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Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

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

#181

Post by hardlianotion »

traceroute66 wrote: post #150
hardlianotion wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brent crude is a light, sweet oil. UK oil is extracted from same oilfields as Norways - little difference in quality - and the major extraction from both is Brent crude A handy explainer on Brent quality is here: https://kimray.com/training/types-crude-oil-heavy-vs-light-s...

> Brent crude is a light, sweet oil. Brent is yesterday's story.... All the oil that would come from the prospective fields if extra drilling were to be permitted would absolutely be the heavy, viscous, waxy stuff.

I am going to have to ask you for a source this time.

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

#182

Post by tzs »

vovavili wrote: post #116
cap11235 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> compete against each other Citation needed.

https://lmgt.org/?q=econ+101

There’s a reason most universities don’t hand you a bachelors degree in economics as soon as you complete EC101. You should look into EC102 and the rest of the curriculum.

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

#183

Post by djhworld »

rwmj wrote: post #145
djhworld wrote: post #109

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…

My friend has a car which can charge only when prices are low. I'm not totally sure how it works though, does the smart meter communicate this to the car?

Some chargers communicate directly with the energy supplier and charge at the cheaper rates.

You can do this yourself as well with home assistant (if your charger supports it) and some API calls. It's just a matter of telling the charger when to start and stop the charge. The rest of the communication between the charger and the car is some protocol I can't remember the name of.

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

#184

Post by skippyboxedhero »

bjourne wrote: post #114
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't refuse to invest in offshore wind. Tories were the ones who started this ball rolling in the mid-2010s by breaknecking the removal of non-renewable energy production without any clear plan. The issue with offshore wind is that it isn't always windy. If you look at modelling with energy system with a high proportion of offshore wind, you need other sources of energy which often isn't factored into the econ…

Last I read the strike price for offshore wind was about half of that for nuclear power (Hinkley Point). In other words the "huge subsidies" aren't going to who you think they are.

You don't understand what a subsidy is. Offshore wind subsidies are taken out of electricity bills, not the price. The price you are seeing does not include the subsidy.

The reason why Hinkley Point is expensive is completely solvable. The reason why it is expensive is because it is supposed to be expensive, that is the purpose. An A road near me has required two lanes, so far they have spent near £100m over twenty years and have not built anything. The basic premise of the UK political system is that people have no idea what the price of anything should be because it is all a political fiction.

When the costing was done for Hinkley 10 years ago the price was going to be, iirc, something like 50% above the price of gas which was at record lows. This was regarded as extremely expensive...electricity prices are up multiples and multiples since then. Since then, you have had armies of lawyers, consultants, lobbyists, planners working on the project full-time...and you are asking why it is expensive? Thinking this requires knowing so little about how much nuclear costs around the world and having literally zero idea about infra projects work in the UK (spoiler: there is massive corruption at almost every level, tens of billions in graft every year).

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

#185

Post by skippyboxedhero »

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…

It isn't the wrong type of crude. Forties pipeline was directly connected to a refinery. That refinery is now shutting down because of high energy costs, high general costs of doing business, and the investment outlook for UK North Sea.

The solution even if this wasn't true is also simple: build more refineries. This is all within our control.

You also said above it takes "energy" to pipe...do you have no understanding of physics? How do you think stuff moves in a pipe. Dear God.

You also said above that Norwegian crude is different...it is not. Brent is a crude blend that includes UK and Norwegian crudes. The chemical differences are relatively small, Norwegian refineries import UK crude (I am using UK crude because, for some reason, you seem to think that is something exists in the real world...it is just Brent).

One of the most confidently wrong posts I have seen on here...and that is after you said that an offshore gas field was given over to real estate development. Lol.

You should consider a career in the Civil Service. You will fit in well.

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

#186

Post by phil21 »

roryirvine wrote: post #164
djhworld wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explained above, I WFH, single (no kids) and have an EV - but I don't use the car for commute etc so I can be choosy about when I charge the car and take advantage of the ultra cheap periods. Fixed price advantage is you use power whenever you want. Your average unit rate is just the price on the tariff. Predictable and safe. Agile price changes every 30 minutes, so you need to do a little planning. But if you take a…

Yeah, and the really important point is that you get to see the prices a day ahead, which is what makes it actually pretty easy to live with. For instance, if I know it's going to be expensive when I'd be cooking tomorrow's evening meal, then I won't make something that would need a long time in the oven. And if it's going to be particularly cheap around lunchtime, then I'll plan to do a big load of laundry then. I h…

> Basically, it's just another thing to factor in when planning my day. No more of a hassle than checking the weather forecast or glancing at my calendar.

Sounds like an incredible hassle at a level I would pay hundreds of dollars per month to avoid. That sort of mental overhead is crazy to me. But I'm also someone who finds having a single event on my calendar for the day disrupts my productivity and mental peace to an absurd level.

Time of day billing is definitely the future for renewables though, once they hit a saturation point for the grid it's the only thing that makes any sort of sense. Perhaps residential is the last place it needs to happen, but eventually it will be the norm. I see it working more in an automated fashion though. Smart load centers (panels), smart appliances, etc. that are connected to the local power company's API. Then you set some rules around it.

Stuff like cooking dinner though? I cannot imagine planning my day around saving a couple bucks. That's just insane to me. Energy use and all this mechanization/automation/technology exists to make life more convenient in the first place! Stuff like EV charging, raising/lowering temps in anticipation of power pricing, laundry (dryer) scheduling, etc. seems to be where 80% of the wins can be made, and are all much more automatable to avoid having to think about it. That last 20% can simply be taken up by whole-home battery storage, which by the time any of this happens at scale will be pretty much the norm.

The thing that concerns me most though are regional "seasonal" events where a once-a-decade lul in energy production happens and there is simply not enough dispatchable power on the grid to meet demand due to everyone hyper-optimizing their loads in such a fashion.

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

#187

Post by bjackman »

djhworld wrote: post #109

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…

I wonder if we'll start to see gimmicks in home appliances for taking advantage of variable prices.

Like for EV charging I assume it's a basic requirement, you simply wouldn't buy a car that didn't let you adjust the charging schedule based on cost.

But what about... Freezers? Maybe there are scenarios where your freezer could drop 20° below its usual temp while prices are low, and thereby avoid running the compressor for several hours while prices are high.

What about a tumble dryer button that says "these clothes are fine to stay wet for up to 8 hours, dry them at the cheapest moment during that window"?

TBH I doubt these things would really pay for themselves but as a consumer I'd still be tempted by the "lol, neat" factor.

Also I assume the local-LLM heads are already finding ways to have their agents do useful work while the GPU can churn tokens for almost-free.

Also makes me think of fun Home Assistant workflows. Like, "when energy is expensive, just try to keep the house between 16-26°. When energy approaches free, I want to live at exactly 20°". (I assume heat pumps also have ways to take advantage of this in more roundabout ways).

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

#188

Post by raphaelj »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #166
danw1979 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because nuclear. Which is a great 20th century French achievement ! If the EPR2 doesn’t spiral into costing £17.5bn per unit as the UK-PWR has, perhaps we can get them in to “rustle me up a nuclear power station” or two, in the words of Tony Blair.

The subsidies for the EPR2 fleet is a 10 euro cents per kWh CFD and interest free loans. With the first reactor coming online in 2038 at the earliest. That sums up towards 20 cents per kWh in total. It’s an absolutely horrifyingly expensive boondoggle before they have even started, and it won’t deliver any electricity in the relevant timeframes for electrifying industry and society. On top of this EDF is already cryi…

A 10c€/kWh CfD is not strictly speaking a subsidy, at the government will recover the average market price.

That being said, the total cost per kWh could well reach 20c/kWh, which is ridiculous. It's not only not competitive against renewables, but also not competitive with natural gas (CCGT are probably around 10-15c€/kWh).

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

#189

Post by GlacierFox »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #174
jordand wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous government was in power for 14 straight years. The current (useless) government only came into power in July 2024. Yes, I think the previous government should have some of the blame. Just to add, wind turbine factory investments have failed for a few other reasons too. One local to me fell through because it was no longer economically viable (local competition, low margin, and of course cheap imports)

Chinese company Ming Yang was planning to invest 1+ billion to build a factory in Scotland. They were going to be the local competition. UK government has just officially refused to approve it. This is a government decision based on politics and lobbying from other interests (US gov and EU competitors) and yet another U-turn for the government (as apparently gov was initially keen...).

I don't want a Chinese company to own 1 billion pounds of energy infrastructure in Scotland.

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

#190

Post by Kaliboy »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #147
terabytest wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you choose this plan in place of a fixed price plan?

Not GP but I assume the fixed prices have to be fairly high to account for people using lots of power during peak demand when most people use lots of power?

It's not only that, you also need reserve for the intermittent sources like wind and solar.

I live on an island, we have big batteries that can supply up to 15 MW of power for a period. In the Netherlands we have natural gas plants that are called up when the wind or sun output decreases, lest the grid frequency drop.

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