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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

#31

Post by rcxdude »

pjc50 wrote: post #16
jl6 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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...

The transition will probably be quite nonlinear: getting from zero to a few days a year of 100% renewables is about as much effort as going from a few days a year to most of the year.

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

#32

Post by fhn »

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.

Sure you could. How much do you think they will pay you per kw? 1/10 what you paid them and they will charge you for using their infrastructure..at least in the US they do.

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

#33

Post by rcxdude »

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.

A lot of the value to homeowners is essentially arbitrage on the retail cost of electricity: when prices are high you're going to be paying a lot more to pull electricity from the grid than you would be paid to supply it, so you're better off using up the buffer yourself as opposed to paying for electricity from the grid.

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

#34

Post by blitzar »

pjc50 wrote: post #26
blitzar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have some of the highest electricity prices in the world. Current price −£24.86/MWh (yes you get paid to use it)

Octopus fixed tariff day rates are currently 33.15 p/kWh, or £332/MWh, which is a better representative number for what people are actually paying. But timeshift seems to be increasingly important.

24.67 pence per kWh, the Energy price cap (fixed till 30 June 2026) is a better representative number for what people are actually paying.

If you fixed at 33p, sucks to be you, my electricity has been free to negative all day.

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

#35

Post by jmyeet »

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.

I couldn't disagree more. I'm going to point to Gary Stevenson [1] for why. He could probably get to the point faster but here's the core premise: Europe responded to the energy shocks since 2020 by transferring the better part of a trillion euros to energy companies in the US and the Middle East, particularly for LNG.

Imagine where Europe might be if half a trillion euros was spent on renewables.

The core problem as he describes it is that European governments don't own these providers so it's a wealth transfer from taxpayers to the ultra-wealthy.

Back in the pandemic, Spain was one of the few countries that tackled the inflation shock in a better way with a windfall profits tax. Interestingly, Europe is talking about doing that now [2]. That would be smarter.

Energy prices disproportionately hurt the poor [3]. If the government owned or part-owned the energy (like Norway does) then you could offset that without burning cash to stick your head in the sand for a little bit longer.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi265I48MdI

[2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/04/europe-energy-windfall-profi...

[3]: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2023/rising-household...

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

#36

Post by rcxdude »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #8
cjrp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if a happy byproduct of pushing for net zero is more investment in renewables, and decoupling the electricity price from gas?

That would be wonderful. But that hasn't happened yet, so i'll point out that whatever our current energy strategy is, it's failing miserably and wrecking the economy. For some reason other countries seem to have it figured out much better, so forgive me for not falling over in excitement over the fact that some war in the middle east is costing us a billion less then it might have.

Other countries are not likely spending much less on the transition, it's just that they're paying for it more in tax and less in the electricity bill. The UK's strategy here basically means there's now a huge amount of investment in renewables even without government subsidies. And the nature of renewables and relying on gas in the meantime (which has pretty much always been setting the price of electricity, it's just gotten even more expensive recently) means that there's a relatively more painful period of investment before you get to the cost benefits of a nearly entirely renewable grid.

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

#37

Post by mono442 »

noir_lord wrote: post #6
cjrp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if a happy byproduct of pushing for net zero is more investment in renewables, and decoupling the electricity price from gas?

Part of the reason why we have high electricity costs (here in the UK) is that we peg the price to gas generation, on the face of it people complain about that but the higher price allows investments in renewables to make sense on an RoI PoV, effectively it's a subsidy to build out renewables at a higher rate than would otherwise be the case. Electricity prices are high in the UK but there is a net benefit to it at l…

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.

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

#38

Post by rcxdude »

mono442 wrote: post #37
noir_lord wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason why we have high electricity costs (here in the UK) is that we peg the price to gas generation, on the face of it people complain about that but the higher price allows investments in renewables to make sense on an RoI PoV, effectively it's a subsidy to build out renewables at a higher rate than would otherwise be the case. Electricity prices are high in the UK but there is a net benefit to it at l…

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.

Texas famously had massive spikes in electricty prices and a near failure of the grid because of their electricity market structure, so it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

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

#40

Post by toomuchtodo »

heyitsmedotjayb wrote: post #39
fhn wrote: post #30

So everything should be cheaper right...RIGHT?

UK is legally required to set the price of electricity to whichever generator has the highest cost - which is natural gas. Its called marginal cost pricing.

Are there any efforts to fix this?
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