MSE News: We'll freeze energy prices, Ed Miliband tells Labour conference

Nilrem

davidgmmafan wrote: »

If worldwide demand is high it doesnt really matter what the lil old uk does now does it?

I am not convinced renewables are part of the solution since you need backup capacity which is less efficient because it isnt in use all the time. .

To be fair to green energy, you need backup capacity for all forms of electrical generating.

Having said that, Nuclear is the almost ideal baseline generating system in terms of cost/up time/reliability.
It's the reason Nuclear is one of the main baseline providers, as it basically has to be running all the time (takes too long to spin up/down to be useful for short term demands).

However at the moment it only makes up something like 20-30% of our baseline capacity with the rest being made up from coal/oil/gas systems (all of which work best in "long term modes"), but there are gas generators that can be brought online very quickly (IIRC minutes) if needed for short to mid term increases in demand, unfortunately they're not very efficient as they trade off the fast spin up for a decrease in efficiency (IIRC normal gas generators are multiple turbine units which require a bit of time to heat up*, whilst the fast ones tend to be single turbines which lose a lot of potentially useful energy as waste heat).

If we had more nuclear our dependence on gas/coal/oil could be reduced very significantly.


*A little like old steam engines were original low pressure units, then by the end of the steam engine you had units that could have a bunch of pressure vessels each doing some work thus wasting very little of the usable steam (we're basically using the knowledge from the steam era to make the best use of the heat provided by almost all our major generators now, as they work in basically the same way - turning heat into steam and then the steam into mechanical movement).

samizdat

Seems as though the BBC has been briefed about the political strategy behind this announcement:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24271960

davidgmmafan

Ok so they all need backup, but I thought certain renewable (in particular wind) are by their nature going to be more intermittent in their output.

I agree on nuclear (didn't expect myself to say that when I was younger) sadly things aren't looking too good. We sold our expertise and it is now a one horse race.

As I have indicated already I don't think we can blame EDF for having the government over a barrel. Indeed they have a duty to their shareholders to strike the best deal they can.

cepheus

The graph below, from an OFGEM report, shows how from 2005 energy companies shifted the profits from the Retail to the Wholesale end of their businesses, by putting up the wholesale price they make them pay to themselves. This allows them to claim their profit margins are puny when selling to their customers.

The Parliamentary Committee on Energy & Climate Change reported in July 2013 that while energy companies could claim a measly 1.5% profit margin on supplying domestic electricity, this was covering up a more than 20% profit margin taken by the wholesale generating end of these same companies.

MillicentBystander

Been saying it on here for a long time; the energy companies just can't lose as they are also wholesalers/excavators so when it looks like their profits are down on the retail side their profits on the wholesale side will be up and vice versa. It's morphed into a complete shambolic mess of an industry and that's the fault of successive Govts. of whatever hue not having the balls to regulate it properly. These customers that are getting fleeced were once all the Govt's customers who were effectively sold down the river so Thatcher could fund the huge unemployment benefits bill her policies required to succeed. It is in my opinion up there with one of the worst political decisions in our history.

Cardew

Those representing consumers(WHICH & Consumer focus) in their evidence. complain about a lack of transparency.

The problem is that these are international companies, and world market prices largely determine prices. This is an extract from the report you quote:

44. Table 4 shows the reported turnover for the six largest energy companies. whether profits are 'excessive' is a matter of opinion. we accept that energy companies need to be profitable and profits will increase if the investment in infrastructure that the UK needs comes forward. Nevertheless, there remains a perception that profits are excessive.

In this chapter we focus on how transparency can be increased in order to facilitate a better understanding of energy company profits.


45. Calculating energy company profits is, however, complicated. Despite very large turnover, and in some cases large pre-tax profits, the big six made significantly different levels of profit and loss in different parts of their business (see table 4). Furthermore, understanding how much profit an energy company was making requires an understanding of company structure (including
whether they are based offshore), how they operate in the wholesale market and whether it is easy to trade in the wholesale markets (i.e. are they sufficiently "liquid", and how they use their trading arm - if they have one).

Richie-from-the-Boro

SuiDreams wrote: »

In my opinion (maybe someone with time on there hands could research and check), but it "feels" like the highest jumps in energy prices have only been since we have started having these harsher winters. probably due to increased demand due to the colder weather. If this is true, what will happen with energy prices particularly gas, if winters returne to being milder and demand drops? Will we see a drop in prices or a slow down in the price increases?

Its more about job creation and pumping taxpayers money into the economy. The price of carbon fuel is decided not by the megalomaniac Putin but by the demand for the fuel by India & China, the rest of the world and its governments can do very little to influence this. Choice of carbon or non-carbon generation is one of the few levers governments hold, this and previous governments chose neither, they used they loaded the taxpayers energy bills to provide employment and investment.

- windy mills power already employs more than a quarter of a million people
- windy mills power is expected to create over half a million jobs in the renewable energy sector by 2020
- the creation of jobs in the renewable energy and the knock on new manufacturing bring new direct and indirect employment

The Danes are the world leaders per head of population in installed windy mills power. They also have, by far the most expensive electricity in Europe. Germany has the largest European installation of windy mills, it's the number two most costly country for electricity prices. Spain is close on Germany's heels for installed windy mills capacity, with Italy and Spain a poor third on total installed wind capacity.

The facts are that French Nuclear power [80% of French Electricity generation is nuclear] provides by far, the cheapest electricity in Europe. France has less than one tenth of the installed number of turbines per head of population compared to Denmark the world wind leader, and only a quarter of the turbines of Germany and Spain.

The French in fact have a surplus supply and rock solid 'energy security', if I was asked how France could improve price supply to its nation I'd recommend the immediate cessation of wind installs and in fact the immediate deconstruction of its uselessly expensive wind farms. They would as a Geordie would say 'be on a winner ' because they don't need it, its a cost .. ..not a benefit to the nation.

Clearly then those with most windy mills pay the highest price in general, but the cost & capacity level is not linear, when wind [now the more expensive wet wind] gets to an high installed capacity % the price subsidy by consumers takes off exponentially.

GOV UK won't reign in the 20% generating profits, continue to inflate our bills with their tree-hugging sandal-wearing policy of more and more windy mills. If the more turbines per head of population, the higher your electricity bills are is true .... and it is .... then isn't it the case that itself and of itself one of the few levers that GOV UK has, that of windy mills investment is the main driver of inflated electricity price in this country ?