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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

#221

Post by theowaway »

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…

Just buy a home battery. Sheesh, there were solutions to problems before LLMs

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

#222

Post by celsoazevedo »

oybng wrote: post #93

The landscape has been destroyed by wind turbines, and energy prices are higher than ever. lose lose.

> The landscape has been destroyed by wind turbines

What? Have you even been to the UK?

> energy prices are higher than ever

Because electricity prices are tied to gas prices (not to mention that wars near countries that export gas don't help bringing prices down).

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

#223

Post by stavros »

eigenspace wrote: post #97
rurounijones wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that if my electricity I am using now is 99% renewable and 1% gas then I am paying as if 100% is gas. That is why prices are so high. The video goes into much better detail but the keyword if you want to search yourself is "marginal cost pricing. You can still have dispatchable gas without this pricing structure.

You can have dispatchable gas without that pricing structure, but having a grid without that pricing structure can't really function without major nationalization of power generation. Marginal pricing is one of those things that at first sounds crazy, but when you delve into the topic, it's the only sensible way to have market pricing on electricity generation. The only real alternative would be a fully nationalized…

Do you have anything I can read on why marginal pricing is the only sensible way to have pricing?

EDIT: Ah, apparently it aligns market forces well, by making cheap energy sources massively profitable to run, so more and more get added.

Perversely, though, it seems to me that it also incentivizes an entire renewable grid to not expand to 100%, so they all enjoy a much higher price.

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

#226

Post by skippyboxedhero »

shadowgovt wrote: post #194
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…

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 energ…

Yes, there are massive onshore reserves. The Tory government that has been accused on here of pimping the environment immediately banned all exploration.

There is are also two relatively big offshore fields that were taken to a very late stage of development and then stopped because of opposition by local government.

I would research exactly how big the gap is with other countries (and, remember, retail price is subsidised). The Cameron government made the active decision to order companies to shut down power plants with no plans for replacement. To be clear, nothing about energy...this is jut electricity provision. There was no economic incentive, that is why tens of billions were given to energy companies to produce non-economic, expensive power with guaranteed payments.

There was some research done last year iirc: if the UK paid zero for gas, the price of electricity would not stop rising because of the government intervention.

It is reasonable that you assume something rational must be going on here. But that model does not apply in the UK. Politics took over from economics a long time ago.

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

#228

Post by Gareth321 »

theowaway wrote: post #221
bjackman wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just buy a home battery. Sheesh, there were solutions to problems before LLMs

Yeah this is the simplest solution. I'm hoping my next EV can do V2H and act as a home battery.

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

#229

Post by themoose8 »

xp84 wrote: post #216

Can people in Britain post their actual electricity rates per kWh? I want us Californians to be able to see how badly we are (or aren’t) being ripped off by our utilities compared to you (mind you, these rates are approved by our regulator). We’re basically told we have to pay this much because of our lovely renewables requirements (they’re still far from 90% renewable though). We are on a ‘time of use’ rate designed…

Those answers won't be too helpful. We have very high bills compared internationally, due to a difficult-to-explain quirk (pay-as-clear marginal pricing) where all electricity is charged to the customer at the highest rate possible at that moment. So wind may cost 0.05 pkwh and be freely available but if gas is being utilised anywhere else in the grid at a cost of eg. 0.45 then everybody gets charged 0.45 pkwh, even for the wind energy.

Its a messed up system which means often pay the highest in Europe, without even helping that much towards the tax coffers. But reform of this system does seem to be gaining a bit of political momentum.

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

#230

Post by skippyboxedhero »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #204
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Yes, offshore wind has CFDs too. If you are building an offshore wind farm, you are spending lots of money to construct something that isn't a low-cost operator and will likely cause significant economic issues with customer's ability to pay you...therefore, CFD. This is how the government was able to intervene to cause non-economic outcomes.

And yes, as I explain above but which you seem to have not read...there was unbelievable levels of graft involved with Hinkley. EDF is not the victim, the reason why the CFD is there is to pay suppliers to EDF which are: lawyers, consultants, planners, etc. At some point, someone may get paid for building a nuclear power plant but that is a largely accidental outcome. If you compare to what other countries with functioning political systems, Korea for example, it is multiples. The costs and prices are so ludicrous, so out of control that no-one could think they make economic sense...and, of course, they don't. It is just corruption.

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