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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

#61

Post by gib444 »

blitzar wrote: post #34
pjc50 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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...

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

#62

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

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.

That's how all commodity markets works. All of Europe runs on the same scheme.

Do you think the Saudi's price their $10 per barrel oil at $10? The average price? Median? Or marginal?

They price at at the marginal price.

In the UK what this means is that cheap production like renewables and storage are incentivized to get built while the most expensive fossil production is shutting down.

Then at some point renewables start to become to marginal producer and prices crater. Which is already happening.

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

#63

Post by noir_lord »

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.

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...

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

#64

Post by zipy124 »

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…

That's some pretty creative accounting to get to the 25bn mark. You also don't need to subsidise storage projects. They get built by market demand, as you can see by the amount being built and operated by energy trading firms who use them solely to buy power when the price is low and sell when high.

The planing issues were mostly due to the conservative party having a complete hate for onshore wind.

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

#65

Post by alephnerd »

martinald wrote: post #58
alephnerd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even offshore ones face persistent opposition [0]. Frankly, opposition to either onshore or offshore wind farms is dumb and is clearly being weaponized by opponents of the UK. > But it was incredibly dumb to build many GW of offshore wind in Scotland when the grid was already over capacity Overcapacity is a good problem to have from a NatSec perspective (as is seen with Chinese and Indian solar). Also, it's the Scott…

I don't quite understand. The opposition can't be that insurmountable for offshore wind off England coast (instead of Scotland) given 700 giant offshore turbines are being built as we speak off the English coast. Including the world's largest windfarm (Hornsea 3).

Look at the timeline of when Hornsea 3 and these projects were initiated - most of these projects broke ground 10 to 15 years ago.

The issue is the next generation of offshore wind projects in England is up in the air. This was why Hornsea 4 [0] was cancelled by Ørsted, how the Isle of Man has mobilized against the Mooir Vannin project [1] despite it having the potential to help Liverpool and Manchester, and the Shetland's project being cancelled due to the fishing lobby [2].

What is under construction today doesn't matter because those projects started a decade ago. What matters is whether new projects are being allowed or blocked.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/offsho...

[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74vj881090o

[2] - https://fishingnews.co.uk/news/developer-pulls-out-of-east-o...

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

#66

Post by digdugdirk »

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 amount of this cost that would need to be invested regardless.

There's also subsidies for fossil fuels to consider [0]. I don't hold these figures as gospel, but there's inarguably a massive amount of money going to propping up the (wildly profitable and hugely destructive) industry that's causing most of your raised issues in the first place - either through reduced maintenance and infrastructure investment (gotta get those shareholder returns) or lobbying/public influence campaigns.

To be clear - I absolutely agree with most of your complaints. I just see them as issues caused/exacerbated by entrenched political players, and I think the benefits to our society of getting off our fossil fuel addiction are worth the costs of modernizing our infrastructure for the long haul.

[0] - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/09/fossil-f...

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

#67

Post by heyitsmedotjayb »

martinald wrote: post #53
heyitsmedotjayb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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).

Unregulated free markets optimizing for the least efficient, and highest possible price to the consumer? That's interesting, because its 100% the opposite of what I've been told my whole life.

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

#68

Post by jmyeet »

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 [1]. Cost have ballooned to almost £50 billion [2] and may balloon further.

So you're looking at almost 20 years to build, £50 billion in costs and electricity production of ~3.2GW.

AFAICT that 3.2GW is ~7% of the UK's current electricity requirements so I'm not sure where you're getting "nearly all electricity demand". Also, 5 Hinkley Point Cs would be 16GW of electricity not 30GW.

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.

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.

[1]: https://eandt.theiet.org/2026/02/23/hinkley-point-c-faces-fu...

[2]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/02/20/hinkley-poin...

[3]: https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-new-uk-onshore-wind-and-solar...

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

#69

Post by dehrmann »

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.

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.

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

#70

Post by endymi0n »

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 decades, with distributed (not megacorp) ownership AND not having every other of these megaprojects cancelled due to protests.

And that figure doesn't even include externalized cost like national/environmental security or decommissioning costs.

Nuclear is riding a dead horse in 2026.

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