and still somehow pay tons for "cheap" green electricity

thebruce87m a day ago | parent | next [-]

Somehow? It’s a well established and publicised fact that it’s due to the price of gas. It’s so well established that anyone posting a comment here about the high price of electricity without mentioning it has an ulterior motive.

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RobinL a day ago | parent | next [-]

It's also widely misunderstood. Just because the spot price of electricity is set by the price of gas doesn’t mean the consumer pays that price for all of their electricity.

A lot of wind and solar are on Contracts for Difference. That means when market prices go above the agreed level, the generator pays the difference back through the scheme, which reduces supplier costs rather than the generator simply keeping the whole windfall.

This is particularly relevant when e.g. the price of gas goes way up due to the Iran war, it doesn't mean that the consumer ends up paying more for the energy from wind

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AlexandrB a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So who's working on fixing it? It's not like "the price is fixed to the price of gas" is some iron law of nature. Meanwhile you have folks seeing these three things together:

- England is 90% renewables

- Renewables are a really cheap source of energy.

- England has very high energy prices.

And the obvious conclusion is that someone is lying. It's eroding support for renewables among those that don't have time to investigate how or why the spot price of gas sets the overall energy price.

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oskarkk a day ago | parent | next [-]

>England is 90% renewables

The thing is, it's nowhere near 90% in general. 90% is the generation right now, with sunlight and good wind. On the site you can see that renewables were 66% in the last 24h, 46% in the last week, and 42% in the last year. I don't think it's possible to have 90% renewable generation overall without massive energy storage.

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pydry a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>It's not like "the price is fixed to the price of gas" is some iron law of nature.

It kind of is.

Gas is the only source of electricity currently which can be scaled up and down at will and on demand.

Even once grids eventually go 100% green we will probably still use (green, synthesised) stored gas as the power source of last resort on cold, windless nights after batteries and pumped storage have been depleted.

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jackpeterfletch a day ago | parent | prev [-]

My understanding is that legislation is in the works to fix that. But we’ll see.

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teamonkey a day ago | parent [-]

Yesterday it was announced that a trial would take place so that regions near wind farms can receive free energy from them in periods of curtailment.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GoodNewsUK/s/jG5OCSWTTy

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swarnie a day ago | parent [-]

Unless i'm reading this wrong I'm pretty sure i already have this in the UK nad have done for years. What's the trial even for...

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teamonkey a day ago | parent [-]

It’s not currently happening in the UK.

A lot of wind power is generated in Scotland, for example. The power conduits that transmit power along the country can often not deliver all of that power to the South on a windy day. There is an excess of power in the north but the wind farms cannot deliver it, they are not paid to generate power so they switch their wind turbines off, even though there is wind available to capture.

This new test means that wind farms will not switch off in such conditions and electricity prices will be allowed to fall to zero, but only for those in the local area.

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swarnie a day ago | parent [-]

Are you sure?

The Octopus subreddit seem pretty convinced they get negative pricing when its windy.

	▲	teamonkey 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It’s not the same thing. Customers on some of Octopus’ tariffs get occasional zero or negative pricing to spur demand that can help balance the grid or reduce curtailment. This trial is different. I think the real goal is to incentivise local communities to support the construction of wind farms. If you have a wind farm nearby, surplus generation is used to supply you with free power when otherwise the turbines would have been curtailed.

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mono442 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not only the price of gas but also the price of the co2 emissions. I'm really surprised the uk didn't get rid of it when they left the eu. It's one of the most stupid things possible. It only makes everything more expensive.

	▲	callamdelaney a day ago \| parent [-]
		That would make British people less poor for once so they decided against it. Managed economic decline and mass immigration go hand in hand with globalism and ‘global warming’ extremists.

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danw1979 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you’ve got even a passing interest in the UK energy market you’d know this is because of the wholesale price of gas, not the actual wholesale cost of solar and wind.

If you really want to pay less for green energy, which is cheap when it’s plentiful (like anything) get on a variable tariff and install some storage.

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Magnets a day ago | parent [-]

how does the wholesale price of gas explain how the UK is the most expensive in the world/europe?

	▲	thebruce87m a day ago \| parent [-]
		tldr: Marginal Pricing https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-why-does-gas-set-the-price-of... > In the UK, the marginal unit is almost always a gas-fired power plant. As a result, one widely cited academic analysis found that gas set the price of power 97% of the time in the UK in 2021.

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spiderfarmer a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Stop seeing this through the eyes of a consumer. On a macro scale, your country is not handing hundreds of millions of pounds a day over to other countries. Now imagine if it still was. You'd be even worse off.

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LunaSea a day ago | parent | next [-]

Of course they are sending millions of pounds a day to other countries. In this case China for the panels.

	▲	spiderfarmer a day ago \| parent [-]
		They're not burning panels.

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AlexandrB a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Almost every normal person sees this through the eyes of the consumer because paying the electric bill is their primary interaction with the issue. What you're describing is politically a tough sell.

	▲	spiderfarmer a day ago \| parent [-]
		It worked before, so start the buses: "We send the UAE £350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead" "We send Saudi Arabia £350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead" "We send Qatar £350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead"