100GW offshore wind power by 2030 possible?

GreatApe

Moving to an electricity system which charges a high line rental and a wholesale per unit price is essential to decarb more deeply more rapidly. 100GW additional offshore wind power by 2030 could be possible with this method else it will be impossible simply by the fact PEAK winter demand is only about 50GW so we can't integrate 100GW of offshore wind (plus onshore wind solar existing hydropower and existing nuclear)

Something like a £30/pm line rental + live wholesale per unit pricing
Wholesale prices would swing quite a lot but will average around 4-5p a unit
This low price of 4-5p for electricity Is cheap enough so people would just install heat pumps or resistance heaters when their boiler breaks down and some 2 million per year are replaced

BEVs can probably charge most night for 1-3p a unit
Heating via heat pumps would be very cheap and by resistance heaters affordable

Line rental price can be based on SAP ratings. Improve the energy efficiency of the property like install LED lights or a heat pump or insulation or double glazing and get cheaper line rental. Maybe something like. EPC rated A=£10/month B=£20/month...... G=£70/month

The line rentals would have to be such that the transmission and distribution and energy companies function without going bankrupt. Right now I calculate the average home would pay circa £30 line rental and about 4.5p (varying a lot) per unit on average. Sometimes less sometimes more.

All enabled by changing how electricity is sold to more closely match the high infrastructure low marginal cost of transmitting and distributing electricity

With this change we could potentially increase offshore wind deployment from 30GW by 2030 to 100GW by 2030-35 this additional 70GW of offshore wind is a huge 300TWh more electricity and 350TWh less gas and oil (there are oil fired boilers too that would be displaced)

:beer:

GreatApe

Such a tariff would also end curtailment which is happening tonight as I type this
Tonight is a windy night & Perhaps as much as 10GWh of marginal green will be curtailed tonight
Equivalent to £500,000 in the toilet just because there is no demand for it

If such a tariff existed my smart resistance Heater would be using electricity right now rather than my boiler using gas

If we had 30GW more wind in the grid, right now, all those 30GW would be curtailed, there just isn't the demand for it. Which is why it's so critical to increase demand in the 2020s and cheap per unit electricity tariffs at wholesale cost would increase demand

If this is planned and implemented around 2022 it would be perfect since the grid will be mostly non fossil by then. Ramp up offshore wind install to ~7GW per year from 2022-2035
Electricity demand from heating will increase by about 20TWh/Yr meet by the 25-30TWh additional output from offshore wind

Offshore wind power also outputs about 50% more energy in the winter than the summer which is good since Winter demand will be higher than summer demand

GreatApe

People who didn't want the risk of wholesale price movements can opt for a fixed tariff which would probably be just a little more expensive. I suspect this fixed price would be very close to the CFD for offshore wind power so about 4.7p a unit (and maybe lower in the future)

But most people would opt just for wholesale prices since the fixed price is just the wholesale price plus insurance. Plus they can set their appliances and hearing and BEVs to only use electricity when below a given price

Future price predications based on weather could allow your BEV to charge tomorrow when the price is predicted to be 0.5p rather than today when it's 5p
Both are super affordable but the 0.5p night would be almost free!

GreatApe

This would also allow a huge amount of demand response from heating
For instance I might set my thermostat to be

16 centigrade above 7p electricity
17 centigrade at 6p
18 centigrade at 5p
19 centigrade at 4p
20 centigrade at 3p
21 centigrade at 2p
22 centigrade at 1p
upto 26 centigrade at or below 0.1p (and negative prices) this would not happen often but a free bonus when it does

Everyone can set what they are happy to pay but I think something like the above might be what most people go for.

When the wind doesn't blow the demand for electricity would be much lower due to the above settings
When the wind blows hard the demand for heating would go up
This upto 10 centigrade swing in temp would act as 'free' short term storage

Remember you can always opt for the fixed 4.7p price (or whatever) if you are chicken but on average the floating price will be cheaper than the fixed price even if some times it is a lot higher

JKenH

GreatApe wrote: »

Moving to an electricity system which charges a high line rental and a wholesale per unit price is essential to decarb more deeply more rapidly. 100GW additional offshore wind power by 2030 could be possible with this method else it will be impossible simply by the fact PEAK winter demand is only about 50GW so we can't integrate 100GW of offshore wind (plus onshore wind solar existing hydropower and existing nuclear)

Something like a £30/pm line rental + live wholesale per unit pricing
Wholesale prices would swing quite a lot but will average around 4-5p a unit
This low price of 4-5p for electricity Is cheap enough so people would just install heat pumps or resistance heaters when their boiler breaks down and some 2 million per year are replaced

BEVs can probably charge most night for 1-3p a unit
Heating via heat pumps would be very cheap and by resistance heaters affordable

Line rental price can be based on SAP ratings. Improve the energy efficiency of the property like install LED lights or a heat pump or insulation or double glazing and get cheaper line rental. Maybe something like. EPC rated A=£10/month B=£20/month...... G=£70/month

The line rentals would have to be such that the transmission and distribution and energy companies function without going bankrupt. Right now I calculate the average home would pay circa £30 line rental and about 4.5p (varying a lot) per unit on average. Sometimes less sometimes more.

All enabled by changing how electricity is sold to more closely match the high infrastructure low marginal cost of transmitting and distributing electricity

With this change we could potentially increase offshore wind deployment from 30GW by 2030 to 100GW by 2030-35 this additional 70GW of offshore wind is a huge 300TWh more electricity and 350TWh less gas and oil (there are oil fired boilers too that would be displaced)

:beer:

Interesting idea. It would work for those of us with higher consumption but there are always winners and losers.

I note the suggestion to link line rental to EPCs and would just make an observation about my experience of the EPC assessment process. When mine was done for my house as part of getting solar panels installed the assessor advised me he had to base the assessment on building regulation standards at the time the house was built and not on the actual construction. When I built our house in 1990 I went for extra wide cavities to enable more insulation and I installed underfloor insulation which was not a requirement at the time. As the assessor could not see either of these he reverted to the building regs standard of the time. I demonstrated that my walls were thicker than normal but to no avail. (I wasn’t prepared to lift floor boards). He did though take into account the double glazing and the extra insulation in the loft. So be warned; unless the assessor can see your improvements or you have documentation to demonstrate later improvements it won’t help your EPC.

GreatApe

JKenH wrote: »

Interesting idea. It would work for those of us with higher consumption but there are always winners and losers.

I note the suggestion to link line rental to EPCs and would just make an observation about my experience of the EPC assessment process. When mine was done for my house as part of getting solar panels installed the assessor advised me he had to base the assessment on building regulation standards at the time the house was built and not on the actual construction. When I built our house in 1990 I went for extra wide cavities to enable more insulation and I installed underfloor insulation which was not a requirement at the time. As the assessor could not see either of these he reverted to the building regs standard of the time. I demonstrated that my walls were thicker than normal but to no avail. (I wasn’t prepared to lift floor boards). He did though take into account the double glazing and the extra insulation in the loft. So be warned; unless the assessor can see your improvements or you have documentation to demonstrate later improvements it won’t help your EPC.

They could just test by experimentation rather than assumption
Use an electrical heater to keep the house at 20 centigrade for say 10hours (ignore the first two hours)

Measure the outside temp during this time and measure the units of electricity used to keep the house at 20 centigrade. Calculate how much energy it took per degree heat differential
This would show the actual thermal efficiency of the house rather than the assumption

And this would almost certainly be a win for the vast vast majority
It will also allow a very rapid deployment of wind power
As I keep noting on other threads, we are already curtailing wind some of the time and this is with just 20GW or so of existing wind turbines. We plan to install another 20GW during the 2020s so unless demand goes up a lot more wind will be curtailed more and more

BEVs will add some demand but they are unlikely to be deployed in large enough numbers
Even if we had 6 million BEVs on the road that is only adding about 12TWh or 4% to national demand

We need to electrify heating much more rapidly and the way to do this is make marginal electricity consumption cheap. Fixed line rental for homes + wholesale prices would do this. Likewise commercial and retail buildings can be offered the same type of deal. Line rental based on EPC X SQM. This offers an incentive to gain a higher EPC and it allows the public to move away from gas boilers in an affordable way.

mmmmikey

This is quite a lengthy series of posts and to be honest I'm not really clear what you're arguing.


I can see that you're advocating increasing standing charges and decreasing cost per kWh but how does this lead to decarbonisation? Wouldn't it just reduce the cost of nudging the thermostat up a degree or so and therefore encourage people to heat their homes more, using more electricity and potentially increasing CO emissions? I can see that if we had a higher proportion of wind energy in the mix that might cancel out the increased emissions effect, but I'm not at all clear why increasing standing charges would stimulate increased investment in wind energy?

GreatApe

mmmmikey wrote: »

This is quite a lengthy series of posts and to be honest I'm not really clear what you're arguing.


I can see that you're advocating increasing standing charges and decreasing cost per kWh but how does this lead to decarbonisation? Wouldn't it just reduce the cost of nudging the thermostat up a degree or so and therefore encourage people to heat their homes more, using more electricity and potentially increasing CO emissions? I can see that if we had a higher proportion of wind energy in the mix that might cancel out the increased emissions effect, but I'm not at all clear why increasing standing charges would stimulate increased investment in wind energy?

Electricity would be much cheaper than today 4.5p rather than 15p a unit but still marginally more expensive than natural gas at 3.5p so there is no incentive to heat your home more than today. There is an incentive to go from 220gram/KWh heat of your gas boiler to 100 grams (soon) / KWh grid resistance heaters or even 30 grams/KWh heat if using s heat pump. So it's a big decrease in fossil fuel useage

Plus we want people to have warm homes it will save lives and keep people healthier which the green lobby pretend is an important aim

This fixed line rental cheap unit price allows people to convert to resistance heaters and heat pumps in an affordable way. 4.5p for electricity rather than 15p electricity

Converting millions of homes to electricity heating is necessary to be able to deploy a lot more wind power. The UK grid simply can not handle 100GW offshore wind power at current demand but can handle 100GW if demand goes up a lot because people switch their gas boilers to electric boilers or resistance Electric heaters and tanks. They would do this if 4.5p electricity was available they won't do this when gas is 3.5p and electricity is 15p

JKenH

Keep up Mikey. More demand equals more investment in wind farms like Mart says.:)

GreatApe

JKenH wrote: »

Keep up Mikey. More demand equals more investment in wind farms like Mart says.:)

Already there is a problem in having to curtail wind power some of the time
We plan to double wind capacity by 2030 so more and more of the time we will have to curtail it

The problem is there is no price signal
When wind is being thrown away I am still charged 15p a unit for electricity

With a fixed line rental plus wholesale prices I can adapt my heating to make use of this curtailed wind power. When it's windy Like last night and the price went to 2.8p and also windy the night before when the price was just 0.2p for some of the time, I can have my resistance heaters kick in to heat the house and the boiler can take a break

Even today this would save many millions in curtailed marginal green
As we deploy more and more wind power this will become necessary
Or we will have to throw away more and more and more curtailed wind power

Plus there is maximum we can install before any additional wind farm is mostly curtailed
The UK thinks it can integrate 30GW offshore wind power (plus the existing 12GW onshore wind power) by 2030 without too much curtailment. But we couldn't increase that to 100GW offshore wind power because far far too much would have to be curtailed

With this fixed line rental cheap unit wholesale price electricity demand will go up and more wind can be out into the grid without curtailment. Also the majority of wind output is during the cokdr months. With wind Energy production 50% higher in the winter months (Q4 & Q1) than in the summer months (Q2&Q3)

Martyn1981

mmmmikey wrote: »

This is quite a lengthy series of posts and to be honest I'm not really clear what you're arguing.


I can see that you're advocating increasing standing charges and decreasing cost per kWh but how does this lead to decarbonisation? Wouldn't it just reduce the cost of nudging the thermostat up a degree or so and therefore encourage people to heat their homes more, using more electricity and potentially increasing CO emissions? I can see that if we had a higher proportion of wind energy in the mix that might cancel out the increased emissions effect, but I'm not at all clear why increasing standing charges would stimulate increased investment in wind energy?

In short, the low unit rate, high standing charge argument was probably the single biggest factor in most people giving up completely on the 'cells' account. This in turn led to the new account.

I'd suggest that most people understand and possibly support the need for energy 'rationing' through prices. As you say, a low unit rate would lead to overuse and waste.

We might all wish that our bills (for anything) were lower, but we can't always get what we want (as Jagger might say), and in the case of energy we have to accept the simple fact that due to the side effects, we simply can't have/use as much as we'd like to.

Personally, and this is not a particularly popular pricing scheme, but I fully support the 'petrol forecourt' pricing model for energy. Put the standing charge in with the price. That way each unit costs more, making you think a bit more about reducing waste, energy efficiency, and the economics of self generation.

The total cost/revenue doesn't change at all, but low users would pay a bit less, high users a bit more, and average users the same.

Eg (using made up/simplified numbers for ease of maths):

Leccy cost 15p/kWh plus a standing charge pa of £105:

Low user, 2,000kWhs @ 15p = £300 + £105 = £405
Average user 3,500 @ 15p = £525 + £105 = £630
High user 5,000 @ 15p = £750 + £105 = £855

Divide the standing charge by average consumption £105/3,500 = 3p/kWh, so NSC tariff becomes 18p/kWh:

Low user, 2,000kWhs @ 18p = £360
Average user 3,500 @ 18p = £630
High user 5,000 @ 18p = £900