Energy news in general

matt_drummer

Chrysalis said:

They are reporting an industry problem  These things need exposing to remind the government and others we are still in a energy crisis, we have serious issues right now.  The article made no claims about profit that I can see.

The headline says that two power station owners are to get £12m for three hours electricity.

What does this mean, it's a lot, or not enough? How much is three hours electricity, it's not a measurement I am familiar with?

The headline is designed to make it sound like two gas power station owners will make a fortune for just three hours work and that we are all being ripped off.

Perhaps the article would have been fairer if it did mention the profit and how that is arrived at.

The headline obviously worked as you said things like this need exposing. All they have exposed is that two power stations got paid to generate electricity at short notice.

QrizB

Auti said:

QrizB said:

Troytempest said:

Having a heat pump would be physically impossible for some dwellings

Pretty much any dwelling with an external wall can be heated by a heat pump. That's essentially all of them

Looking at regulations re siting heat pump that rules out the side of terrace house (back garden) and conservation rules stop use of front of house and back wall of house as would have to be at first floor level and visible (visible at ground floor too) from the road.

That's a planning permission problem, not a technology one. Could be changed by a government official with the stroke of a pen. All those properties could be fitted with heat pumps.

Auti said:

. Let alone insulation is not up to requirements.

You can heat a garden shed with a heat pump. If a property can be heated by gas, oil or coal, it can be heated by a heat pump. Insulation is a red herring.

Auti said:

There are a lot of terraced houses in my area.

All of which could be heated by heat pumps.

Auti

I agree that planning is out of my hands and relies on others to give consent - right hand not listening to left hand demands for net zero - but not in my control.

Looking at insulation  - yes in a way red herring as a heat pump comes in many sizes - but it then impacts efficiency and running costs with the associated extra consumption of electricity.

Siting of bigger heat pumps make the ‘one metre away’ from boundary walls/houses walls (think U shaped rear courtyard) even more problematic - along with noise associated/ bedrooms/neighbour impacts etc.

Yes you can heat a shed by a heat pump, or any structure, but to be efficient and follow rules at the moment it is very problematic. Unfortunately the heat pump unit itself cannot be viewed in isolation as getting it into the property/efficiency also have to be accounted for.

victor2

Assuming you overcome those hurdles, any existing central heating system may not have big enough radiators and associated pipework to operate efficiently. It can become a very expensive project.

QrizB

victor2 said:

Assuming you overcome those hurdles, any existing central heating system may not have big enough radiators and associated pipework to operate efficiently. It can become a very expensive project.

It doesn't need to be a wet system; a dry air-to-air heat pump is relatively cheap to install and potentially returns a higher COP than an air-to-water one.

They don't generally qualify for the £7500 Government grant however, so you'll rarely find installers recommending them.

Scot_39

The efficiency is a stipulation on the grant to control cost benefit expectations - essentially to try and get close to the domestic cash cost of gas and of course minimise extra grid loading and the emissions from fossil generation inherent in the mix of power from it.

Even at a cop of 3 replacing median tdcv 11500 kWh adds nearly 4000kWh electric to the current 2700kWh demand.

Which as this weeks peak demand prices of over £1000/MWh have shown - our over reliance on unreliable wind power has left us in a widely preficted - but yet ignored by years/decades - of policy decisions - a major pickle.

Yesterday wind was generating just 3.4GW 8% of demand when hit £1362 / MWh average at back of 4pm - and dropped around 10% hours later -  and that aversge of course included paying those gas generator £5000/MWh and £2000+ to spin up As ESO forecast a 1.7GW shortfall in what turned out to be UKs 44.8GW demand from current planned duty cycles. Standby capacity  we have to pay for as well as all the new renewables and connevtion costs. As highlighted in the Guardian link above.  


Wind power has generated even less in recent past in deep winter  - like this time last year it dropped to half yesterdays minimum half hourly ave of 3.0 GW  - one freezing cold winters afternoon.  To about 5% cf yesterdays c10% lows of the now c30GW plus installed theoretical capacity.

So last January we spun up all 4 four 500MW coal units at Ratcliffe - to generate upto 2GW - similar to yesterdays predicted shortfall - now closed.  Just part of the UKs secure generation capacity that has in recent years been permanently decommissioned - but not replaced by reliable generation alternatives.

The peaks on renewables save our emissions - the inconvenient for policy makers truth - is the troughs threaten our energy security - if not our own home lights - the heavy industrial users production capacity

As to ashp install - planning not the only potential obstacle.

I know 2 ex colleagues who have been refused despite 1 being on ground floor with private garden space, one ground floor in retirement complex with shared garden space - permission by their private freeholders.  

It may be less of an issue in many English towns - cramped back to backs and terraces probably took more of the housing needs etc - but in major Scottish cities tenement flats are well over the near 30% national average for tenements/ low rise flats - for tge majority population in  inner city households.
 
I know Scottish Greens were talking up community boiler type schemes or communal e.g. per close gshp type arrangements as alternatives - but costly ones in their £33bn "Heat in Buildings" carbon free target by 2045

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-58831166

That £33bn of course was just for Scotlands c5.5m population - less than 10% of UKs 67-69m depending on source on a quick google -  UK wide population 

stripling

@Scot_39
Wind power has generated even less in recent past in deep winter  - like this time last year it dropped to half yesterdays minimum half hourly ave of 3.0 GW  - one freezing cold winters afternoon.  To about 5% cf yesterdays c10% lows of the now c30GW plus installed theoretical capacity.
So last January we spun up all 4 four 500MW coal units at Ratcliffe - to generate upto 2GW - similar to yesterdays predicted shortfall - now closed.  Just part of the UKs secure generation capacity that has in recent years been permanently decommissioned - but not replaced by reliable generation alternatives.
The peaks on renewables save our emissions - the inconvenient for policy makers truth - is the troughs threaten our energy security - if not our own home lights - the heavy industrial users production capacity.

Actually, the cost of the two gas power stations fired up for 3 hours was relatively minor if you zoom out and look at the entire system. There were a lot of scaremongering ill-informed headlines but the gas stations were bought in as back-up not as a desperate quick fix or the lights were going out. NESO could've drawn on the Battery Energy Storage Systems (Bess) for what are called 'peakers' for at least some of this back up but lo and behold our privatised energy system means that the grid batteries made even more $$s by selling their power on markets elsewhere....  Inter-connectors, that sell energy between countries, go out of the UK as well as in. Yep, it's a dog eat dog, high speed, constantly flashing, trans-national energy market and the British end of it is the most broken of all of it. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Because we have 'marginal pricing' where electricity prices are linked to gas - we are suffering from really dirty (as opposed to the previous more 'usual') games of (mostly) American hedge funds on the Dutch TTF markets (the wholesale market). These folks moved in on the game after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The roller coaster high prices then get spun as a problem of 'dunkelflautes' or 'geopolitical stress' or wait for it, drum roll ....Ukraine transits, or the lack of them, all of which is spin, leading to one analyst I talk to coining the expression 'You've been Bloomberged'...
(I won't tell you what he said about the repeated use of the Ukraine transit story because this is a polite forum ..). 😁

What does this mean? It means the consumer (particularly in Britain) suffers from extreme energy prices largely caused by a combination of fossil fuel companies naughty PR games and Hedge funds talking up prices to boost their coffers.  Donald Tusk even wrote a paper recently arguing for European market regulation because of it. 

Renewables are not much of a problem - broken energy markets, lack of regulation and certain 'vested interests' are the real problems.

QrizB

One of the Green & Ethical board regulars shared this link over there. It's to an article about yesterday's electricity supply squeeze.
https://watt-logic.com/2025/01/09/blackouts-near-miss-in-tighest-day-in-gb-electricity-market-since-2011/
I can't vouch for its acuracy, but am sharing for interest value.

stripling

QrizB said:

One of the Green & Ethical board regulars shared this link over there. It's to an article about yesterday's electricity supply squeeze.
https://watt-logic.com/2025/01/09/blackouts-near-miss-in-tighest-day-in-gb-electricity-market-since-2011/
I can't vouch for its acuracy, but am sharing for interest value.

The National Energy System Operator (Neso) on Wednesday issued its third capacity market notice (CMN) of autumn and winter 2024/25. [Note: THIRD] 
 "Seemingly aware of the potential misunderstanding of what this meant, it further stated:
“This is a routine tool that we use most winters, and means we ask generators to make any additional generation capacity they may have available.

“The EMN does not mean electricity supply is at risk.”  [NESO] 

"There’s only a public panic if journalists choose to make it a panic,” 

"A system that ensured so much capacity that there was never a CMN would be very expensive indeed."

BREXIT: "This is in part due to the post-Brexit arrangements for interconnectors – a return to pre-booked capacity on inter-connectors mean that they can no longer function as efficiently as when we were in the single EU energy market.” 🤦🏻‍♀️

Clickbait - noun - informal : an internet story, title, image, etc. that is intended to attract attention and encourage people to click on a link:

* 'Most of these stories are obviously just clickbait'.  [Cambridge Dictionary] 😏

Scot_39

stripling said:

@Scot_39
Wind power has generated even less in recent past in deep winter  - like this time last year it dropped to half yesterdays minimum half hourly ave of 3.0 GW  - one freezing cold winters afternoon.  To about 5% cf yesterdays c10% lows of the now c30GW plus installed theoretical capacity.
So last January we spun up all 4 four 500MW coal units at Ratcliffe - to generate upto 2GW - similar to yesterdays predicted shortfall - now closed.  Just part of the UKs secure generation capacity that has in recent years been permanently decommissioned - but not replaced by reliable generation alternatives.
The peaks on renewables save our emissions - the inconvenient for policy makers truth - is the troughs threaten our energy security - if not our own home lights - the heavy industrial users production capacity.

Actually, the cost of the two gas power stations fired up for 3 hours was relatively minor if you zoom out and look at the entire system. There were a lot of scaremongering ill-informed headlines but the gas stations were bought in as back-up not as a desperate quick fix or the lights were going out. NESO could've drawn on the Battery Energy Storage Systems (Bess) for what are called 'peakers' for at least some of this back up but lo and behold our privatised energy system means that the grid batteries made even more $$s by selling their power on markets elsewhere....  Inter-connectors, that sell energy between countries, go out of the UK as well as in. Yep, it's a dog eat dog, high speed, constantly flashing, trans-national energy market and the British end of it is the most broken of all of it. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Because we have 'marginal pricing' where electricity prices are linked to gas - we are suffering from really dirty (as opposed to the previous more 'usual') games of (mostly) American hedge funds on the Dutch TTF markets (the wholesale market). These folks moved in on the game after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The roller coaster high prices then get spun as a problem of 'dunkelflautes' or 'geopolitical stress' or wait for it, drum roll ....Ukraine transits, or the lack of them, all of which is spin, leading to one analyst I talk to coining the expression 'You've been Bloomberged'...
(I won't tell you what he said about the repeated use of the Ukraine transit story because this is a polite forum ..). 😁

What does this mean? It means the consumer (particularly in Britain) suffers from extreme energy prices largely caused by a combination of fossil fuel companies naughty PR games and Hedge funds talking up prices to boost their coffers.  Donald Tusk even wrote a paper recently arguing for European market regulation because of it. 

Renewables are not much of a problem - broken energy markets, lack of regulation and certain 'vested interests' are the real problems.

WE may not have lost the lights - we may have conventional capacity still - but we were still reliant on GW on interconnects yesterday during evening peak.

But yet still selling c0.8GW to Ireland.

That's not energy security.

If a cable or conversion station fails - remember the price spikes when the fire occurred on the French 2GW link station in UK - what sort of energy security is that.

The interconnects go both ways - so if EU prices are higher - UK generated power gets sold to them - so we have to match it to.

You can blame speculators - but no one would be able to speculate - if the conditions weren't right for them to do so.

And in the UK - sorry IMO our exposure is largely due to our reliance on unreliable wind to move to net zero.

It's not the only solution and now its such a large share - it's variability - not just in UK - but through interconnects - large swathes of N Europe - also now impact us.

Supposedly 30.3GW installed theoretical capacity last figure I saw - which we could get just c5% out of in last years example - or just 10% yesterday - when needed power at peak winter demand - around 45GW yeasterday only 3GW wind power.

Imagine if your gas boiler only gave you 2-3 kW of power to heat your home and HW yesterday rather than say its normal 20-30kW rated power.  And you had to go and run 18 kW of electric plug in's instead to make up the shortfall.

Thats the reality of winds lows.

Replacing GWs of conventional coal and nuclear - shut often long after design lifetimes - without building any of our own core generation replacements - for like 3-4 decades- has gotten UK into this mess.

In 2000s alone we have shut down 6.6GW of nuclear and GW more of coal - the last 2GW of which that we did have - and we had need of last Jan - at Ratcliff - now gone too.

More than enough to have avoided any need for interconnects - and so exposure to wider EU market speculation - or their energy policy decisions / mistakes.