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

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

#101

Post by crote » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 6:52 PM UTC

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…

> Rehabilitation of nuclear is almost certainly required for the transition

Using nuclear means electricity prices will be set by the price of nuclear - which is even higher than the price of gas.

Besides, it is economically impossible to operate it as backstop as almost all of its costs are in paying back the construction loan: run it 10% of the time and its cost-per-kWh is increased by 10x, run it 1% of the time and its cost-per-kWh is increased by 100x. With that kind of budget there are suddenly a lot of alternatives to nuclear as generation-of-last-resort.

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

#102

Post by martinald » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

ndr42 wrote: post #49

martinald wrote: post #43

The issue though is that the UK spends something along the lines of £10-25bn (depending how you count subsidies) a year on renewable. Something like £10bn in direct subsidies via CfD and RO, then another ~£1.5-2bn on curtailment (paying wind farms to turn off), ~£3bn in balancing market costs, and £6bn on transmission upgrade costs (passed back to consumers/businesses) to upgrade transmission for nearly always renewa…

Why replace oil dependency with uranium dependency (presumably from Russia)? Costs are not the only consideration.

Australia and Canada have enormous uranium deposits. We're not going to have an entirely British energy supply chain (solar panels are mostly from China, etc).

And it's a relatively small amount of mass to ship - perhaps 500 tonnes of yellowcake for a reactors' yearly requirement.

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

#103

Post by crote » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #88

heyitsmedotjayb wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saudi's use the government to price their oil internally low... on the free market they sell it at the price dictated by supply and demand. Renewables and storage are disincentivized because oil and gas is legally blocked from ever taking a loss. Whats stopping O&G from raising prices to keep their marginal producer status and ensuring a race to the bottom?

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 the government subsidizes production. Something similar happened with early wind power.

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

#104

Post by martinald » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #68

martinald wrote: post #43

The issue though is that the UK spends something along the lines of £10-25bn (depending how you count subsidies) a year on renewable. Something like £10bn in direct subsidies via CfD and RO, then another ~£1.5-2bn on curtailment (paying wind farms to turn off), ~£3bn in balancing market costs, and £6bn on transmission upgrade costs (passed back to consumers/businesses) to upgrade transmission for nearly always renewa…

> But overall, for the same £20bn a year you could have probably built 5 Hinckley Point C sized 3.2GW nuclear plants concurrently (assuming £4bn a year capex for 10 years). Planning began for Hinkley Point C in 20113. It was approved in 2016. Construction commenced in 2017-2018. It's hit major delays and is currently projected to come online in 2030. It could be delayed furhter. Unit 2 is expected about a year later…

Yes of course it's hit major delays, but my point is in hindsight had we started 5 nuclear plants (sort of as planned) around HPC construction start instead of spending the money on renewables, we'd have 5 plants coming online in (say) 2030. This would be nearly 50% of the entire UK supply. Another ~10 years later you'd have another 5, giving ~30GW of baseload.

And there's no reason we couldn't have used other reactor designs, apart from lack of financing so only EDF gambled everything on the EPR for HPC (again) and failed to deliver on time/on budget (again).

>Hinkley Point C has a contracted price of £133/MWh. I imagine there's some risk-sharing and inflation in the contract so this will probably go up. Compare this to £65/MWh for new solar and £72/MWh for new onshore wind [3]. Plus of course that wind and solar projects don't take 20 years to come online.

In 2012 prices HPC was £89/MWh. AR7 is delivering (in 2012 prices) offshore wind for ~£65/MWh.

But regardless these aren't comparable at all, for the reasons I set out above. That £65/MWh often doesn't include grid upgrades (which aren't required to nearly the same scale for nuclear, as they tend to be nearish existing population/demand centres and have existing grid infra). AND you still need (expensive) backup for that wind. We are building (right now!) new gas peaking plants that are allowed by law to only operate 10 days per year. The cost per MWh if you include that capex is horrendous.

>Lastly, the only way the per MWh costs can even get that low is by giving Hinkley Point C a 60 year lifespan to amortize the cost over a sufficiently large timespan. It's likely that as the plant ages, operational costs will significantly increase beyond what's projected.

Not true, HPCs 'agreement' is for 35 years. After that they just get the market price, so it is not based on the 60 year lifespan per se.

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

#105

Post by martinald » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 7:15 PM UTC

digdugdirk wrote: post #66

martinald wrote: post #43

The issue though is that the UK spends something along the lines of £10-25bn (depending how you count subsidies) a year on renewable. Something like £10bn in direct subsidies via CfD and RO, then another ~£1.5-2bn on curtailment (paying wind farms to turn off), ~£3bn in balancing market costs, and £6bn on transmission upgrade costs (passed back to consumers/businesses) to upgrade transmission for nearly always renewa…

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 (which may change, but doesn't look to be).

Nearly all of the cost on the grid is to do with renewables, not 'general upgrades'. We would not be building 10GW of HVDC from scotland to england. We wouldn't be doing a drastic 275kV -> 400kV rerating and duplication in the middle of nowhere scotland otherwise.

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

#106

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 7:33 PM UTC

blitzar wrote: post #75

gib444 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my electricity has been free to negative all day Like a gambler who only talks about their wins, people on these smart energy plans on the few days it goes very cheap only seem to pipe up with the current low unit price, and never mention their longer-term moving-average unit price...

> never mention their longer-term moving-average unit price 17.1p (last 6 months) no battery, no timeshifting

[deleted]

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

#107

Post by jmyeet » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

martinald wrote: post #104

jmyeet wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But overall, for the same £20bn a year you could have probably built 5 Hinckley Point C sized 3.2GW nuclear plants concurrently (assuming £4bn a year capex for 10 years). Planning began for Hinkley Point C in 20113. It was approved in 2016. Construction commenced in 2017-2018. It's hit major delays and is currently projected to come online in 2030. It could be delayed furhter. Unit 2 is expected about a year later…

Yes of course it's hit major delays, but my point is in hindsight had we started 5 nuclear plants (sort of as planned) around HPC construction start instead of spending the money on renewables, we'd have 5 plants coming online in (say) 2030. This would be nearly 50% of the entire UK supply. Another ~10 years later you'd have another 5, giving ~30GW of baseload. And there's no reason we couldn't have used other reacto…

The UK's grid upgrades are a mix of the shift to renewables but also to handle anticipated increased demand, which will be needed regardless of the electricity source or location. I don't know what the mix is however.

> Not true, HPCs 'agreement' is for 35 years. After that they just get the market price, so it is not based on the 60 year lifespan per se.

Isn't this conceding the point that costs are going to go way up as HPC ages? Why else would you have a 60 year lifespan on a plan but 35 years of agreed pricing?

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

#108

Post by benj111 » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 8:10 PM UTC

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #99

pjc50 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we're (UK) only just at the "occasionally cheap 100% renewables" state, and it's maddeningly slow progress. But it seems like a lot of things are suddenly coming online, like battery storage, and the Scotland-England grid upgrade will happen in the next few years. https://eandt.theiet.org/2026/04/02/ps12bn-plan-upgrade-scot...

> and the Scotland-England grid upgrade will happen in the next few years. I hope not. We're currently getting shafted by National Grid pricing, and this is only going to mean we get to pay even more for electricity where it's generated while the south coast of the UK gets it cheap.

We get that now. They were looking in to zonal pricing last year but backed out.

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

#109

Post by benj111 » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 8:14 PM UTC

ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #17

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.

If you had a big enough battery, could you sell electricity back to the grid later? Get paid to charge the battery, get paid to discharge the battery? It seems silly, but actually... it's driving useful behavior I suppose. Then again, maybe a good government would notice this and just fast track grid storage rather than distribute that work to all the citizens.

Like an EV....

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

#110

Post by benj111 » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 8:20 PM UTC

modo_mario wrote: post #24

cjrp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I believe some EVs allow this too.

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.