The Alternative Green Energy Thread

michaels

Perhaps we should be using demand side 'turn up and save' - could be automated with for example hot water tank immersion heaters.

Oh and my favourite bugbear, not all solar output has the same market value despite having the same CfD value - in reality West facing array output might be more valuable than S facing despite producing about 10% less per annum.  How hard would it be to use the CfD process to spread solar output over a longer window?

JKenH

QrizB said:

Mr Hewitt told Energy Live News: “The reason National Grid ESO gave yesterday (Monday 29th May) was that it was an energy action. This means they had too much power and needed to reduce generation and interconnector imports.

I've been wondering about this quote from Mr Hewitt.

Checking Nordpool, I can't get hourly prices for the 29th of May (it's too long ago) but can access the average daily price. It was £76.93 a MWh.

From EnergyStats I see that the lowest Agile price on the Monday 29th of May was 6.31p/kWh. That's only fractionally lower than the day before (7.72p/kWh) and higher than the day before that (when it hit 0p).

This suggests to me that the problem wasn't a wholesale surplus of electricity in the UK (or a surplus of wholesale electricity) but a localised problem in one region where generation exceeded the ability of the grid to move it around to places where it was in more demand. This would be similar to the occasion last summer when NG ESO had to buy electricity from the continent at a huge cost per MWh to make up for a shortfall in part of the southeast.

Agile prices were close to, or below, zero from midnight until 4pm today. It will be interesting to see if NG ESO had to pay France to take it off our hands.

Electric insights are showing a real time price of -£151 at around 2.30/3pm on 29th May. (That’s assuming of course 29th May, BH Monday, was the day in question). https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2023-05-29&&_k=8aqome

Agile prices are I believe based on day ahead prices whereas NG would be dealing with a live situation and real time prices might better reflect the gravity of the situation. Today, prices were negative again but the real time and day ahead prices tracked each other whereas on 29th May there was a significant difference between the prices, i.e. NG weren’t anticipating the oversupply being so large until on the day. The shorter the notice; the more volatile the price.

1961Nick

Isn't this situation something that can be solved in future by using the demand flexibility scheme? A notification sent to customers in the affected regions offering free electricity for a few hours would surely mop up any surplus. 

paul991

loop are doing that at the moment 

JKenH

Mid afternoon today wholesale prices were -£185. What puzzles me is we were importing 6.8GW. Had we bought this level of import and were contractually obliged to take it?

https://www.electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2023-07-17&&_k=p8hgeg

QrizB

JKenH said:

Mid afternoon today wholesale prices were -£185. What puzzles me is we were importing 6.8GW. Had we bought this level of import and were contractually obliged to take it?

https://www.electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2023-07-17&&_k=p8hgeg

I can't check on my phone, but was that the balancing price or the day-ahead one?
The amount of electricity traded at the balancing price is relatively small.

JKenH

QrizB said:

JKenH said:

Mid afternoon today wholesale prices were -£185. What puzzles me is we were importing 6.8GW. Had we bought this level of import and were contractually obliged to take it?

https://www.electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2023-07-17&&_k=p8hgeg

I can't check on my phone, but was that the balancing price or the day-ahead one?
The amount of electricity traded at the balancing price is relatively small.

Only one price is showing.  

QrizB

JKenH said:

QrizB said:

JKenH said:

Mid afternoon today wholesale prices were -£185. What puzzles me is we were importing 6.8GW. Had we bought this level of import and were contractually obliged to take it?

https://www.electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2023-07-17&&_k=p8hgeg

I can't check on my phone, but was that the balancing price or the day-ahead one?
The amount of electricity traded at the balancing price is relatively small.

Only one price is showing.  

On my laptop now

In the left-hand side, in the key, you'll see a green arrow next to "price". Click on that arrow and the site will show two separate sets of price info. The darker green one is the day-ahead price, the lighter green one the balancing ("real-time") price.

The charts for yesterday look like this:

So, the negative pricing for pricing periods 28, 29 and 30 (1330-1400,1400-1430 and 1430-1500) was solely in the balancing price.

If you then visit the Exelon BMRS data site:
https://www2.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main

... you can see how much electricity was traded in the balancing mechanism for those periods.

It was something like 450, 610 and 780MWh for periods 28, 29 and 30 respectively. That's not a huge amount considering the total national demand at that time was around 30GW (~15GWh for each 30-minute period).

JKenH

QrizB said:

JKenH said:

QrizB said:

JKenH said:

Mid afternoon today wholesale prices were -£185. What puzzles me is we were importing 6.8GW. Had we bought this level of import and were contractually obliged to take it?

https://www.electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2023-07-17&&_k=p8hgeg

I can't check on my phone, but was that the balancing price or the day-ahead one?
The amount of electricity traded at the balancing price is relatively small.

Only one price is showing.  

On my laptop now

In the left-hand side, in the key, you'll see a green arrow next to "price". Click on that arrow and the site will show two separate sets of price info. The darker green one is the day-ahead price, the lighter green one the balancing ("real-time") price.

The charts for yesterday look like this:

So, the negative pricing for pricing periods 28, 29 and 30 (1330-1400,1400-1430 and 1430-1500) was solely in the balancing price.

If you then visit the Exelon BMRS data site:
https://www2.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main

... you can see how much electricity was traded in the balancing mechanism for those periods.

It was something like 450, 610 and 780MWh for periods 28, 29 and 30 respectively. That's not a huge amount considering the total national demand at that time was around 30GW (~15GWh for each 30-minute period).

Unfortunately it isn’t appearing like that on my iPad. If I click on the arrows the the price just disappears. It hasn’t always been like that, I can usually see day ahead and real time prices by clicking on “price”. A couple of days ago when I was looking at the 29th May data “Demand” wouldn’t show but both prices did. Today I can see demand but only a single price.

Perhaps you weren’t  aware that I have been using this website for several years and publishing images from it on this forum including both real time and day ahead prices so am quite familiar with its operation. 

As far as the distinction between day ahead and real time prices is concerned, the quantities may not be large but because of the prices the amounts involved are still significant. I haven’t looked back to check but I recall a figure of around £9m being involved. That, though, wasn’t the issue I was seeking an explanation for - it was why we were importing and then paying a premium for our interconnector partners to take their electricity  back. 

Edit: sorry, the £9m figure related to the 29th May incident, not yesterday. Later edit - There is no suggestion that yesterday we were paying our interconnector partners. Sorry that the two incidents have been conflated.

 Edit 2: I just looked back through the photos on my iPad and this is how the page has appeared in the past with both prices showing.

Wasn’t provision made recently for battery operators to provide balancing services? Presumably they could be used to either supply or consume electricity.

JKenH

Exiled_Tyke said:

So what if wind farm costs are not falling? The simple fact is that they do supply cheap electricity. The fact that government has failed to get the economic model and the grid infrastructure sorted should not be blamed on the technology itself. The more wind farms we build then the more pressure there will be on government to get the grid and storage problem sorted.   

Reading this I'm suspicious of the motives of the author. All around the world wind is providing more electricity than it ever has done and we need more of this.  The writer appears to be looking for headlines to create negativity towards a much needed resource, summed up by this quote. "Of course, I am not personally in favour of a race to build more wind. “

As also reported in the G&E News thread today, this is what:

Vattenfall has stopped the development of the Norfolk Boreas offshore wind power project in the UK and will review the way forward for the entire 4.2 GW Norfolk Zone, the Swedish energy company revealed in its interim report.

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/07/20/breaking-vattenfall-stops-developing-major-wind-farm-offshore-uk-will-review-entire-4-2-gw-zone/

Edit: the point was made on the Battery Electric Vehicle news thread that there is a lot of anti RE/EV comment but just sometimes there may be a grain of truth in what industry experts like Kathryn Porter and Gordon Hughes have to say.