| ▲ | okasaki 6 days ago |
| Cool so when will this translate into cheaper energy? Why am I paying $0.4 per kwh? |
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| ▲ | AnotherGoodName 6 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Pretty much straight away actually. In Australia prices were reduced by over $50 a year per person in the state on average once a similar battery went online. Similar policies and market there to this case too. Details: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve I get that it's easy to be pessimistic but batteries like the above not only pay themselves off in 2years (From the article above, $46million profit in one year alone on a $90million install cost!) they also cut prices on the grid from day one. Behind the scenes prices can fluctuate between <0 and >100x baseline. These types of installations immediately smooth out the costs. As long as you have competing wholesalers/providers the price reductions will come through pretty quickly based on similar cases. |
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| ▲ | hdgvhicv 6 days ago | parent [-] | | One issue the U.K. has is a grid bottleneck but wiggle pricing across the grid. While excess power may be available in some places, there’s not enough interconnection to move it where it’s needed, so those with excess power (lots of wind etc) can’t benefit. | | |
| ▲ | 3eb7988a1663 6 days ago | parent [-] | | If the batteries are installed south of the interconnect, won't that help the problem? | | |
| ▲ | hdgvhicv 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Certainly, and these are small improvements that add up over time. People won’t appreciate them though, and will just listen k the “drill baby drill” coming from the tories and reform |
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| ▲ | rwmj 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This project won't do anything (as you likely already know). The reason electricity is so expensive is because it's tied to gas prices, which is an entirely political decision. |
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| ▲ | xnorswap 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Isn't the price tied to the marginal price, rather than the price of gas? Even if they're typically the same, because CCGT is the best for on-demand generation, flattening the demand curve ought to slightly reduce that marginal cost. I've seen the UK generation market attacked quite a lot lately, but to me it makes sense to price everything at the marginal cost, and doing so also helps encourage capital investment in generation that can have lower generation costs themselves, because the marginal cost is only slowly impacted rather than a boom and bust model. | | |
| ▲ | chippiewill 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I agree, although I think one of the disadvantages in the UK is that the suppliers aren't paying the cost for their own volatility. A renewable supplier can add 1GW supply to the grid, but 1GW of natural gas generation capacity is still required. Fixed costs and capital costs end up being shouldered by the consumer which ironically ends up pushing overall costs up. | | |
| ▲ | lokeg 5 days ago | parent [-] | | This can be alleviated by the gas plant operator selling call options, effectively paying them for being reliable. The relevant keyword is "capacity markets". |
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| ▲ | justincormack 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yeah we still need some more renewable capacity (and transmission) before gas usage can go to zero much of the time (which will need more batteries to deal with short term fluctuations). Right now we are using around 10% gas, which is a decent amount. Prices are still going negative at night some of the time, like last night. |
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| ▲ | ZeroGravitas 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Batteries will reduce the number of times gas sets the marginal price, so they will have a near immediate impact on that. They'll also likely reduce the balancing costs by relieving congestion. Probably too small to notice among all the other costs and changes, like deploying more renewables and starting to pay in advance for new nuclear. | |
| ▲ | tomatocracy 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The current marginal market price is not the same as the current average price being paid for all electricity delivered. A lot is delivered via fixed price arrangements of one sort or another (CFDs, PPAs, etc) and then there are things like the Balancing Mechanism which is paid as bid, and capacity payments which are outside the marginal cost per kWh part of the system. | |
| ▲ | mytailorisrich 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Gas prices are a political decision, too in Europe. For demand to reduce and for other sources to be more competitive prices have to be and remain high. In the UK I believe it is policy for electricity prices to be high in general for thse reasons and to encourage lower usage. | | |
| ▲ | skippyboxedhero 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Retail energy prices are subsidised. It isn't policy to encourage lower usage, the government is paying billions to sustain retail consumption (and yes, this is whilst another part of the government is driving prices higher). The issue in the UK is that we moved to renewables that can't produce energy at the margin, marginal prices are still driven by gas, and we simultaneously decided to shut down large amounts of non-renewable sources of energy to satisfy the ambitions of politicians. Result? Highest energy prices in the world, most energy-intensive industry shutting down, and massive reliance on political direction/regulators by industry (the original comment is not right, since the mid-2010s energy companies have been directed day-to-day by the state, invest in this project, don't do this anymore, etc. Our policy is made by people who wish the world was a certain way, reality doesn't matter to them). | | |
| ▲ | mytailorisrich 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It is policy to encourage lower usage, like it is policy to keep prices up (both production and the grid are a shamble, not to mention climate commitments on top). Maybe the policy isn't publicly stated but actions speak louder than words. Of course this isn't popular so, at the same time, the governments takes measures to appear to try to keep prices lower. It is a political balancing act and subsidies are not incompatible with a policy of encouraging lower usage. It's the same as they are doing on immigration: They say they want to lower it but the actual policy is to keep it high. People have understood that now, which explains in big part the Conservative wipe out. Labour is now on the same path. | |
| ▲ | tonyedgecombe 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Retail energy prices are subsidised. Retail electricity is taxed in the UK. | | |
| ▲ | youngtaff 6 days ago | parent [-] | | But that’s OK isn’t it - if we tax it people should use it more efficiently |
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| ▲ | HPsquared 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | We are all just paypigs, after all. |
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| ▲ | benrutter 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think a big reason for net-zero policies getting bad press, is that these kind of things are difficult to quantify. Energy is largely set by gas price, so having more non-gas assets on the grid probably means you do have cheaper energy (or, at least will have much cheaper energy in the future when gas ceases to dictate the energy price) I guess what we can't do is step into the alternative world where there's less batteries and renewables, and complain about paying $0.6 per kwh. |
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| ▲ | blitzar 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm paying £0.06 at the moment and I got paid to use electricity on the weekend thanks to the sun shining and wind blowing. |
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| ▲ | okasaki 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't know how you're accomplishing that. The lowest mine goes is $0.3 1am-4am. | | |
| ▲ | scrlk 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Probably on a half-hourly tariff, e.g. Agile Octopus: https://www.octopriceuk.app/agile | | |
| ▲ | okasaki 6 days ago | parent [-] | | So on the site itself it says Agile prices can spike up to 100 p/kWh any time - although a typical household in Winter '22-'23 paid around 35 p/kWh average. so that's even more than I'm paying. This seems to only make sense if you have some sort of intelligent battery system. | | |
| ▲ | jansper39 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Over the last year of being on the Agile tariff, my average weighted price per kWh is £0.12 with a total saving of £506 over the year (drive an EV with an average of 4500kWh usage over the year). I'm happy to shoulder a very 40p peaks every so often as it's very often cheaper overall. | |
| ▲ | scrlk 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can make that tariff work without a battery, just that you need to be flexible when it comes to load shifting to maximise the savings. Moving consumption out of evening peaks would be enough over a course of a year. | | |
| ▲ | frabcus 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I use that tariff, with no home battery or home solar or electric car. Saves about 1/3rd off my electricity bill. My only behaviour change has been to not run the washing machine 4pm-8pm. It's great! I assume I'll get hit by a price spike at some point, hasn't happened for a couple of years so far. Average unit cost for me yesterday was 4.35p/kWh. |
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| ▲ | frabcus 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The spikes in the last 2 years have happened for very short amounts of time. If renewables are working, you don't get a spike, and save loads on this tariff. The small amount of time they're not, you sometimes have to pay more, but not for long enough to matter. It's fundamentally more effective for everyone than the default of buying the insurance of fixed prices. |
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| ▲ | 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | beAbU 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I call bullshit on this claim. Sure, you might be paying pennies a kWh, but likely only for a few hours at midnight, then it spikes to £0.50 during peak times. | | |
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| ▲ | rcxdude 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Once there's enough renewables and batteries that the UK is running off of near 100% renewables a decent fraction of the time, so the price is not being set by the gas turbines making up the margin. |
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| ▲ | happosai 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If you are paying for electricity in dollars, this battery won't translate to cheaper energy for you. The battery is in Scotland. |
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| ▲ | hgomersall 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Essex | | |
| ▲ | tialaramex 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Which, to be clear is: Not in Scotland, and, is in fact very far from Scotland. In terms of countries, it's closer to France, or Belgium, or the Netherlands than to Scotland. It is in the UK though, so, if your model of where "Scotland" is just means vaguely "the United Kingdom somewhere" and thus also includes London then yeah, close enough. |
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| ▲ | okasaki 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm just translating for USD for an American audience. |
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| ▲ | gadders 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Not really. The higher proportion of renewables a country has, the more expensive the energy. See the chart on this page: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bjorn-lomborg-solar-wind-p... |
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| ▲ | grues-dinner 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Alternatively, the higher the cost of non-renewable energy in a country, the more attractive renewables are in that market. If gas costs £1 a unit and solar is 90p, solar is profitable (especially if you get paid the gas price). If gas is 50p a unit, solar isn't going to be much of an investment. | |
| ▲ | ZeroGravitas 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Bjorn Lomborg is a hack propagandist and that is obviously bad science. Just look at all the unnamed points in the lower left that are actually creating the trend he claims to have found. If you graph developed nations the correlation reverses. | |
| ▲ | Lio 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Personally, I'd take Bob Ward's analysis over Bjorn Lomborg's. https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/more-misinforma... | | |
| ▲ | gadders 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I'd like to see them debate. All I know is my energy cost keeps going up in the UK, and we seem to have some of the most expensive energy in the world. | | |
| ▲ | frabcus 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Have you tried switching to Agile Octopus tariff? My electricity cost has gone down 1/3rd since I did that. I also installed smart radiator thermostats, and knocked about 1/3rd off gas heating cost. | |
| ▲ | Lio 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | We do and I share your concerns. As far as I can see pricing electricity on the marginal costs of gas has not been a good strategy. I think we should be charged the true cost of generation which is something like 8 times lower for renewables. | | |
| ▲ | tialaramex 6 days ago | parent [-] | | The question is, if I'm going to be paid only "true cost of generation" why would I perform any generation? I also don't want to be paid only "true cost of labour" for my work, I'll take the wages you offered thanks, not my "true cost". | | |
| ▲ | Lio 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Sorry, maybe "market rate" would be better phrasing on my part. I assume there's a mark up in there even if I didn't say it. My point is that base cost of gas is so much higher than renewable energy that we are crippling our economy by forcing the renewable engergy market rate to be based on the market price of gas. | | |
| ▲ | tialaramex 5 days ago | parent [-] | | What "renewable energy market" ? Are you mistaking "green" consumer electricity tariffs for actually renewable energy ? It's all the same electrons, and if you don't pay for the gas then those gas turbines don't run, which means there's no electricity. What we have is a single electricity market because electricity consumers do not care how this electricity was made. Their motors spin, their lamps light, it's the same whether we burned peat (which is very, very bad for the environment) or strung together a lot of photovoltaics and made the sun's light into electricity directly. |
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| ▲ | triceratops 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Fires burn wherever firefighters show up, it's weird. |
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