The Alternative Green Energy Thread

70sbudgie

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking, but if you look at the text above the years (in the table), it says "Further Flex and Renewables". Having read the NESO report Clean Power 2030 and the DESNZ response Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, I recognised the name of one of NESO's scenarios (which they call pathways) for achieving clean power in 2030. 

We have developed two primary pathways that meet our clean power description. These offer 

challenging, but realistic and cost-effective, routes based on our assessment of the project 

pipelines and stakeholder feedback.

(From p.15 Foundations for Clean Power)

 (I am not going to claim that I have read all of the CP30 information, or in detail. There's just too much of it)

Where did the table above come from? I was looking for the equivalent for the New Dispatch pathway, but the table above isn't Figure 1 for any of the documents I've looked at. 

This is also an excerpt of what the NESO CP30 report says about flexibility (p18)

Electricity demand and demand flexibility: Demand could rise by around 11% by

2030, but energy efficiency and demand flexibility can reduce costs for consumers

and lower investment needs.

JKenH

I know I keep harping on about the number of solar farms in our area but I recently came across this map showing the extent of solar farms in the Trent Valley. Newark in the bottom left corner of the map will be completely surrounded by solar farms. 9% of the Newark parliamentary constituency is scheduled to be covered by solar farms connected to existing HV lines which were previously powered by three coal fired stations at West Burton, Cottam and High Marnham. Strategically the location is perfect but this is all good quality agricultural land in the Trent Valley.

70sbudgie

You may find that some of those solar farms disappear in the imminent grid connections reform. The DNO in that area has more solar generators in the queue than is needed, so some of them (maybe a third?) will fall away as they won't be allowed to connect in the next 10 years. 

I am also interested why you are so unhappy about solar farms. The landowners will only lease land to solar farm generators if it makes them more money than farming the land. I believe that there are a lot of farmers who use that rent to subsidise their farming activities, because a solar farm generates income that a fallow field can't.

Solar panels are not comparable development to urbanisation. The panels are installed on legs, so no large swathes of concrete or tarmac. They don't produce pollution. They are increasingly spaced to encourage wildlife and / or continued farming. And they are technically temporary as they can be removed after 25 years and the land returned to it's previous use.

If you want to use electricity, it has to come from somewhere. And I personally would much prefer a solar farm to a pollution spewing gas or coal fired power station. I would suggest that solar is also preferable to wind turbines, which can produce noise and are visible from further away. (Though, I think the modern windmills are quite pretty!)

JKenH

70sbudgie said:

You may find that some of those solar farms disappear in the imminent grid connections reform. The DNO in that area has more solar generators in the queue than is needed, so some of them (maybe a third?) will fall away as they won't be allowed to connect in the next 10 years. 

I am also interested why you are so unhappy about solar farms. The landowners will only lease land to solar farm generators if it makes them more money than farming the land. I believe that there are a lot of farmers who use that rent to subsidise their farming activities, because a solar farm generates income that a fallow field can't.

Solar panels are not comparable development to urbanisation. The panels are installed on legs, so no large swathes of concrete or tarmac. They don't produce pollution. They are increasingly spaced to encourage wildlife and / or continued farming. And they are technically temporary as they can be removed after 25 years and the land returned to it's previous use.

If you want to use electricity, it has to come from somewhere. And I personally would much prefer a solar farm to a pollution spewing gas or coal fired power station. I would suggest that solar is also preferable to wind turbines, which can produce noise and are visible from further away. (Though, I think the modern windmills are quite pretty!)

I don’t have any ideological objection to solar farms. It is the visual impact of these huge solar farms - as I have said before some of these are the size of Heathrow airport - and the agglomeration in such localised areas near me coupled with the impact on house prices/ability to sell. Like 95% of the population I don’t mind them if they are somewhere I wouldn’t see them. Some of the solar farms Ireferred to are being built on the Trent flood plain and no amount of landscaping will hide them when viewed from the escarpment above. Can you imagine the reflections? 

Some people might call me a NIMBY* but on that basis you would likely find most of are NIMBYs deep down. We just don’t realise it until there is a development near us we don’t want. Ginetta have a test track just one mile from my home which is open to the public for track days. No problem for me as I love hearing (from my garden on a Sunday morning) the sound of a motorcycle engined track car accelerating up through the gears, but I can appreciate not every one else feels the same. I am quite happy for you to have a solar farm or a wind turbine outside your door if that is what floats your boat (and apparently some people do love such things) but not all your neighbours would welcome it. Most people live in urban areas and know that renewables infrastructure won’t impact on them or their house values so are unsympathetic to those who are affected. 

I appreciate your comment about connection queues, and I hope you are right, but aren’t solar developments going to the front of the queue as they can be up and running in 2-3 years? I don’t know the capacity of the grid locally but 3 large coal stations have been decommissioned and the substations are still in place. That is part of the logic of building them here. 

Do modern gas stations spew out much pollution? CO2 yes, but air pollution to affect local properties, not much, if any. I thought they were cleaner than cars which are (relative to last century) virtually pollution free. Yes, I would much prefer a solar farm outside my back door to a giant wind turbine. 

*My definition of a NIMBY is someone who wants to pull up the drawbridge after they have benefitted from a similar development or want to deny others the the lifestyle they have. For instance, moving to a new house in a development on the edge of a pretty village then objecting when someone wants to develop the next field. Not someone who objects when the whole landscape around their village is to be changed by a commercial development the size of an airport which will have a significant negative impact on house values. (The idea that £2,500 over 10 years is any form of compensation is laughable. If the government would agree to buy affected properties and pay people the predevelopment value that might be a different matter.) 

JKenH

Ofgem Launches Probe into Whether Moray East Was Charging ‘Excessive’ Grid Balancing Prices

The UK’s energy regulator Ofgem has opened an investigation into whether Moray Offshore Windfarm (East) Ltd was charging excessive prices for reducing power output on the request of the National Energy System Operator (NESO) as part of the grid-balancing mechanism.

According to an update published by Ofgem on 9 April, the bid prices of Moray Offshore Windfarm (East) since it began operating in the BM  “appear expensive relative to the expected marginal cost of reducing generation for this generator”. 

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2025/04/15/ofgem-launches-probe-into-whether-moray-east-was-charging-excessive-grid-balancing-prices/

There is also comment in the Telegraph about this story.

John Constable, of REF, said overcharging for constraint payments was common across the wind industry and Ofgem should expand its investigation.

He said: “We estimate that, in the two years to 30 September 2023, Moray East was paid approximately £100m for constraining output.

“While Ofgem is to be commended for starting an investigation into Moray East offshore wind farm, it is disturbing that it has taken nearly two years for an investigation into this single wind farm to commence.

“Our data suggests that almost all of the 123 wind farms which have received constraint payments have been overcharging the consumer and that Ofgem needs to develop a more serious strategy for reclaiming these payments and returning them to the consumer very much more promptly.”

Ocean Winds was contacted for comment. Renewable UK, the wind industry trade body, declined to comment.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/17/wind-farm-investigated-charging-households-100m/

JKenH

I did think about posting this in the “Solar in the news” thread but it is negative so it’s here instead. 

I recently watched a Gary Does Solar video explaining why Octopus Flux export rates had fallen and in that video Gary reported that on April 6 we hit a new solar generation record of 12.68 GW. 

https://youtu.be/GdhoLAV67x8?si=qA_xz8QMVo7MvWLh

Good news of course but is it? The grid is struggling to cope with this level of solar in the middle of the day and day ahead prices are regularly going negative mid afternoon. But for how long can this be sustained without it impacting on our existing export rates. Flux is now below 10p daytime rate. I left Flux and moved to Agile Import and fixed (actually variable) Outgoing tariffs, the latter paying a flat 15p/kWh but I don’t see this being maintained throughout the summer. 

In parts of Australia customers are already being charged for exporting between 10am and 3 pm above a threshold currently set at 6.83 kWh/day averaged over a month. https://www.aer.gov.au/system/files/2023-12/Ausgrid%20-%20Revised%20proposal%20-%20Att.%208.14%20-%20Small%20customer%20export%20tariff%20fact%20sheet%20-%2030%20Nov%202023%20-%20Public.pdf

If a similar policy is adopted here that could be quite punitive, particularly for those with south facing solar systems. Over the last 28 days I have averaged export of just under 18kWh per day. 

The more solar farms come on stream the more likely this is. Solar farms on a CfD will get paid for switching off so it is logical that householders will be incentivised to (or rather penalised if they don’t) turn off their solar first. If you are on a fixed import tariff and do switch off your solar then you will potentially have to be importing and even if you are on Agile it won’t necessarily be free. (So far since joining Agile at the beginning of the month I have only seen negative import prices on one day.) In a front loaded export month like we are currently enjoying you may have reached your free export limit before you are even half way through and so  switch off your panels between 10am and 3pm. You then end up being penalised for whatever you do import towards the end of the month even when import rates are quite high. 

Those celebrating the roll out of ever more solar farms may want to think again. 

paul991

Why is it not better to charge batteries  , heat waters , heat houses, and store energy in things like a Zeb /tepeo heater. In the long term cheap energy can only be good for the UK and not to mention charging Evs.I am sure in the long term there will be many new ways to store energy. May it wont help householders with export prices.

QrizB

JKenH said:

Good news of course but is it? The grid is struggling to cope with this level of solar in the middle of the day and day ahead prices are regularly going negative mid afternoon.

Cheap electricity in the middle of the day will be guzzled up by smart EV chargers. My Ohme has done this a couple of times this year; I've plugged in and have expected it to charge overnight, but instead Ohme and Octopus have chosen slots in the middle of the afternoon.

JKenH said:

But for how long can this be sustained without it impacting on our existing export rates. Flux is now below 10p daytime rate. I left Flux and moved to Agile Import and fixed (actually variable) Outgoing tariffs, the latter paying a flat 15p/kWh but I don’t see this being maintained throughout the summer.

I was expecting Fixed Outgoing to drop from 15p last year, and can't quite fathom why Octopus are still paying that much. They're overpaying significantly compared to commercial generation, as far as I can tell.

EON are even paying 16.5p!

It might cause problems for householders who have installed solar panels in the hope of a quick payback (potentially as few as 5 years) but the energy companies, Ofgem and UK Gov aren't responsible for your ROI calculations.

paul991 said:

Why is it not better to charge batteries  , heat waters , heat houses, and store energy in things like a Zeb /tepeo heater.

Self-consumption is the obvious answer to low or negative export prices. If you're not getting paid to export, you might as well use it to substitute for gas.

JKenH

paul991 said:

Why is it not better to charge batteries  , heat waters , heat houses, and store energy in things like a Zeb /tepeo heater. In the long term cheap energy can only be good for the UK and not to mention charging Evs.I am sure in the long term there will be many new ways to store energy. May it wont help householders with export prices.

At the moment, if you have solar and an export tariff like Outgoing Octopus, it is difficult to take advantage of cheap Agile import prices. If you are, say, exporting 3kW in the afternoon when Agile prices are negative, then putting the immersion heater on will absorb what you are exporting first and cost you 15p/kWh. You need to exceed 3kW before you start to take advantage of the low agile rates. In practice it maybe cheaper to import electricity at any below 15/kWh overnight if that is available. This tends to be the pattern I am seeing at the moment. Yesterday, from 12 noon to 1pm, my Agile import rate was around 5p and as the sun wasn’t shining on me (although it was elsewhere) I was able to take advantage of it. Had the sun been shining it would have been cheaper to wait until 2-30 to 4am this morning when the import rate was around 14p. It’s not a problem householders without solar face.

In the long term cheap energy will be good for us all but because of the constraint payments the headline cost of solar in the auction rounds is not what we will see on our bills. Constraint payments are conveniently ignored. 

Edit: what we really need is a reliable generating source from 6-30 to 8-30 am and 4 - 7pm and most solar installations are oriented south to optimise total generation because the auction rounds make no price distinction for time of day. Why not pay solar farms a graduated rate for generation. It would encourage both East/West orientation and integrated battery storage?

Edit 2: I have just been reading the post on the G&EEN thread about the fast tracking of solar grid connections. I can’t imagine what that will do to the economics of domestic solar generation and our bills. Even allowing for a doubling of demand we are going to be curtailing more than half the solar generated on sunny days. The BESS and longer term storage connections should be prioritised not more solar farms. Does anyone at the DESNZ have a brain? One can understand why NESO has been taken in house - their reports have to be approved by DESNZ so all we will get will be propaganda.

We will soon be heading towards the Australian model for domestic export which works as follows.




Yes, that’s right, a typical domestic consumer with solar panels will earn 2 cents a month from their export. This may well be on its way to your home soon given the over expansion of solar generation in the pipeline. In 2022 Australians were being paid 15c/kWh now it’s down to around 2c/kWh provided you don’t go over the threshold. That change has happened in just 3 years so why couldn’t it here?

Much as my heart tells me I want to expand my domestic PV installation the figures no longer stack up. Yes, if you don’t have solar already you will save on import (increasingly so as bills rise) but extending a system based on current export rates that will soon disappear is a fool’s errand. 

JKenH

QrizB said:

It might cause problems for householders who have installed solar panels in the hope of a quick payback (potentially as few as 5 years) but the energy companies, Ofgem and UK Gov aren't responsible for your ROI calculations.

But annoyingly they do seem keen to look after the ROI for commercial solar farm operators through the CfD scheme. Households are no longer deemed to need subsidies to install new solar PV on their roofs but commercial operators,despite the economies of scale are.