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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

#71

Post by ZeroGravitas »

heyitsmedotjayb wrote: post #67
martinald wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not the highest possible price, it's roughly the same price but with less transparency and some fudge factors added due to uncertainty.

In a world where renewables are cheaper the transparency speeds the transition

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

#72

Post by alephnerd »

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…

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 domestic capacity and spending tens to hundreds of billions to do so.

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

#73

Post by jmyeet »

martinald wrote: post #57
jmyeet wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The UK had/has the exact same windfall tax on energy: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electricity-gener... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-profits-le... And the reason Spain is so well insulated is because they have limited gas interconnection so they have a 'captive supplier' in Algerian gas. Algerian gas can basically only go to Spain, Morocco or the domestic Algerian market. They have…

Spain has the advantage that solar is very effective because it's further south than most of Europe. Solar now seems to be 20-25% of Spain's electricity mix (and rapidly increasing). As cost the projected costs [1]:

> We anticipate low solar capture prices of close to €25/MWh in 2027 and €20/MWh in 2028

> And the reason Spain is so well insulated is because they have limited gas interconnection so they have a 'captive supplier' in Algerian gas

Interestingly, this is also a factor in US pricing of natural gas and oil. The hotly contested (and ultimately cancelled) Keystone SL pipeline was designing to bring energy products to a wider market and ultimately to raise prices. Don't believe anyone who tells you oil companies build pipelines to lower prices. As an aside, different pipelines were built instead without the same controversy.

[1]: https://www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/regulatory/article/spain...

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

#74

Post by 7952 »

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…

Surely gas prices would spike if the UK needed to import enough to generate an extra 125TWh. And whilst we are waiting for nuclear to come online you still need to generate energy.

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

#75

Post by blitzar »

gib444 wrote: post #61
blitzar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> never mention their longer-term moving-average unit price

17.1p (last 6 months) no battery, no timeshifting

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

#76

Post by ZeroGravitas »

dehrmann wrote: post #69
ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The UK is world leading in battery rollout because someone did the sums and decided it did make sense at scale.

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

#77

Post by gopher_space »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #47
turblety wrote: post #45

This is amazing news. I look forward to my bills going up again next month!

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.

These are people attempting to convince themselves.

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

#78

Post by pjc50 »

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.

Turns out I'm actually on 20p from a fix from last year, I was just grabbing some representative numbers off the website. Also this discussion has reminded me to put in a meter reading.

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

#79

Post by heyitsmedotjayb »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #71
heyitsmedotjayb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not the highest possible price, it's roughly the same price but with less transparency and some fudge factors added due to uncertainty. In a world where renewables are cheaper the transparency speeds the transition

It floats oil and gas profits with huge public subsidy while ensuring nobody in the market realizes benefits from alternate sources. It slows/blocks the transition.

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

#80

Post by ufmace »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #40
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.

Are there any efforts to fix this?

Why should they? It's not the right time for that yet. Letting the price stay high despite renewable prices being lower means it's tremendously profitable to build new renewable sources, so there's lots of incentive for it to be done.
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