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Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

grid.iamkate.com

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Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#101

Post by traceroute66 »

Gud wrote: post #96
traceroute66 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> paying huge amounts of carbon to import from the Middle East is a good idea You are wrong here. UK oil has a very high carbon footprint. British North Sea oil is sour (high in sulphur). It is the "wrong" type of oil for UK refineries. So it gets sent to other countries around the world for refining. UK oil is viscous, waxy, crude which needs to be heated to pipe it. This means it takes a lot of energy to pipe (hell…

So why not refine it in the UK?

> So why not refine it in the UK?

I already gave the answer in my original post.... UK crude is the wrong type of oil for UK refineries.

Almost all UK refineries were built back in the day (late 60's/early 70's), before North Sea, when the UK was mostly importing oil from Libya and elsewhere in that region.

All the stuff from Libya and elsewhere is far removed from the viscous, waxy sludge that emerges from the North Sea. It requires a far less intensive refining process.

So if your refinery has been built for a low-intensity process you can't just bolt on the shit-ton of high-energy stuff required for waxy crude.

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#102

Post by shafyy »

ghighi7878 wrote: post #4
nickslaughter02 wrote: post #3

> Britain paying highest electricity prices in the world for second year running > Ed Miliband’s net zero targets are facing fresh scrutiny after Britain was found to be paying the highest electricity prices in the developed world. > New data published on Tuesday showed the price paid by UK industry for power was 63pc higher than in France and 27pc higher than in Germany. > Britain is also the second-most expensive c…

Yes. But these things can be orthogonal. Or actually brcause gas is expensive. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro The price for wholesale electricity is set by a bidding process, with each generating company saying what it would be willing to accept to produce a unit of electricity. Once built, the cost of generating power from renewables is very low, so these typically come in with the cheapest bid. Nucl…

Well explained, thank you! This is called the marginal price. Many people are not aware of this and are then think renewables are expensive.

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#103

Post by fmajid »

roenxi wrote: post #84
ghighi7878 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But these things can be orthogonal. Or actually brcause gas is expensive. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro The price for wholesale electricity is set by a bidding process, with each generating company saying what it would be willing to accept to produce a unit of electricity. Once built, the cost of generating power from renewables is very low, so these typically come in with the cheapest bid. Nucl…

They aren't orthogonal - the reason that gas is being used is because renewable can't reliably power the grid! If you look at something like https://grid.iamkate.com/ you can see that in the last 24 hours the gas peak is when the wind dies down and the sun isn't shining, around 6-8pm. Happens to be a real price peak at that time. This isn't some weird and unexpected outcome, we've had at least a decade of evidence wi…

Unfortunately for the UK, its geology means there isn't a lot of pumped hydropower storage unlike France, which is the cheapest way to bank intermittent renewables. In the places where there is pumped hydro capacity like Coire Glas, the operators are demanding the government guarantee they would be paid today's (natural gas generated) price to go ahead with construction, which would completely defeat the purpose of energy storage.

And yes, letting nuclear power dwindle was a political choice, spurred by short termist bean-counter thinking:

http://www.stross.org.uk/charlie/old/rant/torness.html

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#105

Post by roenxi »

trollbridge wrote: post #99
roenxi wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't orthogonal - the reason that gas is being used is because renewable can't reliably power the grid! If you look at something like https://grid.iamkate.com/ you can see that in the last 24 hours the gas peak is when the wind dies down and the sun isn't shining, around 6-8pm. Happens to be a real price peak at that time. This isn't some weird and unexpected outcome, we've had at least a decade of evidence wi…

Seems like a very good case to get storage and power backup in people's homes. Industrial users could install their own gas fired generators. Residential consumers could have simple battery based backup, or even a generator which would double for helping during powerouts.

Bigger question is why they haven't already - these trends have been in place for a very long time and this current phase of the UK energy crisis has been on display for years. Anything legal and cost effective would have been done by now if the market had anything to say about it. Which suggests something odd is afoot. Maybe storage is more expensive than gas, maybe the UK government has regulated the option out of existence. Maybe something else.

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#106

Post by gambiting »

traceroute66 wrote: post #101
Gud wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why not refine it in the UK?

> So why not refine it in the UK? I already gave the answer in my original post.... UK crude is the wrong type of oil for UK refineries. Almost all UK refineries were built back in the day (late 60's/early 70's), before North Sea, when the UK was mostly importing oil from Libya and elsewhere in that region. All the stuff from Libya and elsewhere is far removed from the viscous, waxy sludge that emerges from the North…

That begs the question why aren't we building refineries that can process our own oil without having to ship it abroad for processing.

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#107

Post by gambiting »

traceroute66 wrote: post #73
pydry wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes time though and it's hard to anticipate geopolitical shocks like the war in Ukraine and Iran.

> Iran To be fair, I think you would be hard pushed to find anyone outside Israel who seriously thought Iran would ever be on the cards. Netanyahu dedicated 40 years of his life going to various US presidents trying to get their buy-in. The US presidents all clearly listened to what their advisors had to say regarding Hormuz etc. and said "Thanks, but no thanks" to Netanyahu. Then Trump came along who was ready to ov…

I don't think Trump particularily cares himself. But he's surrounded by weird religious cult who all think that attacking Iran and bringing in war in the middle east will bring on the end times and second coming of jesus christ. I honestly wish this was just a facade for attaining political power, but these nutjobs seem completely earnest in their beliefs.

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#108

Post by enlyth »

traceroute66 wrote: post #31
ghighi7878 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But these things can be orthogonal. Or actually brcause gas is expensive. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro The price for wholesale electricity is set by a bidding process, with each generating company saying what it would be willing to accept to produce a unit of electricity. Once built, the cost of generating power from renewables is very low, so these typically come in with the cheapest bid. Nucl…

> Or actually brcause gas is expensive. Gas in the UK is expensive because the Tories spent decades selling off the storage so developers could turn them into real estate. This continued well into the 2000's when, for example the lettuce (Truss) closed the Rough storage facility in 2017. Gas in the UK is expensive because of 1980's privitisation. Another one of the Tory's great ideas. The UK privitisation model is de…

Is gas expensive though? It's like 6p per kWh at the moment with electricity about 25p per kWh for consumers.

I think gas is dirt cheap, heating your home and hot water with electricity is 4x more expensive and costs hundreds a month.

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#109

Post by djhworld »

I'm on a electricity tariff where the per kWh unit price changes every 30 minutes, you're basically being charged at market rate or thereabouts, the prices for the next 28 hours are announced at 4pm every day.

Generally the prices betwen 4pm-7pm are expensive and the rest of the time it's cheaper - although with current world events things have gotten a little spicy lately.

On really windy days you definitely get to see the benefit where prices drop to zero or even negative, which is great if you have an EV or something to dump lots of power into. Looking at todays prices they're like 1-3p p/kWh!

But that doesn't last, as the wind dies things start to get back to normal.

The key with the tariff though is to just play the averages and generally avoid high power usage during the peak periods. My average for the last 2 years was around 30% cheaper (p/year) than what I would have paid if I was on a normal energy tariff.

It will be interesting to see whether that trend continues, especially with the state the world has suddenly been thrown into.

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#110

Post by Magnets »

danw1979 wrote: post #78
PunchyHamster wrote: post #7

and still somehow pay tons for "cheap" green electricity

If you’ve got even a passing interest in the UK energy market you’d know this is because of the wholesale price of gas, not the actual wholesale cost of solar and wind. If you really want to pay less for green energy, which is cheap when it’s plentiful (like anything) get on a variable tariff and install some storage.

how does the wholesale price of gas explain how the UK is the most expensive in the world/europe?
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