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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

#111

Post by benj111 »

blitzar wrote: post #93
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people making (intentionally?) vague statements about prices going up? Are you referring to the war Trump started, or are you all climate denying loons who love Trump and think net-zero is a Chinese hoax? Or just nihilists that just think the world is going to shit in multiple ways and refuse to even contemplate small silver linings on dark clouds? It's impossible to tell from these quips.

Only 3 certainties in life; death, taxes and the cost of everything going up every year.

And people not being able to count apparently...

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

#112

Post by benj111 »

alephnerd wrote: post #72
endymi0n wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear fans are heavily underestimating the cost of that energy source. The levelized cost of energy per kWh today is TRIPLE that of solar already, at a negative learning curve, with a gap only widening (and accelerating so). For the very same cost per kWh, you can get double overprovisioned solar PLUS battery storage at 90% capacity factor, TODAY. All of that fully decentralized, within the next years instead of de…

Civilian Nuclear Power is a dual use technology. The UK needs to subsidize it's civilian nuclear program if it wishes to also remain a nuclear power. The alternative is it de facto becomes the 51st state of America. The UK needs to subsidize nuclear, as well as wind, solar, and everything in between. There's a reason countries like the US, China, Japan, India, South Korea, and others are investing in this kind of dom…

The half life of uranium and plutonium is 1000s of years?

Unless the UK is planning on increasing it's number of nukes why would it need more cores?

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

#113

Post by thebruce87m »

jonatron wrote: post #15
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.

Batteries are getting affordable too - Fogstar do a 16kWh battery for around £2000. Plus, grid scale iron-air batteries sound promising.

Have you got one? Looking for installation options.

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

#114

Post by benj111 »

noir_lord wrote: post #63
mono442 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just an excuse to justify the scam? Texas has very low electricity prices and at the same time a growing share of renewables.

Been a while since I looked at a map but I don't remember us invading Texas and annexing them as part of His Majesties territories...

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

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

#115

Post by adammarples »

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.

The UK has positioned itself almost uniquely poorly in Europe. That is why its government bond prices are trading at a premium to the others.

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

#116

Post by mvc »

martinald wrote: post #54
alephnerd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> build those wind farms closer to England How? The issue is local NIMBYs [0], anti-industry environmentalists [1], far left leaning groups [2], and even the fishing lobby [3] all attempt to obstruct wind farm expansion and make it difficult for moderates in Labour to actually execute on building energy independence for the UK. Of course, this is also being amplified by information warfare by opponents to the UK [4][…

I mean offshore wind, not onshore. Thankfully most of the new ones are being built in England - check https://openinframap.org/#7.05/53.375/3.069 , and these aren't curtailed. But it was incredibly dumb to build many GW of offshore wind in Scotland when the grid was already over capacity.

> But it was incredibly dumb to build many GW of offshore wind in Scotland when the grid was already over capacity.

Isn't it equally dumb to continue to bet the entire country's economy on a tiny little bit of England (and then shame the other regions as unproductive layabouts when they don't produce as much tax revenue)? Energy production is not the only, nor even the biggest imbalance in UK resources. Maybe people and businesses should go where the energy is instead of waiting for it to come to them.

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

#117

Post by IshKebab »

sefrost wrote: post #10

Does this cancel out the high energy prices people in the UK have been paying for the past decade+? Part of the reason the bills are high is because they subsidise the installation of renewable generation.

> Part of the reason bills are high is because they subsidise the installation of renewable generation.

Yeah citation definitely needed. UK electricity prices are high because we are highly dependent on imported gas.

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

#118

Post by noir_lord »

benj111 wrote: post #114
noir_lord wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been a while since I looked at a map but I don't remember us invading Texas and annexing them as part of His Majesties territories...

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.

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

#119

Post by OneDonOne »

endymi0n wrote: post #70
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…

Nuclear fans are heavily underestimating the cost of that energy source. The levelized cost of energy per kWh today is TRIPLE that of solar already, at a negative learning curve, with a gap only widening (and accelerating so). For the very same cost per kWh, you can get double overprovisioned solar PLUS battery storage at 90% capacity factor, TODAY. All of that fully decentralized, within the next years instead of de…

The LCOE may be triple, but the LFSCOE [0] (full system cost, not just cost of generation) however of solar, is triple that of nuclear in Texas, and 15x that in Germany. Notice that 1. Solar Irradiance per location is actually taken into consideration and 2. Renewables have not stopped the ongoing deindustrialization of Germany due to high energy costs.

[0] (PDF) https://iaee2021online.org/download/contribution/fullpaper/1...

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

#120

Post by martinald »

jmyeet wrote: post #107
martinald wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

UK peak power demand has _reduced_ by 15GW in the past 20ish years.

Obviously there is some investment needed but if you take a look at the capex cost of the north Scottish grid upgrades PLUS the HVDCs it's pretty terrifying.

The idea is that the financing will be "paid off" after 35 years so it doesn't require a "guaranteed" price after that (it reduces finance costs significantly when HMG is underwriting the main payback period. I expect the remaining 25 years will be extraordinarily profitable for EDF. Even if there is more maintenance costs they will have no finance costs. And finance is the main cost of HPC (60-70% goes to interest payments on the debt).

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