300% increase in bill not 54% with SSE

Uxb1

jcontest said:

Just throwing that out there as I get the impression your not keen on the merits of Solar/Wind.

The fundamental problem with them is that they are variable depending on the weather. So relying on them means that we need to change from having power when we want it to having power when the weather obliges.

In particular as I and many many others have pointed out the critical point is in Jan/Feb when we have the usual anticyclone high pressure weather system sitting over the UK for a week+ which results in fog and nil wind while it is cold outside So UK based Solar and wind generation will be next zero just at a time when everyone's heating will be on full blast.
So you need as backup at the point of max demand exactly the same amount of generation capacity as you had before you had any solar/wind: either available domestically or imported power from elsewhere.
When someone proudly tells us that we generated XX% renewables last year they don't tell you about the week when we had all the nuclear and gas generators in existence going full blast when wind and solar was 2%.

As regard domestic solar
Spain was going to charge domestic suppliers who generate into the grid a "network access fee" - abandoned I think, California is going ahead with such a scheme and here in the UK OFGEM is consulting about doing the same. Those people gaining handsomely from the solar FIT scheme payment will go apesh*t if it happens!

Tidal/wave  power has the best opportunity for constant power however the seawater environment they operate in is very hostile and the one large scale tidal barrage in France ended up an environmental disaster for the lagoon area behind the dam