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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

#301

Post by gendal »

youngtaff wrote: post #300
gendal wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount wind farms in the UK have contributed back over the last ten years is a rounding error compared to how much they have received. It's not even close: https://x.com/7Kiwi/status/2031657347433603581 And the scary thing: the wind farms aren't even making that much money! Some projects have been cancelled and others had to re-bid in subsequent auctions to get a higher CFD price than they originally received bec…

Where’s his methodology? How does he separate the CfD price from the market price that’s being set by renewables? Where’s his evidence that using gas would be cheaper than renewables?

He explains on his website where he gets his data from. He gets it from The Low Carbon Contracts Company... y'know: the firm who is the actual counterparty to the CFDs and so should probably know the actual sums of cash being moved - and in which direction.

His January article: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/record-january-cfd-subsid...

LCCC's relevant data page: https://dp.lowcarboncontracts.uk/dataset/actual-cfd-generati...

The actual spreadsheet: https://dp.lowcarboncontracts.uk/dataset/8e8ca0d5-c774-4dc8-...

And note: even when gas is more expensive than the CFDs, the huge fixed and/or policy costs (network build-out, capacity market, curtailment, etc) are devastating.

The story would be completely different if wind farms were actually cheap to build and run... the problem is they're just not.

I wish it were not so... it would be great if we had a path to being free of dependence on hydrocarbons. But in a battle between wishful thinking and physical and economic reality, reality usually wins.

So we're faced with a choice as a nation: continue to pour tens of billions of pounds down this drain... or call time on the experiment and free up all that money for something productive?

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

#302

Post by youngtaff »

gendal wrote: post #301
youngtaff wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s his methodology? How does he separate the CfD price from the market price that’s being set by renewables? Where’s his evidence that using gas would be cheaper than renewables?

He explains on his website where he gets his data from. He gets it from The Low Carbon Contracts Company... y'know: the firm who is the actual counterparty to the CFDs and so should probably know the actual sums of cash being moved - and in which direction. His January article: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/record-january-cfd-subsid... LCCC's relevant data page: https://dp.lowcarboncontracts.uk/dataset/actual-cf…

Thanks… I’ll have a read through though I’m highly skeptical of anyone who’s a member of Toby Young’s Free Speech Union… it says a lot about their political leanings

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

#303

Post by gendal »

youngtaff wrote: post #302
gendal wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He explains on his website where he gets his data from. He gets it from The Low Carbon Contracts Company... y'know: the firm who is the actual counterparty to the CFDs and so should probably know the actual sums of cash being moved - and in which direction. His January article: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/record-january-cfd-subsid... LCCC's relevant data page: https://dp.lowcarboncontracts.uk/dataset/actual-cf…

Thanks… I’ll have a read through though I’m highly skeptical of anyone who’s a member of Toby Young’s Free Speech Union… it says a lot about their political leanings

Cheers. No doubt there's additional nuance I've missed but I'm fairly certain he's directionally correct. And, if he is, we face some dire consequences as a nation.

Re the Free Speech Union, that's an interesting one and perhaps points to a broader point. It often feels to me that there can often be an asymmetry of risk faced by participants in some highly charged debates. I know this is a cliche, but there is definitely something to the adage that "conservatives think progressives are stupid, but progressives think conservatives are evil".

So it doesn't surprise me at all that the FSU was founded by somebody from that 'side': If you're debating in an environment when some (I stress some) of the people who may read your writings may actually think you're evil, as opposed to just wrong, it seems rational to invest in some protection?

In any case, I don't know Turver, but I have no reason to believe he's making this stuff up. He seems pretty rational to me, and does share his working. I'd urge you to remain open minded to the (scary) possibility he's right.

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

#304

Post by fracarma »

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…

I second this. I live in Spain and put solar panels on my roof. I have no batteries. In the last 2 years, the price of the energy returned to the grid has been 0 or even negative. Therefore I started running automation using Homeassistant and I'm stuck at appliances that cannot be simply turned on and off with a power switch (i.e. my freezer, the AC, washing machine etc). If someone could produce a refrigerator that I can control via an open protocol(i.e. ZigBee) it would be awesome!

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

#305

Post by jeffbee »

xp84 wrote: post #299
jeffbee wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The volumetric rate for electricity is almost totally irrelevant. California's bills are dominated by the fixed cost of the grid, and we use very little grid power compared to other states, so the volumetric rate has to be really high as a consequence. Electric power bills in California are in the middle of the pack compared to the other states, almost exactly the same as Texas and less than ten other states.

This isn’t convincing to me - our electricity rates in 2002 were 8 cents per kWh and none of those other facts were different back then. Inflation hasn’t done 5x since then, but our electricity rates have. We are being ripped off by the three companies that CPUC allows to do it. They should have imposed a ruinous penalty on the utilities for their wildfire liability, and seized their assets for non-payment of it. And…

> none of those other facts were different back then.

That is not correct.

Small-scale solar capacity in California today stands at 19GW. In 2002, it was 45MW. That is a more than 400-fold increase. Title 20 and 24 rules have dramatically cut residential electric demand, especially lighting which has fallen by over 90%. Population grew 13% but peak grid load has not grown at all. But all that grid stuff to serve the new residents had to be installed and amortized. Many many things have changed since 2002.

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

#306

Post by Valakas_ »

codexb wrote: post #66
zug_zug wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us outside of Britain (i.e. 98% of us?) the message here isn't "mission accomplished" -- it's "Yes it's possible"

Well, in the sense that it's possible to be eating zero calories in the time between meals. You still need the meals. If you're just looking at brief snapshots, it doesn't tell you much.

But it would still be an achievement worth sharing if, never in your life before, you thought you could go on a full day without eating, and then you go and do it, wouldn't it? And then you might argue back "oh but it's not an achievement to go a full day without eating" or "Anybody can do it". To which i say "Well that's the problem of the metaphor you made. It's still an achievement and a milestone that we could get to 90%+, even if just briefly.

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

#307

Post by muskstinks »

rimunroe wrote: post #277
muskstinks wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm following battery prices and you can now get 25kwh for 3.5k. This will be a solved problem a lot sooner for a lot of people. A heat pump house uses perhaps 40-50kwh in deep winter.

> A heat pump house uses perhaps 40-50kwh in deep winter. Over what time period, and where? My geothermal system draws about 1200 watts when heating our large house on the coldest days of the year

Argh... i wanted to write 1-2 days.

I meant it as a short buffer

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

#308

Post by danatkinson »

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…

Agile tariffs really only make sense if you have batteries. That way you can ride out the peaks by running off power generated in the troughs.

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

#309

Post by rimunroe »

muskstinks wrote: post #307
rimunroe wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A heat pump house uses perhaps 40-50kwh in deep winter. Over what time period, and where? My geothermal system draws about 1200 watts when heating our large house on the coldest days of the year

Argh... i wanted to write 1-2 days. I meant it as a short buffer

Ah gotcha. That seems much more reasonable!

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

#310

Post by rlpb »

hvb2 wrote: post #283
rlpb wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, but those same free markets will happily see those expensive producers go out of business. No, because remember you are only able to meet 10% of market demand. The expensive producers will still get 90% of the business, and the market price for their product will remain basically the same. This is what we observe in the electricity markets today: the price to us is the cost of the most expensive product. The…

> The cheaper producers who cannot meet the full market demand still get to sell at the cost of the most expensive product. Which would mean it's super lucrative and your same laws of economics will tell you that that means they'll be building like crazy. My while point was that as soon as you get to a day where no gas is needed you've lost the ability to react quickly because no supplier will just leave a gas plant…

The markets accomodate that though. Market participants buy energy futures because they do need guaranteed future energy. Solar and wind producers cannot sell such futures (or else they can but will be forced to buy from gas plants to fulfil them when they can't). So in practice, wholesale buyers continue to buy a mix.
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