Energy news in general

QrizB

JKenH said:

We have seen, for instance, how the tax penalties for individuals earning more than £100,000 are in fact leading to highly skilled professional people retiring or reducing their hours to stay under the threshold - this is particularly affecting doctors. Not only is the personal allowance tapered down by £1 for every £2 earned but other benefits such as some child care allowance is lost. 

Various solutions to the weird features of UK income tax have been suggested; here's a fairly well thought through example.

https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/10/17/reform-income-tax-end-the-scandal-of-high-marginal-rates/

Property taxes could also be reformed.

https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/10/18/how-to-reform-property-tax/

My point being, there are lots of idiosyncrasies to UK tax laws and fixing them is independent of any decision to raise or lower the overall tax take.

Scot_39

Whether taxing solar would save anything on bills would depend on 

a) whether you believed it would say cut the amount exported - e.g. people might store rather than pay the taxes

b) whether you think suppliers margins are higher or lower - a balance of spot wholesale + network delivery costs paid to networks to deliver to our doors - vs that paid to domestic exporters.

It certainly might put a damper on people investing in new solar - possibly no bad thing given commercial solar are now receiving curtailment payments.   

But apart from peak demand slots - I suspect many domestic solar exporters are getting less than other renewables wholesale - like say the upto £120 OS price for OS wind in AR1 for quick delivery (£180 now - 18p/kWh) - and the c£59 that new fixed OS wind got in AR6 (*) - 2012 rates - so if it was online - c£90/MWh at 2025 rates - or 9p/kWh.

That 9p in the 8-9p range google AI gave as an average of SEG rates for last year - but said Octopus dynamic / peak rates far higher now - do they really pay upto 40p/kWh ?.

But then remember we have to add things like the electric share of the as of Oct cap total network cost of £396 - up £24 / c6% - and how that would feed into unit and SC etc etc. to those wholesale rates.

Edit and come to think of it - it solar and wind getting genuine balance based curtailment - I suppose you would have to add the cost of that to the cost of domestic export - as one offsets the other. It's really not a simply time invariant cost - and its changing all the time - weather / demand / generation mix etc..

 

QrizB

Ok nuclear fans, here's your chance to prove that it doesn't have to be wildly over budget and delayed:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgzevzwxwro

From the limited info in the article I'm guessing the 12 reactors are XE-100 80MW SMRs:

https://x-energy.com/reactors/xe-100

In which case, all 12 of them together will provide roughly 1/3rd of the outfit Hinckley Point C.

The UK nuclear industry has always been held back by not standardising on a small number of reactor designs, and (from that report) we're planning to continue that quirk.

£40bn could, instead, have bought another EPR from EDF - who at least know how to build reactors.

MattMattMattUK

QrizB said:

Ok nuclear fans, here's your chance to prove that it doesn't have to be wildly over budget and delayed:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgzevzwxwro

Impossible for anyone here to prove or disprove.

QrizB said:

From the limited info in the article I'm guessing the 12 reactors are XE-100 80MW SMRs:

https://x-energy.com/reactors/xe-100

In which case, all 12 of them together will provide roughly 1/3rd of the outfit Hinckley Point C.

They are not a great choice as far as SMRs go, the Rolls Royce SMR would be a far better deal, made in the UK, cheaper per GW. Current estimates for the RR SMR (UK SMR) is a cost of around £3.3 billion per GW vs £10 billion per GW for the EPR reactors used at Sizewell C. We should look a the actual cost of the reactor vs the cost of commercial finance, in the cases of the reactors being built in the UK at the moment the cost of commercial finance (either the loans themselves, or the price guarantees put in place which amount to the same thing) are more than the cost of the reactor itself, in most cases they are 60-75% of the cost. 

QrizB said:

The UK nuclear industry has always been held back by not standardising on a small number of reactor designs, and (from that report) we're planning to continue that quirk.

To get the most efficient cost we would need to follow something similar to the French model, built many of them, keep building them and have the state finance them rather than with private finance. I agree we started off with a variety of novel designs and never built at scale, we never mass produced parts, we never learnt from mistakes, we never iterated designs because we always built new designs. As an example the EPR2 is a far better reactor than then EPR, France is now starting to build those, but we are still going with the older design, even for sites that have yet to break ground. 

QrizB said:

£40bn could, instead, have bought another EPR from EDF - who at least know how to build reactors.

It could have, though EDF, every EPR they have built has been well behind schedule and significantly over budget. It also means the profit from those reactors goes abroad, to the French state, so again, we would be better building our own. Rolls Royce could help with that, we have lots of fuel stored in various sites so we would not need to buy it and we currently have all the required skills and industry to build reactors domestically, it just needs pulling together. 

The reactors being announced as part of the Trump visit are really a political statement rather than anything to do with a coherent energy policy, they are about trying to shore up the trans-Atlantic relationship, not give the UK energy security. 

debitcardmayhem

And in the meantime, keep buying gas from elsewhere….and kill off UK jobs in the Oil and Gas sector.

debitcardmayhem

Oh RR take on the news https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press-releases/2025/15-09-2025-rr-welcomes-action-from-uk-and-us-governments-to-usher-in-new-golden-age-of-nuclear-energy.aspx

debitcardmayhem

@MattMattMattUK makes you wonder why Centrica is not doing a JV with a british co. like Rolls Royce 
Edit and don’t get me started on EDF …..

JKenH

Scot_39 said:

Whether taxing solar would save anything on bills would depend on 

a) whether you believed it would say cut the amount exported - e.g. people might store rather than pay the taxes

b) whether you think suppliers margins are higher or lower - a balance of spot wholesale + network delivery costs paid to networks to deliver to our doors - vs that paid to domestic exporters.

It certainly might put a damper on people investing in new solar - possibly no bad thing given commercial solar are now receiving curtailment payments.   

But apart from peak demand slots - I suspect many domestic solar exporters are getting less than other renewables wholesale - like say the upto £120 OS price for OS wind in AR1 for quick delivery (£180 now - 18p/kWh) - and the c£59 that new fixed OS wind got in AR6 (*) - 2012 rates - so if it was online - c£90/MWh at 2025 rates - or 9p/kWh.

That 9p in the 8-9p range google AI gave as an average of SEG rates for last year - but said Octopus dynamic / peak rates far higher now - do they really pay upto 40p/kWh ?.

But then remember we have to add things like the electric share of the as of Oct cap total network cost of £396 - up £24 / c6% - and how that would feed into unit and SC etc etc. to those wholesale rates.

Edit and come to think of it - it solar and wind getting genuine balance based curtailment - I suppose you would have to add the cost of that to the cost of domestic export - as one offsets the other. It's really not a simply time invariant cost - and its changing all the time - weather / demand / generation mix etc..

 

FiT payments are separate from export payments and are paid irrespective of how much is exported - it is a payment for generation and those who got in early get paid over 70p/kWh.

For example, a household that had a solar panel system installed between April 2010 and April 2011 will receive 74.37p for each kWh generated between April 2025 and March 2026.

https://www.sunsave.energy/solar-panels-advice/exporting-to-the-grid/feed-in-tariff

Some of those eligible for FiT also may be on deemed export payments based on 50% of the amount generated. Because I export over 80% of my generation I opted out of deemed export and am paid on actual export. I currently receive 15p/kWh exported. Those on Intelligent Octopus Flux can earn around 30p/kWh at peak times. 

So someone who installed their panels in 2011and is on IOF can potentially earn a total from FiT and export of over £1/kWh. 

silverwhistle

debitcardmayhem said:

And in the meantime, keep buying gas from elsewhere….and kill off UK jobs in the Oil and Gas sector.

We need that skilled labour to help build offshore wind. Besides, it's high cost oil and gas as the 'easy' stuff (and the North Sea has never been easy) has already been exploited. It's a declining field.

As for nuclear, they still haven't solved the waste problem and that's after ~60 years.

Scot_39

QrizB said:

Ok nuclear fans, here's your chance to prove that it doesn't have to be wildly over budget and delayed:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgzevzwxwro

From the limited info in the article I'm guessing the 12 reactors are XE-100 80MW SMRs:

https://x-energy.com/reactors/xe-100

In which case, all 12 of them together will provide roughly 1/3rd of the outfit Hinckley Point C.

The UK nuclear industry has always been held back by not standardising on a small number of reactor designs, and (from that report) we're planning to continue that quirk.

£40bn could, instead, have bought another EPR from EDF - who at least know how to build reactors.

To be fair I am not sure the 10 years of delays on Flamenville reactor 3 - the leed plant for the Areva designed EPRs at Hinkley and Sizewell - suggest any real degree of competence. 

They only just scraped in on the 10 years - by achieving grid connection / final proper grid supply delivery in Dec 2024 - originally planned for 2012.

How much was Areva design, how much was external to their scope, how much rework due to problems with the quality of the steel producers they used, and no doubt multiple other issues than never really leaked out - all made press headlines in trade and some even in general media - plus of course a bit of covid thrown in for good measure - is anyone external to the projects guess - but 10 years plus is hardly a ringing endorsement of the biggest nuclear operator in Europe's capabilities.