Re: energy in UK

On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 15/04/2025 01:43, Don Y wrote:

On 4/14/2025 3:58 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:

On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:

>
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/

>
They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the
extent that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.

 
What's "sky high"?  And, are residential and commercial/industrial
rates significantly different?

>
Yes and in complicated ways. Residential tariffs are capped, ordinary
businesses are not but a handful of ultimate heavy use load balancing
centres get preferential rates on condition that they can get no
electricity at all. Think aluminium and fertiliser plants and choralkali
electrolysis. (I think the last aluminium plant in England has now shut)
>
Increasingly the winter peak load in the UK is balanced by paying big
heavy industrial users to shut down or go to a standby condition! There
are even schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak times.
>
Typical electricity prices in the UK are tightly coupled to the spot
price of natural gas in a totally crazy pricing structure. Electricity
in the UK is 2x the price on mainland Europe and 4x that in the US.
>
It was sort of OK until the war in Ukraine started and Russian gas was
plentiful in Europe. We were pretty much screwed from that point because
we had almost no long term gas storage capacity with Rough closed down
(it was deliberately taken offline to save on maintenance costs).
>
https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/knowledgecentre/business/business/gas_price_spike/
>
The price paid for wholesale electricity in the UK is determined by the
cost of generating the most expensive component needed to match demand
(so that they can make a profit). This is typically a fast response gas
turbine and all suppliers get paid in proportion to that high price.
>
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/02/25/its-time-to-change-uk-energy-pricing/
>
The whole thing is rigged by Ofgem (the energy regulator) for the
benefit of the electricity producers and against their customers.
>
At night the spot price for electricity can spike negative so that UK
battery farms like to put insanely big substations onto their batteries
to game the system (and so get paid handsomely for accepting power).
This does nothing for network stability.
>

The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in the
North and consumption of power in London and the South East. The main
cables running N-S are routinely overloaded during daytime during winter.

 
Why is NEW generation not brought on-line closer to the demand?

>
Engineers have been warning about the problem for about 3 decades.
>
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/in-depth/generation-gap/
>

Is this a NiMBY issue?  Or, a consequence of real-estate valuations?

>
Partly a factor is that land prices are much lower in the north but also
it is a lot more windy. A Nimby in the south is worth 10 in the north.
>
One option is to install large BESS systems near to the windfarms and
also near the major city loads. That way power can be moved overnight to
where it will be needed in the daytime. Only snag is that it is way more
profitable to build them in the north where land is so much cheaper.
>
UK infrastructure configuration is determined by speculators.
>

Or, just a resistance to solving a problem (which then means you can't
CLAIM to be the one who WILL solve it -- if elected to do so)?

>
UK national infrastructure has been privatised and robbed blind by
vulture capitalists since the 1980's. It isn't just electricity that is
problematic London's water supply was in dire danger of going bust too.
>
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66051555
>
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the
balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners.
>
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.

There will never be enough batteries to power even a tiny country like
the UK,  to keep people alive through a few weeks of cold, dark, still
weather.

People can keep warm by snuggling around burning lithium batteries.