Energy news in general

QrizB

I don't think Class War is a particularly helpful approach to this.

The rent-a-roof companies (A Shade Greener and the ilk) took advantage of the FITs to give free solar panels to homes that couldn't afford them. And there is a lot of social housing around me where the HA installed PV on the roofs, using the FITs to fund the investment. Without the FIT scheme those households wouldn't have benefitted.

Moving some numbers around on a government spreadsheet so that today's households can have low-cost loans for solar, batteries and heat pumps should involve little public cost and could bring significant social benefits. If it can put 10kWh of storage into a million homes, that's not just a million households with lower electricity bills; it's 10GWh of aggregate battery capacity that will be used to help balance the grid and reduce some of those million-pound payments that keep getting discussed in this thread.

molerat

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9m26kl5y7epo

"We remain committed to both the Loughton project and the UK and we are exploring alternative power sources for the site,

The data centre was due to receive its power supply at the end of the year.

But as first reported by the Telegraph on Sunday, external, Nscale has been told this will not happen until the 2030s.

Scot_39

Fitting panels - and if paid presumably on a purchased house - was your choice.

I dont ever remember bill payers being given the choice to have what is now 0.714p / kWh electric added to their bills to pay for the FIT profits many are now banking at our expense.

Over the years that adds up - especially for those having to pay over the odds for major levies like ro and more minor fit/nRAB to power their electric heating.

JKenH

The report into the alleged cover up by NESO has been released and a copy appears at the bottom of this post. Spoiler - there was no cover up. A number of issues were, though, raised which are highlighted in this Telegraph newspaper report - gift link attached 

Grid operators warn net zero making it harder to keep the lights on

Review into whistleblower claims finds no cover-up of system failures, but warns of ‘disconnect’ between bosses and staff. 

The review referred to multiple witnesses who claimed Neso bosses did not understand “the reality of the pressures faced by those responsible for keeping the lights on”.


Whistleblowers had claimed that grid bosses were “risking blackouts to protect Neso’s reputation”. 


Eversheds investigators wrote: “There are high levels of stress and concern within the Electricity National Control Centre regarding the current state of the energy industry and the longer-term ability to maintain system balance, given the challenges of the net zero transition and increased reliance on renewables, which are less flexible than conventional generation, as well as current energy market structures.”

The report added: “One witness described an ‘implicit understanding and expectation from the leadership to hear what they want to hear’ and stated that they felt a degree of pressure to convey a positive message, describing the expectation that people make sure ‘everything’s fine’.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/852ad48b77e921a9

Here is a full copy of the Eversheds Sutherland report so you can draw your own conclusions.

https://www.neso.energy/document/388821/download   

stripling

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82173706#Comment_82173706

This is utter nonsense. Nonsense gift-linked 🤦🏻‍♀️😂

The Telegraph is owned by Axel Springer - a far-right, anti-decarbonisation, German organisation headed by a billionaire friend of Peter Thiel. You will never get balanced or fair reporting on energy in the Telegraph. Instead you get Kathryn Porter and her pals at the fossil-fuel funded Global Warming Policy Foundation - part of the US Koch billionaire funders and lobbyists, Google them they're famous. Kathryn knows enough to spin things while deliberately avoiding any facts that contradict her anti-decarbonisation mission. They want Big Fossil and nothing but Big Fossil (oh and no rules and regs for rich people).

The grid needed serious work and expansion even if solar and wind turbines had never been invented. So 'Net Zero' is irrelevant it was privatisation and lack of investment that caused the grid problems.

Subsidies are part of the energy and infrastructure deal - check out the eye-watering subsidies nuclear receives for starters and who do you think paid for the grid in the first place?

Meanwhile, don't worry about EV subsidies because they started the market rolling. Now we can finally buy a second hand EV for a couple of grand and it will be much cheaper to run and maintain than my VW Polo. We need energy independence. Or did y'all miss the fisticuffs in Hormuz ?

Other countries have a far greater roll-out of renewables than the UK and indeed, since the US/Israel invasion of Iran many, including France, have just announced a speed up. France intends to ban new gas heating and has increased funding for heat pumps, EVs and for the low-waged, social EV leasing.

Other countries with a far higher share of renewables than the UK have much cheaper electricity btw. The problem of our expensive energy is not 'renewables' but we've discussed that endlessly in this thread .

System balance is achieved in various ways but there's too much bull talked about this by people who hope you don't understand so they can sell their stories. They tried it with the Spanish blackout (which was not caused by renewables) and they'll keep trying it.

Whether it's pumped hydro, interconnectors or the inclusion of BESS storage, including now huge models that no longer use Lithium, it is now even easier. National Grid has some extremely innovative oscillation monitoring kit that their engineers pioneered and has now been turned into a separate British company that supplies grids elsewhere in the world. It's not for nothing that China invested in and raced ahead with Green tech now we're waking up to what we should've been doing years ago.

I've just come back from the Nordics where I saw renewables on a scale that would make the Telegraph self-combust. Literally cities running on heat pumps, district heating and EVs - rolling out trucks, farming and mining equipment all powered by electricity. And building the biggest green steel processing plant in the world - it's huge. Oh and perfect 4G phone signals even in the remote Arctic Circle. 😁

NESO is run by serious engineering experts - not pen pushers. I have been in conferences with national energy system operators from across Europe. They all work together and share their knowledge and experiences.

You can moan about our privatised, marketised, hedge-fund manipulated energy systems, (I certainly do) but don't even try this anti-decarbonisation nonsense because it is nothing but fossil fuel funded lobbying and not even remotely in good faith. It has zero value. Least of all for money-saving or planet-saving.

We are not even going to meet our Climate Change objectives of 1.5° limits we are heading for overshoot. This is not a dress rehearsal and the longer we put off decarbonisation the very much more it will cost each of us in the future. Don't be dinosaurs.

Oh and to be clear, I'm referring to the Telegraph reporting and anti-decarbonisation comments.

stripling

Here's the French announcement which I posted in the Heat Pump section - google translate is your friend.

stripling

@JKenH

Here is a full copy of the Eversheds Sutherland report so you can draw your own conclusions.

Thanks for this - shall read it in the morning and try not to choke on my coffee. 😁

stripling

And finally, (I'm on a roll tonight 😂) if we accept that decarbonisation is vital (am past the debating stage) how do we make it more equitable?

I said on the HP section without the BUS grant (and a loan to top up the difference) I would not be able to own a heat pump. Now I have one (without batteries or solar) it is cheaper to run than my previous gas. In Sweden they are literally everywhere, they are the 'norm' ( yes they had grants too).

Balcony solar is one small help for renters and people on low or insecure incomes as is funded insulation, but what else? I'm going to be visiting community energy projects in other European countries that can supply the community AND trade and/or share the energy produced - and schemes that power entire towns. Is municipal energy production a way forward?

What is the way forward?

Scot_39

"The grid needed serious work and expansion even if solar and wind turbines had never been invented. So 'Net Zero' is irrelevant…"

Literally 1000s of engineers and scientists across the world have been telling us what would be required for decades - and for far far too long ignored - as renewables introduced at any scale.

And those now trying to fix their nations grids before renewables destabilises their grids - in limit - to regular repeated collapse.

The grid system doesnt care whether you think net zero is good or bad, whether the climate science predictions are real or not.

It only cares about the engineering dynamics of generation, transmission and loads attached to it - and how to cope with variations in each.

Even if renewables generated 100% reliably - they would still introduce regulation problems.

NGESO for instance didnt spend over £350m on their initial 5 year plan for inertial stabilisation on a whim - they did so as it was desperately needed.

The fact that renewables cannot be relied upon to do so and there output regularly varies at now massive scale over short periods of time makes balancing generation to load even harder.

As the installed renewable capacity ramps up the problem only gets worse.

Making the grid operators job even harder. Having to source that power from elsewhere (or shut it down) often as this month, often as of June - in emergency purchases.

And why does that matter - because at the scale renewables are now disturbing the generation mix - the balances have to be maintained and regulated back into range within 10s of seconds in some cases - not 10s minutes - not hours.

So when a grid engineer talks about being ignored - and emergency interventions / purchases - just remember Spain/Portugal incident - and the approx 90 seconds it took their grid to collapse.