on a downwards trajectory. b) Majority of the early R&D in solar, EVs etc came from the US. China has been vital in driving unit economics.

a) China is third to US and EU in terms of GDP. And their economy is on a downwards trajectory.

what about population? as that's the main driving factor for pollution - especially if you couple that with energy needs.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#245

Post by moooo99 »

fakedang wrote: post #170
omnibrain wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly the same in Germany. In addition the state government of Bavaria in the south east does everything to keep wind power from being built in their state and worked against high voltage power lines to bring cheap and abundant energy from the north to his state.

To be honest, Bavaria isn't the ideal place for wind power imo, WHEN THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES. Braindead Germany just woke up and decided that they want to do away with nuclear and suck the icy cold teats of Mother Russia. Wind isn't suited for inland Germany, especially in a place like Bavaria, which has the frickking Black Forest ecosystem and a mountainous terrain. Not to mention the winds are much slower there than…

Your comment really is a prime example of what is wrong with this discourse.

> which has the frickking Black Forest ecosystem

Bavaria has forests, but not the Black Forest. The Black Forest is in Baden Württemberg.

> and a mountainous terrain

Bavaria is more mountainous than northern Germany for sure, but not all of Bavaria is the alps.

> Not to mention the winds are much slower there than in North Germany. For the cost calculus that wind energy provides, it's best suited for underutilized offshore areas or desert climates.

I often see this argued, often with people citing ground wins speeds to support their statement. However, at 100m public records to show sufficient wind speeds to justify the investment in many cases. Of course offshore wind is always going to have a lower LCoE than onshore wind, but in southern states like Bavaria transmission bottlenecks and redispatch are also a concern (by the way, both of witch are exasperated by the lack of investment in transmission networks).

> but of course solar doesn't make sense in Germany,

This is just a factually wrong statement. Solar does make sense ans the business case is just getting stronger with the falling panel and storage costs. I have a residential installation (the least cost and energy effective solution) and I cover most of my electricity needs from my roof in 10 out of 12 months. People love to reference the two months to demonstrate that it is useless, but that’s a bit like saying your house is useless because you’re not at home for 10 hours a day.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#246

Post by everfrustrated »

dukeyukey wrote: post #61
nradov wrote: post #31

I find it so weird that UK citizens have often just sort of passively chosen to be poor. Like they still had food rationing for years after WW2. Is there some sort of cultural blind spot which prevents them from understanding that there are better ways to do things?

> Like they still had food rationing for years after WW2 To be fair the UK was completely broke and responsible for feeding half of Europe.

>responsible for feeding half of Europe.

How so? The UK has not been self sufficient for food since before WWII. Hence food rationing for many years after the war ended.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#247

Post by ilaksh »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #89

An important reason that power is expensive in the UK is that it doesn't use zonal pricing and is effectively not giving the right price signals to consumers of power to move closer to where the cheap power is (e.g. data centers) or to conserve power when power is expensive; or producers of power to invest in power generation closer to where the power is scarce and expensive. Another point to make is that the nationa…

I just assume the real reason is that it's an island and there is relatively little competition. The government and power companies can work together to take whatever they want from you and you can't stop them.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#248

Post by ggrothendieck »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #89

An important reason that power is expensive in the UK is that it doesn't use zonal pricing and is effectively not giving the right price signals to consumers of power to move closer to where the cheap power is (e.g. data centers) or to conserve power when power is expensive; or producers of power to invest in power generation closer to where the power is scarce and expensive. Another point to make is that the nationa…

Gas production from the North Sea is low because they imposed onerous windfall surtaxes on it so now it is unattractive to produce.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#249

Post by everfrustrated »

samatman wrote: post #6

Third option not discussed: have the military leverage its existing nuclear reactor competency to build a fleet of nationalized nuclear power generation stations. I'm not saying that they should tile the island with submarine-scale reactors, I'm saying that their supply chain for building those knows how to build nuclear power stations. The only thing which makes this prospect expensive, is the lack of political will…

The Rolls-Royce SMR designs are considerably larger in MW than the subs so I doubt there is anything shared or any efficiencys to come from that sadly.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#250

Post by pfdietz »

fakedang wrote: post #170
omnibrain wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly the same in Germany. In addition the state government of Bavaria in the south east does everything to keep wind power from being built in their state and worked against high voltage power lines to bring cheap and abundant energy from the north to his state.

To be honest, Bavaria isn't the ideal place for wind power imo, WHEN THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES. Braindead Germany just woke up and decided that they want to do away with nuclear and suck the icy cold teats of Mother Russia. Wind isn't suited for inland Germany, especially in a place like Bavaria, which has the frickking Black Forest ecosystem and a mountainous terrain. Not to mention the winds are much slower there than…

When I go to https://model.energy/ and run the optimization algorithm on Bayern using 2030 cost assumptions, it finds that using solar/wind/batteries/hydrogen to produce steady power output costs 77.8 euro/MWh. This is probably cheaper than new construction nuclear would be there.

Europe in general is one of the worst parts of the world for renewable energy, but this just means that in a post-fossil fuel, renewable powered world, Europe will be at a competitive disadvantage in energy intensive industries, and nuclear will not save them vs. industries in sunnier places.

Post reply on HN