BBC on Oil - are low prices here to stay

Martyn1981

cells wrote: »

You are intentially mixing up my posts. I calculated a value of 5.7p/kwh assuming an imaginary price of £100/ton co2 cost.

I'm not mixing up anything, I'm simply responding to your apparent challenge where you set a price of 5.7p/kWh. But when I engage you, you move the goal posts again ...... accounting tricks perhaps!

cells wrote: »

British Gas website says average non economy 7 customer uses 3200KWh a year

Price comparison website shows for that many units it would cost £405 for the year which = £ 1.11 per day

Which would support your £1/day claims, but doesn't explain your recent use of 15kWh ....

cells wrote: »

Daily winter electricity need for a typical home is about 15kWh

....... when trying to argue against PV. Which as explained would suggest a figure of approx £2/day. So it seems again that you keep moving the goal posts ...... accounting tricks perhaps!


A third example, would be your criticism of PV, whilst supporting wind. I pointed out that PV can fill in for wind when it's weakest (BST months) at the same cost so your differing approach to the two technologies makes no sense .......... accounting tricks.


Fourth example, your defence of this was to point to the following situation:

cells wrote: »

If you install for arguments sake 50GW of PV and 50GW of windpower what happens in summer when the PV is outputting 35GW and the wind power 35GW? How do you handle the 70GW of power when demand is 40GW? What do yoy do with the 35GW? You throw it away

But earlier you had mentioned the practice of undersizing inverters (relative to PV array size) to increase overall economics. I fully accept this as a practice, but it does of course mean some loss/capping during exceptional generation periods. So you both accept capping, and criticise it in different posts. Goal posts!


Fifth example, sticking with the above case. To criticise the mix of PV and wind, you reference 100GWp of installed capacity, an amount that would suggest a date into the 2030's. But when I mention one of the solutions, storage, you criticise current efficiency (2015) levels. Goal posts!

So please don't claim that I'm mixing up your posts, I'm simply reading them (what you want?) absorbing them (what you want?) and referring back to them in context (what you don't want?).

If your arguments were 'safe and solid' then there would be no hypocrisy for me to point out.

Mart.

cells

Generali wrote: »

If I disconnect from the grid then I don't have to pay for the grid. That is surely self-evident.

I get your idea that solar only replaces spot generation. Solar plus storage and removing myselfsfrom any backup from national electricity generation removes any requirement for me to pay towards the grid.

That's what could make the grid untenable in the end: the cost is split between too few people.

If that happens eg if it is economical to go off grid with PV then great we would all benefit but it isn't remotely close. The max benefit you can gain from going off grid is of course £1.11 a day......hardly anything....and of course thats not what you save as the off grid system costs more than zero

As for the grid becoming untenable if a number of homes leave I don't think so.
For a start homes are only about 25% of the grid and even if 100,000 homes go off grid a year that will be offset by new homes offices and industry built and added to the grid

also what you will find is that grids small and big are affordable. Eg the UK grid is 10x the size of the Irish grid yet electricity and the gird in ireland is still very affordable.


in summary the idea of a few grid defections causing an exponential cost increase in the grid is clearly wrong. They way I see it either solar PV is truely cost competitive and everyone defects or the grid stays very affordable.

Also look at Germany with retail prices more than twice the UK and no mass grid defections. Even if every home left the UK grid I don't think prices would double and clearly even at double prices the grid seems to work better than PV at the moment

cells

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I'm not mixing up anything, I'm simply responding to your apparent challenge where you set a price of 5.7p/kWh. But when I engage you, you move the goal posts again ...... accounting tricks perhaps!




Which would support your £1/day claims, but doesn't explain your recent use of 15kWh ....



....... when trying to argue against PV. Which as explained would suggest a figure of approx £2/day. So it seems again that you keep moving the goal posts ...... accounting tricks perhaps!


A third example, would be your criticism of PV, whilst supporting wind. I pointed out that PV can fill in for wind when it's weakest (BST months) at the same cost so your differing approach to the two technologies makes no sense .......... accounting tricks.


Fourth example, your defence of this was to point to the following situation:



But earlier you had mentioned the practice of undersizing inverters (relative to PV array size) to increase overall economics. I fully accept this as a practice, but it does of course mean some loss/capping during exceptional generation periods. So you both accept capping, and criticise it in different posts. Goal posts!


Fifth example, sticking with the above case. To criticise the mix of PV and wind, you reference 100GWp of installed capacity, an amount that would suggest a date into the 2030's. But when I mention one of the solutions, storage, you criticise current efficiency (2015) levels. Goal posts!

So please don't claim that I'm mixing up your posts, I'm simply reading them (what you want?) absorbing them (what you want?) and referring back to them in context (what you don't want?).

If your arguments were 'safe and solid' then there would be no hypocrisy for me to point out.

Mart.

I fell you are trying very hard to split hairs. Oh the fuel price is 2.1 cent noti2.3 cent...so what it changes nothing. Oh a house uses 11kwh a day not 12!....so what it changes nothing

forget everything to now and these are my points

a non controlable output of electricity is worth no more than the fuel saved. A figure which clearly makes PV untenable

A grid currently costs about £1 a day and works well so any off grinders are trying to save a fraction of that

a carbon price is artifical imaginary price that can be made real by government force and the one in existence today the EU carbon price is about €6 euro a ton

The harm of fossil fuel use us vastly overplayed. They have been a great blessing to humanity and helped pull out nations from extreme poverty

Generali

cells wrote: »

The max benefit you can gain from going off grid is of course £1.11 a day......hardly anything.

Are you entirely sure about that number? The entire cost of the UK grid divided by 60 odd million people multiplied by 4 (the size of my family) equals a quid or so a day?

That seems at best highly unlikely.

The National Grid accounts for 2013-4 are here:

http://investors.nationalgrid.com/~/media/Files/N/National-Grid-IR/reports/national-grid-plc-annual-report-and-accounts-2013-14.pdf


Now clearly the National Grid is just a small amount of what I pay for a base load of power as it doesn't include power stations nor does it include most gas delivery, infrastructure to allow me to pay bills, regulators fees and so on. So what would the National Grid cost me if I lived in the UK?

Revenues are £14,809,000,000 p.a.. Divide by 365 (days in a year) and then by 64,100,000 (population) and multiply by 2.3 (average household) size we get cost of the grid per household as ~£1.50.

As a result, your estimate of the cost of the entire grid system is less than the revenues of the National Grid alone.

I think you may want to revisit your numbers.

cells

Generali wrote: »

Are you entirely sure about that number? The entire cost of the UK grid divided by 60 odd million people multiplied by 4 (the size of my family) equals a quid or so a day?

That seems at best highly unlikely.

The National Grid accounts for 2013-4 are here:

http://investors.nationalgrid.com/~/media/Files/N/National-Grid-IR/reports/national-grid-plc-annual-report-and-accounts-2013-14.pdf


Now clearly the National Grid is just a small amount of what I pay for a base load of power as it doesn't include power stations nor does it include most gas delivery, infrastructure to allow me to pay bills, regulators fees and so on. So what would the National Grid cost me if I lived in the UK?

Revenues are £14,809,000,000 p.a.. Divide by 365 (days in a year) and then by 64,100,000 (population) and multiply by 2.3 (average household) size we get cost of the grid per household as ~£1.50.

As a result, your estimate of the cost of the entire grid system is less than the revenues of the National Grid alone.

I think you may want to revisit your numbers.

£405 is what I was quoted this morning for using 3200KWh (typical UK house)

Or £1.11 a day

That is not just the grid but the electricity supply to your home. So it also includes VAT and the fuel for the power stations and the subsidy for wind farms and PV cells and for insulating homes and for upkeep of all of that



PS where you went wrong is that you didn't factor in that homes use ~25% of the electricity generated so only 25% (or a bit more as suppling homes is more cost and grid intensive) of your number is a cost to homes. Overall a competitive electricity bill for a house is just north of £400 or £1.10 a day. You should actually minus the green stuff bolted onto that and the VAT but whatever I'm not in the business of splitting hairs

PS2. if we use your method. About £15B and say 30% is for homes and 27.5m homes that equals 45p a day for the grid so the other 65p must be for fuel upkeep and the green subsidy etc. Sounds about right

cells

I've also beem thinking about the scam that is carbon pricing they are trying tl force upon us.

and it occurred to me, lets say they slap a $100 a ton tax. Well you emmit ~10 tons a year or you will get an invoice for $1000 each year for your emissions

Who is it that you are going to pay this invoice to?

Well supposedly everyone is harmed by these terrorist carbon molecules so is everyone going to get a rebate????

So I get an invoice for $1000 which is my supposedly for the damagr my carbon is doing....but then do I get a rebate for how much from the damage I and everyone else is supposedly receiving? ?

It just sounds like a scam for the paper shufflers to me

Generali

cells wrote: »

I've also beem thinking about the scam that is carbon pricing they are trying tl force upon us.

Why is carbon pricing a scam please?

cells

Generali wrote: »

Why is carbon pricing a scam please?

Because it is an imaginary cost plucked out of someones but hole

From what I can see the proponents want to put a imaginary cost on carbin so as to make 'alternatives' work

But why con ourselves?
Why not say...we don't like coal and gas and oil so we will pay for wind and PV and nuclear to replace them. No need for paper shuffling 'carbon price'


Then you can get to the real debate. In the UK fossils cost us maybe in the region of £30B a year. Lets say for arguments sake the alternative cost is £60B (its much more imo but we will go with this example)

So the additional £30B a year the government (or us effectively) must divert to 'alternatives' should be paid for by cutting the education or NHS budget? Or by rising income tax? No free lunch afterall

Martyn1981

Generali wrote: »

If I disconnect from the grid then I don't have to pay for the grid. That is surely self-evident.

I get your idea that solar only replaces spot generation. Solar plus storage and removing myselfsfrom any backup from national electricity generation removes any requirement for me to pay towards the grid.

That's what could make the grid untenable in the end: the cost is split between too few people.

It's not just the grid, you also have to consider the leccy supply companies, and the leccy generators. Demand side distributed generation is already causing them some concern, though it varies from country to country.

Taking my situation as an example I have halved my import, reducing the supply companies revenue by about 1,500kWh pa. But I've reduced the generators revenue by approx 4,300kWh. [The difference is my export that goes into neighbouring properties, but will still get billed. So the supply companies suffer less than the generators.]

Approx 20% of UK properties are PV suitable, but the bigger threat is from commercial properties, where costs are low, but income potential higher as closer to 100% of generation can be consumed. Possibly 80% of commercial properties are PV suitable, but the main problem is that most commercial properties are leasehold.

Looking wider, there are huge differences. Spain was moving massively towards domestic PV till a couple of years ago. The leccy companies realised that this would cause them a disaster so ....

Warning, you'll need to Google this to check it, as you simply won't believe that this is true.

..... by Royal Decree they got a 'dumping fee' placed on grid-tied PV systems. This meant that instead of being paid for export, you would have to pay a dumping fee of approx €0.06/kWh. The true killer though is that the fee is to be applied to all generation, not just export. This was a disaster for PV, and is being challenged in the EU courts.

As batteries are cheaper in mainland Europe (than the UK) and solar gen larger and more predictable, there was a move to go off-grid, but that was covered too, with a potential multi million € fine for 'stealing sunlight'. You couldn't make it up.

Moving on to the US, the leccy companies have also started to panic, but PV take up is slow there as prices are higher - there subsidy schemes haven't forced down costs the way that FiT schemes have - but even so, many companies have tried to get monthly fees placed on PV properties. The reasoning behind this is that they like to operate a net-metering scheme/subsidy, so exported units knock off imported units. This means that many properties would have zero bills.

The companies complained that PV'ers get to use the grid without paying for it. The counter argument is that PV generation during the daytime has proved valueable and reduced costs. The net affect appears to be positive, so there is currently a kind of stalemate position with some states applying small monthly fees ~$5.

In Australia PV has been a massive success, but also raised concerns for the suppliers. Like Spain, generation can suit off-grid, but the kit (batts and assorted equipment) is expensive in Australia, so only time will tell.

Moving on to the fossil fuel companies, things are really hotting up. There are political campaigns for divestment from them. Google Harvard for some legal battles on this.

But more importantly there is serious concern that the companies are massively over-valued as their share prices reflect there reserves. But since it's generally accepted across the world that we can never burn more than about half of current reserves, there is the threat that their values could drop significantly. This potential 'carbon bubble' is serious enough for the Bank of England to have recently launched an investigation.

Sorry for the long response, but there is one hell of a lot going on at the moment, and it's only going to get busier, especially if the cost of grid-tied battery hybrid systems keep falling - offering perhaps 3-5kWh of useable storage. there are many systems out there already, but the costs are still considerable.

Mart.

cells

Martyn1981 wrote: »

It's not just the grid, you also have to consider the leccy supply companies, and the leccy generators. Demand side distributed generation is already causing them some concern, though it varies from country to country.

Taking my situation as an example I have halved my import, reducing the supply companies revenue by about 1,500kWh pa. But I've reduced the generators revenue by approx 4,300kWh. [The difference is my export that goes into neighbouring properties, but will still get billed. So the supply companies suffer less than the generators.]

Approx 20% of UK properties are PV suitable, but the bigger threat is from commercial properties, where costs are low, but income potential higher as closer to 100% of generation can be consumed. Possibly 80% of commercial properties are PV suitable, but the main problem is that most commercial properties are leasehold.

Looking wider, there are huge differences. Spain was moving massively towards domestic PV till a couple of years ago. The leccy companies realised that this would cause them a disaster so ....

Warning, you'll need to Google this to check it, as you simply won't believe that this is true.

..... by Royal Decree they got a 'dumping fee' placed on grid-tied PV systems. This meant that instead of being paid for export, you would have to pay a dumping fee of approx €0.06/kWh. The true killer though is that the fee is to be applied to all generation, not just export. This was a disaster for PV, and is being challenged in the EU courts.

As batteries are cheaper in mainland Europe (than the UK) and solar gen larger and more predictable, there was a move to go off-grid, but that was covered too, with a potential multi million € fine for 'stealing sunlight'. You couldn't make it up.

Moving on to the US, the leccy companies have also started to panic, but PV take up is slow there as prices are higher - there subsidy schemes haven't forced down costs the way that FiT schemes have - but even so, many companies have tried to get monthly fees placed on PV properties. The reasoning behind this is that they like to operate a net-metering scheme/subsidy, so exported units knock off imported units. This means that many properties would have zero bills.

The companies complained that PV'ers get to use the grid without paying for it. The counter argument is that PV generation during the daytime has proved valueable and reduced costs. The net affect appears to be positive, so there is currently a kind of stalemate position with some states applying small monthly fees ~$5.

In Australia PV has been a massive success, but also raised concerns for the suppliers. Like Spain, generation can suit off-grid, but the kit (batts and assorted equipment) is expensive in Australia, so only time will tell.

Moving on to the fossil fuel companies, things are really hotting up. There are political campaigns for divestment from them. Google Harvard for some legal battles on this.

But more importantly there is serious concern that the companies are massively over-valued as their share prices reflect there reserves. But since it's generally accepted across the world that we can never burn more than about half of current reserves, there is the threat that their values could drop significantly. This potential 'carbon bubble' is serious enough for the Bank of England to have recently launched an investigation.

Sorry for the long response, but there is one hell of a lot going on at the moment, and it's only going to get busier, especially if the cost of grid-tied battery hybrid systems keep falling - offering perhaps 3-5kWh of useable storage. there are many systems out there already, but the costs are still considerable.

Mart.

clearly the most a household can save from PV or magic pixy dust is a FRACTION of the current cost of electricity to a home which is ~£1.10 a day*

£1.10 a day*


*or more like 90p a day with 20p of other non eletricity things bolted onto it like paying you a subsidy for wind mills and PV farms




as for the USA many states have fully regulated utilities they act or try to act in the best interest of all consumers and clearly it isnt in the best interest of all consumers for some people to free-ride the grid and use it as a free battery to buffer their solar output