Energy news in general

Scot_39

mmmmikey said:

Scot_39 said:

Could you be any more insulting ?

Open your mind and put yourself in say the place of a gas plant operator in the UK today - one being asked to invest in their upkeep or even replacement.

Of course we have had multiple generation sources and even overcapicity - unpredictable demand, summer vs winter one obvious reason - but even conventional plant has outages.

But gas plants are now ramping in and out daily and by 10 GW plus even in low demand days as solar and renewables take over when can.

It's a fundamental difference in generation behaviour - and the utilisation level for many conventional plant - which of course impacts their costs.

Others will put into standby rather than generate a share of low demand and then you get the spike to spin up the media made a large fuss about in Jan  when wind again failed to produce typical output - only c10% of theoretical capacity.


Take yesterday evening for instance.

Gas ramped up to 18GW output by c8pm from sub 6 GW at 3pm to offset loss of solar - near 10GW at 3pm.

And wind output c2.2 GW from 30GW theoretical  - an even lower 1.41GW at 8am this morning - sub 5% of theoretical installed 30GW hit last Aug..

Yet at other times wind can just about produce that 18GW on its own like say in Dec 24 when weekly ave over 19GW - and suspect some of that throttled  by grid capacity - even if winter weekly  ave more like 12GW  and summer more like 7GW

Look at say last Dec / Jan - but at a lower level even in summer and you will see the issue.

https://grid.iamkate.com/

Scroll down and look at generation over last 24 hours

Select last year instead and then look at generation by source  wind green gas orange solar yellow click or hover over / on graph for figures  - and youll see them switch in and out vying for same demand.

That's two systems physically present and available to act but only when can despite the demand in terms of renewables and when needed to meet the same overall typical demand.
 
They aren't ramping in out according to ability to derate and match demand as of old - yesterday evening gas reached its peak despite demand having reduced by 3GW - gas is now having to regularly give way to solar and wind on windier days at typical demand.

Gas plant is therefore used on ave to lower share of capacity which of course has a direct impact on operating costs.  And so pricing to us.  If not per kWh wholesale in other balancing / standby event costs.

We aren't actually using significantly less peak non renewables generation.

We're just using less on average.

But need to maintain the plants for the peaks to replace the renewable troughs.

So two generation systems - one weather dependent - the other not - supplying a share of the same total demand.

One when it can, conventional stepping in when renewables cannot. 

Sounds pretty much like two in parallel to me. For a large chunk of uk demand - obviously when excluding core like currently non load following nuclear from total daily demand.

None of this changes the fact your bold assertion that you cannot run two systems in parallel is patently not true. Even if you make the distinction between weather and non weather dependent energy sources that doesn't change the fact that already, today, now, this minute we're actually doing what you say cannot be done. So I maintain my view that what you say is patently and obviously not true.

Not meant as an insult - simply me boldly asserting that I think your bold assertion is nonsense. It doesn't matter how many statistics you point to or how much you write about this. It's ridiculous in my view to say that something that is already being done can't be done.

p.s. I guess your opening question was rhetorical but in case not the answer is a resounding yes. I see no need to demonstrate that though because it wasn't my intention to insult you : smile

And you again ignore an important part o f my arguement -so  to go to the end of the line - and see " - for the same costs as one"

debitcardmayhem

BBC on the case late again https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjlkrwmpveo

debitcardmayhem

I wonder how many of the 430000 Energy UK include the ones we see on this board that aren’t RTS but wrongly thought to be so by the suppliers. 

Scot_39

debitcardmayhem said:

BBC on the case late again https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjlkrwmpveo

Does anyone know if that picture in the articles is actually an RTS meter.

Looks more like a spinning dial analogue single rate meter to me.

MattMattMattUK

Scot_39 said:

debitcardmayhem said:

BBC on the case late again https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjlkrwmpveo

Does anyone know if that picture in the articles is actually an RTS meter.

Looks more like a spinning dial analogue single rate meter to me.

You are correct, just a very old analogue meter which looks like it was out of certification in 2007.

debitcardmayhem

Scot_39 said:

debitcardmayhem said:

BBC on the case late again https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjlkrwmpveo

Does anyone know if that picture in the articles is actually an RTS meter.

Looks more like a spinning dial analogue single rate meter to me.

MattMattMattUK said:

Scot_39 said:

debitcardmayhem said:

BBC on the case late again https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjlkrwmpveo

Does anyone know if that picture in the articles is actually an RTS meter.

Looks more like a spinning dial analogue single rate meter to me.

You are correct, just a very old analogue meter which looks like it was out of certification in 2007.

Looks like it was pinned to a board for effect, perhaps for a nail varnish ad for a working mum.😂

Ildhund

debitcardmayhem said:

BBC on the case ...

I've seen this claim before: "... a distrust of smart meters. The BBC has previously found that smart meters can sometimes give inaccurate readings ..." but never any evidence for it. We've seen a couple of examples of inaccurate gas meters, but I've not heard of a single SMETS electricity meter giving inaccurate readings. If the metrology function is faulty, the readings would I think always be inaccurate. Where do they get this assertion from, I wonder?   

Chrysalis

michaels said:

The_Green_Hornet said:

Nationalise gas power plants to boost energy security, thinktank urges UK ministers

Common Wealth says private gas-fired stations can charge exorbitant fees when renewable energy is in short supply

“Privately owned gas-fired power plants exploit a unique market power position in the ‘balancing mechanism’, holding the grid to ransom and demanding eye-watering sums of money to supply energy at short notice,” it said..

Nationalise gas power plants to boost energy security, thinktank urges UK ministers | Energy industry | The Guardian

Surely the answer is to fix the market not nationalise - the market position means these plants may be very valuable when begin used as currently but would therefore have a much lower value once nationalised and no longer used to exploit market power - so a poor investment.  Instead if there was a specific contract for balancing services, open to battery and pumped hydro as well then the gas plants would no longer be able to collect these economic rents.

They would also have the choice of just refusing to play along.  Open market usually is a failure for essential services, its been proven in recent years.
But yeah they refuse, the powers that be wont want power cuts, so then we back to square one.

Chrysalis

Ildhund said:

debitcardmayhem said:

BBC on the case ...

I've seen this claim before: "... a distrust of smart meters. The BBC has previously found that smart meters can sometimes give inaccurate readings ..." but never any evidence for it. We've seen a couple of examples of inaccurate gas meters, but I've not heard of a single SMETS electricity meter giving inaccurate readings. If the metrology function is faulty, the readings would I think always be inaccurate. Where do they get this assertion from, I wonder?   

Old legacy meters have given inaccurate readings on occasion (past expiry date, faulty batches), that isnt a smart specific issue, so I agree with your comment.

Gerry1

debitcardmayhem said:

Scot_39 said:

debitcardmayhem said:

BBC on the case late again https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjlkrwmpveo

Does anyone know if that picture in the articles is actually an RTS meter.

Looks more like a spinning dial analogue single rate meter to me.

MattMattMattUK said:

Scot_39 said:

debitcardmayhem said:

BBC on the case late again https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjlkrwmpveo

Does anyone know if that picture in the articles is actually an RTS meter.

Looks more like a spinning dial analogue single rate meter to me.

You are correct, just a very old analogue meter which looks like it was out of certification in 2007.

Looks like it was pinned to a board for effect, perhaps for a nail varnish ad for a working mum.😂

A surprisingly poor article full of errors ('plug sockets' etc) and the predictable scaremongering.  Very disappointed considering it's from You and Yours, they should know better.

It's recently been updated (original saved on Wayback Machine).  It now shows an RTS with a broken seal....