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

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

#201

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

belorn wrote: post #160

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…

How are the fixed costs in this? Here in Sweden I have seen a strong trend that as the grid has become more variable and connected to the European grid, a larger portion of the bill becomes fixed. For most part of the year, the fixed costs are now greater than costs that scale with consumption. Transmission and construction, crewing and maintenance of of thermal power plants (under the name of "reserve energy") cost…

Chris Norbury, CEO of E.ON UK said:

"Some of the modelling we have suggests that you could get to a position by 2030 where if the wholesale price was zero, bills would still be the same as where they are today because of the increase in non-commodity costs."

Fixed costs are enormous and are increasingly driven by paying for the CFDs that back up the economics of wind. The CFD scheme allows wind producers to de-risk from market prices by locking in a fixed price with the government who then recover this from bills.

So, yes you get to enjoy low variable costs when it's windy, but you pay for the priviledge year round.

I do think that wind has a part to play in the UKs long term energy mix, but by this point I'm happy to call the current scale-up a complete false economy.

Household and industrial electricity bills are double what they were in real terms 15 years ago.

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

#202

Post by jordand » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #177

jordand wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labour and the Conservatives are no different from each other. The Tories back then expected the "free market" to take care of everything. And that "free market" has clearly failed British people given where we are. They were "extremely aggressive" in their words (like BoJo back in 2020) but really extremely passive in their actions. Britain really needs grid-scale energy storage to make renewables work and that is i…

Come on bro...next election, it will be different this time. Tories do not back the free market. You said it yourself, the two parties are the same. Elections are irrelevant, both political parties pander towards orthogonal groups of voters, they tell them they are different, and they get in government and will do the same thing. Reform will do the same thing. Also, the characterisation of what the government is able…

"Storage is not possible"

Interestingly, the reality is that the "free market" is making this happen and its already here. 'The UK grid-scale battery storage market grew 45% by operational capacity in 2025, with 4GWh coming online during the year, bringing total operational capacity to 12.9GWh.'

Link: https://www.energy-storage.news/another-record-breaking-year...

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

#203

Post by newsclues » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:05 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…

There are devices to store hot water.

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

#204

Post by ZeroGravitas » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #184

bjourne wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

Hinckley Point C has a Contract for Difference that basically means they know what they will be paid in advance.

Any savings they make constructing or overruns don't affect that.

So if anyone is grifting they are grifting the French taxpayer via EDF.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/16/edf-hinkley-...

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

#205

Post by WarmWash » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

eliben wrote: post #5

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…

California is a great example; highest electricity prices in the US (not counting Hawaii, which makes sense) despite significant hydro and fantastic solar capacity. In the last few years California runs 100% renewable on many days (and growing) every year. Economics 101: prices are not set by what goods cost to create + markup. Prices are set by how much people are willing to pay.

PG&E's prices are not a function of what people will pay though, it's a function of what people expect.

CA wants green energy now (aggressive targets), needs to have fire hardened infrastructure (expensive upgrades), and wants full service to sprawling remote areas using modern infrastructure.

The combination of these is incredibly expensive.

If you don't believe me, buy PGE stock and get your dividend from their "greed". But honestly, the stock is an awful performer, because the actual problems facing them are real.

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

#206

Post by marcosdumay » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #136

oskarkk wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't pumped hydro severely limited by geography in many places? Scotland seems to be a perfect place for pumped storage. I see that UK has 4 pumped storage stations, 2 in Wales, 2 in Scotland. But Scotland being quite far from most of UK's population may not be ideal if we're talking about supporting the whole country with pumped storage. It would be like 600km to the south of England.

HVDC would work quite well for a 600km transmission line, I don't think it needs UHVDC lines for that kind of distance.

Yeah, the idea of people claiming that something on the Great Britain is too far and can't distribute power to something else on the Great Britain is laughable.

Next we'll have somebody from Lichtenstein saying the same about their country...

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

#207

Post by phil21 » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

jordand wrote: post #134

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…

Labour and the Conservatives are no different from each other. The Tories back then expected the "free market" to take care of everything. And that "free market" has clearly failed British people given where we are. They were "extremely aggressive" in their words (like BoJo back in 2020) but really extremely passive in their actions. Britain really needs grid-scale energy storage to make renewables work and that is i…

> grid-scale energy storage

This is currently called natural gas. You store it in the ground, and in "day tanks" on land connected to pipes.

Nuclear can also be seen in the same way in relation to renewables.

Batteries are currently much further than I ever thought possible, but still nowhere close to being cost effective enough for most areas.

If you forced every solar or wind installation to have at least 48 hours of nameplate capacity in storage, you would get closer to the true cost of deploying renewables. Right now there is a whole lot of cherry picking going on, where investors are taking the profitable easy stuff, collecting subsidies, and then making the hard expensive stuff someone else's problem.

Right now battery deployments cover the few hour duck curve at best, because that's the only profitable way to deploy them. Hopefully the trend continues though!

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

#208

Post by djhworld » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:16 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…

I think freezers would definitely be a gimmick as they don't really use that much power.

I can see it being a nice feature for higher-load tasks though, e.g. my dishwasher uses about 1.8kWh for a cycle. On this tariff it's trivial to compute the best start-end time based on the 30 minute price windows, so if the dishwasher could do that it would be pretty sweet. Right now my dishwasher just supports a 3h delay function. I wouldn't mind if my dishwasher had a (local) API you could hit to control its schedule. Sadly this usually comes with some cloud requirement though.

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

#209

Post by bethekidyouwant » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:17 PM UTC

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…

Bananas. I hope you do this because it appeals to you at some level.

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

#210

Post by card_zero » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

appstorelottery wrote: post #30

hvb2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read this before and I don't understand how this doesn't become/is untenable. Doesn't this mean that solar/wind are insanely lucrative? Also, this would mean that in order to really bring the price down, gas needs to be taken out as a source. But gas is typically the source that balances the grid because its output can be changed quickly. So price wise, you might get a drop but you would lose your ability to rea…

> Doesn't this mean that solar/wind are insanely lucrative? I used to work in wind energy in the Netherlands, it is only profitable there due to government subsidies. It was/is an enormously complicated system to understand on the whole. I was on the environmental impact side (visualizations) during the permitting process. It's high-risk & enormously expensive during the permitting process (i.e. getting permission to…

I wondered what the ratio of traditional windmills to modern turbines is, and the answer is about 36. https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/how-does-the-...

Maybe you should build them 36 traditional windmills instead. Or, like, 9 traditional-looking giant ones.