Why be angry at scottish power raising energy prices??

grahamc2003

HalloweenJack wrote: »

name calling and stubbornness aside - these are contracted payments when a power generation facility is asked to set *down/off* to reduce whats flowing into the national grid, and all facilities have a similar framwork - its just that the payments for wind is quite alot more than those for coal; its not a subsidy

Yes, we all accept that. Nobody is saying the ro pays subsidies for wind not generating, but it does pay large payments for not generating.

There are subsidies outside the ro which do pay for wind when not generating (i.e. irrespective of whether they bare generating or not), although they are not explicit subsidies so some say they aren't subsidies.

Anyhow, the substantive point - with which no one disagrees afaiia - is that wind attracts large payments, paid for by consumers, both to generate and not to generate.

Some, but not all and in particular not any ro payments, could be labelled as a subsidy by preferential treatment.

It seems we are getting bogged down in semantics rather than the substance of the points being made.

HalloweenJack

the payments being made for not generating, which are outside the RO - are constraint payments as agreed between the national grid and the companies who own wind farms; these are under contract , and the same style of contract (but not level of payments) are in place for other renewables (hyrdo for example) and also for coal and gas fired stations.

i know that some here are anti john carpenter - BUT the link i gave above does have the level of payments (i assume from FOIA requests) for wind farms - and for other utilities its allready in teh public domain.


now , if your saying there are other subsidies for not generating - above and beyong contracted payements for being asked to constrain *DOWN/OFF* , then please show them.

an RO payment is not a subsidy - they dont get the money if they dont meet the criteria.

magyar

@grahamc2003 I have already made the point that if you are not intentionally intending to mislead anyone and are simply believing the rubbish which is spoken about wind farms when I apologise for calling you a liar.

I agree with you that we're getting bogged down in semantics and also need to get a sense of scale here.

If you look at the amount of money paid by consumers under the RO, it's in the region of £1bn a year. In addition, companies have to pay Climate Change Levy which costs in the region of £100m.

By comparison, costs paid under the bid/offer system in May/June (to my knowledge the only such payments ever made) total around £2m.

So even if you think it's a subsidy, the 'payments for not generating' amount to something like 0.2% of the total amount received by generators.