Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by bullfightonmars » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:43 PM UTC

declan_roberts wrote: post #126

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…

That's a great system. Like so many things, success comes down to implementation. In California, for example, PG&E will charge you the maximum peak demand prices while simultaneously paying other states to take electricity during the solar duck curve. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56880

Are you saying that they don’t let rate payers take advantage of low rates to advantage load shift?

That seems counterproductive and exploitative.

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

#192

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC

raphaelj wrote: post #188

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The average day ahead price in France in 2025 was 6 cents per kWh.

This is with carbon trading starting to make fossil production very expensive, on top of LNG fossil gas. Which will quickly start to diminish as more renewables and storage comes online.

While the CFD runs for 40 years so into the 2080s for all but the first reactor.

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

#193

Post by mb5 » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:47 PM UTC

lancebeet wrote: post #104

Jemm wrote: post #94

If by renewables you mean lumber from Canada, then sure.

Sorry, what are you implying here? That people burn lumber from Canada to heat their homes?

They’re referring to the source of wood pellets for the Drax power plant i.e. this https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/26/drax-pow...

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

#194

Post by shadowgovt » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #81

jordand wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, and the Tories banned onshore wind, and refused to really invest in offshore wind. We've got the North Sea and its perfect for wind farms we should have had for decades

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…

General question because I'm ignorant of UK internal politics: are the Isles' energy prices just generally higher? There aren't any large sources of fossil fuels or natural gas that aren't offshore, right? And the coal got significantly used up by hundreds upon hundreds of years of mining.

I'm wondering if really, the causality is reversed: it's not that the renewables make energy expensive in the UK, it's that energy is expensive in the UK, which incentivized construction of a lot of renewables, because they're an overall cheaper source of energy long-term since you don't have to either pay your neighbors to import them or build rigs in the saltwater ocean?

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

#195

Post by WarmWash » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:54 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #106

traceroute66 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The writing is on the wall that people, especially young people, don't want to be using fossil fuels anymore.

Refineries are expensive (like $10B for country scale) and take years to build.

Which begs the question, how much renewable energy can you get for $10B? And perhaps even faster?

But it's not that clear, because reality has these fractal trade offs and the future is typically pretty opaque. So then will/motivation because an issue too.

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

#196

Post by adamckay » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:54 PM UTC

margalabargala wrote: post #149

fguerraz wrote: post #141

Yes, if you count the Drax power plant as renewable, sure. If you add to that deindustrialization and buying everything from abroad and not caring where that energy comes from, it’s super easy.

It's a biomass burning power plant. Biomass is absolutely renewable by any definition of "renewable". More can be grown on useful short term timescales. Also, burning biomass does not affect the long term CO2 makeup of the atmosphere. The CO2 emitted was sequestered a decade ago, not 400 million years ago. Biomass carbon release is the normal carbon cycle of the earth.

It takes decades to grow the trees that then absorb the CO2 that is emitted from the burning, and the biomass that Drax burns has been (and still is) imported from Canada from felling old-growth forests (some of which have been estimated to be over 250 years old), and this isn't even considering the emissions from transporting the pellets via ship, rail and road from western Canada to eastern England which is not tracked against Drax.

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

#197

Post by fastasucan » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

bjackman wrote: post #187

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 compresso…

Many homes in Norway has this. Its a smart plug in your fuse box. For me it offsets EV charging untill the electricity is at its cheapest, it also cuts down on heating for the peak hours etc etc.

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

#198

Post by upofadown » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

bjackman wrote: post #187

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 compresso…

Things like freezers don't take a huge amount of power. It's definitely about things that do space heating/cooling. The traditional approach is to put your electric water heater on a timer. That way you can schedule your hot water use on a consistent schedule but only heat the water at night when you can be sure the rates are lower.

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

#199

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

leonidasrup wrote: post #171

simonsquiff wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s only x4 more expensive to use electricity with old methods like immersion / resistance heaters Heat pumps are 400% efficient or more, so have parity or better with gas prices

Heat pump have problems to reach high enough temperatures for most industrial heat applications. https://www.irena.org/Innovation-landscape-for-smart-electri... With electric resistance heating you can gen very high temperatures, but with less than 100% efficiency. With electric arc heating you can melt steel, but again less than 100% efficient.

> Heat pump have problems to reach high enough temperatures for most industrial heat applications.

They do if you start from ambient temperature, but they can be more effective if they are pumping heat out of the waste heat stream of a process. This requires different working fluids than lower temperature systems, though.

Most industrial heat energy is not consumed at very high temperature. IIRC, 2/3rds is at less than 300 C.

Electric resistance heating might also allow PV to dispense with auxiliary equipment, like inverters, so even if inefficient that might not matter as much. Heat also allows easy long duration storage at scale, even at rather high temperature, so resistive heating can be used with intermittently available cheap surplus power.

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

#200

Post by fastasucan » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

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?

No the smart meter communicate with the charger.