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Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026

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Re: Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026

#121

Post by martinald »

stevesimmons wrote: post #59
martinald wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth thinking how this would work if it didn't work like this though? Nearly all 'commodity' markets clear this way. If you switched to 'people get paid what they bid' it's almost certain the market would just converge back to this anyway - but with a lot more gaming and guesswork (wind guessing the gas marginal price to try and get the highest price).

That's only true for spot pricing, right? Longer term supply contracts can embody more "strategic" criteria.

Yes of course but the spot market and associated futures has a very big impact on any "OTC" deal that a supplier and generator does.

Like you are not going to agree a eg 3 year supply deal with $SUPPLYCO at a significantly lower price than what you could get on the spot market for it (or what you could hedge out on futures).

Re: Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026

#122

Post by dehrmann »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #76
dehrmann wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone at the utility went through the same math you are and decided it isn't worth it at scale. It's probably not worth it at small scale.

The UK is world leading in battery rollout because someone did the sums and decided it did make sense at scale.

Or it is! And they can do it cheaper at-scale than you can.

Re: Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026

#123

Post by digdugdirk »

martinald wrote: post #105
digdugdirk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to look at the whole picture though - most of the issues you raised are political issues, either brought about by NIMBYism or a lack of infrastructure investment over the past few decades. Without this investment (which, yes, is more expensive than it would be if it weren't also providing additional benefits tailored for renewables) the grid would continue to deteriorate. So clearly there is some amoun…

I'm certainly not saying we should stay on fossil fuels, my main point is that for the money that is being spent on various renewables could have been spent on a giant nuclear expansion at lower cost and far higher relability. I don't really agree with this 'declining grid' narrative the renewable lobby has pushed. Yes there is upgrades to be done, etc etc. But peak UK electricity demand is down from ~65GW to ~45GW (…

Again, we're in agreement, and I yearn for a world with massive buildout of scalable nuclear power.

But what is this "renewable lobby", and how are they doing funding-wise against the various extremely well funded and deeply entrenched fossil fuel industry lobbying groups (and companies!) that have been pouring money into UK politics ever since they stopped setting UK foreign policy directly and overtly?

All I ask is that people take a step back and look at the whole picture, and then question whether their arguments benefit an industry that is responsible for so much damage and destruction (environmental, economic, human health, societal, political, etc.) or if their arguments benefit individuals and society as a whole.

Nuclear power built out in such a way as to achieve the original "too cheap to meter" goal would be a dream. But don't let perfect be the enemy of good and all that.

Re: Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026

#124

Post by pixxel »

edent wrote: post #13

I'm in the UK and am currently being paid to use electricity. My energy provider uses a tracker tariff which can change every half hour (it does have a maximum cap to prevent the issues seen in Texas). Prices are currently negative, so every kWh I use right now means the electricity company pays me. Nuclear promised energy which was "too cheap to meter". But solar actually delivered.

[dead]

Re: Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026

#125

Post by modo_mario »

benj111 wrote: post #110
modo_mario wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that would ever commonly be viable or at least not for a long time. EV's are a lot more than batteries and are proportionally stupidly expensive. If the electricity net arbitrage was worth the degradation of the battery then .... companies would do it themselves and just build the batteries for cheaper at scale.

The battery is already a sunk cost. Doesn't matter how expensive the battery was if it's already sitting on your drive. I did a quick fag packet calculation and even today 10% of everyones EV battery would be enough to cover the grid for an hour. That's enough of a buffer to spin up gas turbines for example, so you can actually shut them completely off.

>The battery is already a sunk cost. Doesn't matter how expensive the battery was if it's already sitting on your drive.

My Hyundai Ionic 6 rolling battery costs 50-60k. Spending a cycle of it's battery is not a discardable cost.

Some will still take it but this seems just like a more deceptive version of those uber driver that get a pricey car and then find out that combined with maintenance, degradation/devaluation and other hidden costs they don't actually make that much driving around.

>I did a quick fag packet calculation and even today 10% of everyones EV battery would be enough to cover the grid for an hour.

I presume you deduct more than half of the rolling battery capacity out there. You can't discharge those to 0% shouldn't charge them to 100%, many won't be charged fully (or connected) + If I need to leave in the morning like most I don't want to necessarily be dropping charge into the grid.

Re: Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026

#126

Post by modo_mario »

edent wrote: post #29
modo_mario wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that would ever commonly be viable or at least not for a long time. EV's are a lot more than batteries and are proportionally stupidly expensive. If the electricity net arbitrage was worth the degradation of the battery then .... companies would do it themselves and just build the batteries for cheaper at scale.

It is commercially viable. A UK energy company already has a Vehicle to Grid tariff. https://octopus.energy/power-pack/ See also https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/case-study-uk-electric...

>A UK energy company already has a Vehicle to Grid tariff.

And is that actually worth it to anyone who does the math? An optimistic 161 pound saving compares to how many of my battery cycles for example? My car costs 50-60k so battery degradation is not nothing.

Re: Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026

#127

Post by benj111 »

noir_lord wrote: post #118
benj111 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it kinda was, until the locals got uppity and threw their tea in the harbour.

Texas wasn't part of the US at that time. It was annexed in the mid-19th century, they abused the Yorkshire Gold way before that.

That's why I said kinda. Texas is part of the United States. The United States was the group that got uppity.

If 2 European powers had a war over a territory that is now part of a third country we would still describe the war as being between the 2 original countries. Even if other territories that weren't part of those nations at the time now are.

But yes, on the other hand we are talking specifically about Texas so maybe you're right.

On the 3rd hand the chance to get superior with the colonies should never be passed up.

Re: Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026

#128

Post by benj111 »

modo_mario wrote: post #125
benj111 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battery is already a sunk cost. Doesn't matter how expensive the battery was if it's already sitting on your drive. I did a quick fag packet calculation and even today 10% of everyones EV battery would be enough to cover the grid for an hour. That's enough of a buffer to spin up gas turbines for example, so you can actually shut them completely off.

>The battery is already a sunk cost. Doesn't matter how expensive the battery was if it's already sitting on your drive. My Hyundai Ionic 6 rolling battery costs 50-60k. Spending a cycle of it's battery is not a discardable cost. Some will still take it but this seems just like a more deceptive version of those uber driver that get a pricey car and then find out that combined with maintenance, degradation/devaluation…

>My Hyundai Ionic 6 rolling battery costs 50-60k. Spending a cycle of it's battery is not a discardable cost

Problem is we don't have good data on actual costs. So we don't know if we're talking about something substantial or something hypothetical. Absent that data I think my comment is fair.

>I presume you deduct more than half of the rolling battery capacity out there

No. We are talking about 10% of battery capacity so your battery at 80% would only need to go down to 70%.

A problem we have in the UK at the moment is that we have gas turbines running even if not needed just incase the wind suddenly drops. It takes (or can take) about an hour to spin up a turbine from cold. So a battery supply that could cover that hour would mean we could use a lot less gas. Most of the time it isn't even used, and if it is, most probably won't use that full 10% and once the gas turbines have spun up it could recharge the batteries.

To link it back to the earlier comment, even if the maths is bad for EV as battery storage, you can still use it as battery of last resort. It would be expensive, so ev owners would still be up on the deal, but there would be a system on place to actually use them when actually needed.

Re: Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026

#129

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

crote wrote: post #103
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can they be legally blocked from ever taking a loss? It is a market. They bid. There's a plethora of producers with varying equipment, startup times, ramp times, costs and so on. As renewable penetration expands the most expensive, or least flexible ones are called in fewer and fewer hours until they shut down. If one oil and gas producer tries to raise prices a competitor steps in and fills the demand. Did you t…

> How can they be legally blocked from ever taking a loss? It is a market. They bid. I don't know enough about oil & gas to tell you what is happening there , but not every market truly operates as a free market. For example, nuclear power plants almost always have a contract with the government for a specific electricity price: if the market pays more the profits will go to the government, if the market pays less th…

Yes, that is a CFD. CFDs are allocated in bidding processes to get them as cheaply as possible.

Oil and gas plants in Europe are very much not on CFDs. They can bid out their power using futures. But that is like any other market.

Re: Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026

#130

Post by adrianN »

jl6 wrote: post #14
adds68 wrote: post #3

Europe seems to be responding well since the Ukraine war, the picture now is a lot more positive than in 2022. The UK has postionined itself well, even without the mass uptake of local generation/storage in it's domestic market.

Electricity prices in the UK are painful, and galling when set by the price of gas, but it’s worth remembering that this model and all this expense has bought a major asset that will only become more important and strategic. The next milestones to hit are: * A 10x increase in generation capacity * A 100x increase in storage capacity * A 1000x increase in seasonal storage capacity * Electrification of heating * Electr…

How do you make money with a nuclear power plant when renewables deliver more than enough power 95% of the year?
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