funding for mates.
Net zero could push energy bills up by £120 a year
- Thread starter Mrwong
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Yet the conditions over the last week have also meant that more panels in more areas will be performing well, just not at 100% of rated output (apart from a relatively short period where it was raining very heavily and very cloudy).
And anyone who has suggested renewables has tended to comment on the fact that you do need to have storage or other methods to help cover the difference.
I'm guessing the primary reason a coal power station was fired up was because there was no gas turbines available*, or purely financial (cheaper to bring coal online than gas dependent on pricing).
At the same time I'm fairly sure that we've been down quite a bit on the nuclear generation, a google brings up a suggestion we've been as low as something like 3.6gw on nuclear from a peak of over 5, meanwhile solar on average seems to have been performing really well.
A further google suggests that the coal fired station took up something like .2mw, meanwhile at the same time the nuclear output was down around 0.8mw and the solar output was actually UP when on sunday we used no coal and solar was 2.49gw (nuclear was 4.9), and then on monday when we used .24gw of coal solar was 2.65 (nuclear however had fallen to 3.42)
Now I'm no mathematician, or expert in power generation but it would appear that on the same day they bought the coal power station online solar actually increased it's output by something like 60% of what the coal provided, and nuclear actually dropped by about 5 times that.
*Either offline for maintenance, or shut down permanently and not replaced.
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Probably not helped by most of the world shifting production into China !
Either way, China continues to install massive solar arrays. Last year they installed more than the whole of the rest of world combined, on top of what they already had.
They are shifting to renewables faster than anyone else!
They have about 400GW of solar capacity
[For reference, the UK about ~12GW of solar]Chart added for a visual reference
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Yes I'm well aware that people claim 'storage' is the answer to renewable intermittency but the figures just don't stack up. Just because it's possible to store energy in a battery or other device doesn't mean that its practical to do so in systems that have both the instantaneous power delivery and long tern storage characteristics that will be needed for the many occasions when solar and wind won't cut it.
If you look at the hour by hour energy generation stats for that day (try energydashboard.co.uk for example) you can see the bulk of the coal generation was between 17:00 and 21:00 hours....
I.e when it was still very hot after a sunny day but the electricity output from solar was cratering.... again peak renewable supply often doesn't align very well with demand for electricity.
Even though on this occasion wind generation picked up quite a bit (peaking at around 17:00 hrs) it wasn't enough to cover the slack and of course there's no guarantees that sufficient wind generation will be available to cover solar dips even during daylight hours.
Depends what you mean by 'performs well'.... for most of the day the nuclear output was pretty much a straight horizontal line.
I.e predictable well in advance and consistent, unlike renewables.
I undertand nuclear generation is somewhat less flexible than things like gas and coal, that can be quicker to spin up when needed. Needless to say it's quite clear that nuclear generation has been terribly handled in recent decades with no where near enough new capacity being put in place.
I'm not sure where thoose figures have come from and the appears to be some confusion between MW and GW.
Again you need to look at the generation throughout the day and not just the overall daily amounts. Take monday for example. Gas was as it always is very reliable and scalable where needed proving a solid 47.6% of the 691 GWh generated and ranging from instant delivery between a bit over 10GW to a bit over 14GW.
Solar of course varied from zero to a maximum of just under 7GW which allowed it to provide 8.8% of all the energy produces that day. And wind varied from barely over 0.8GW up to a max of a bit under 5.5GW generating a superficially impressive 11.5% of the electricity generated on that day.
But it remains the case that there still isn't an alternative to backing up 'renewables' with some combination of nuclear and more conventional power plants.
Hence why we have some of the most expensive energy prices in the world as we have to pay for such redundancy.
The figures are clear coals overall contributions on Monday was slight (6 GWh) vs 61 and 79 for solar and wind respectively.
But whats more important is *when* it produced that power (when overall wind solar dipped but demand remained high).
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Soldato
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the point is the fault isnt that solar efficiency drops 10% in hot weather, it is that we don't have enough of it...... we don't have enough wind, we don't have enough tidal..... and we don't have enough nuclear and we certainly do not have enough storage.
For now we also need Gas (unfortuantely) but we shouldnt need coal any more.
the article could just have easily said that nuclear power let us down because its production dropped however thanks to the increased uptake in solar ONLY a tiny amount of coal was needed.......... and if we do better we can reduce our reliance on burning fossil fuels even more.
it isnt the data i have issue with, it is the framing of it.
btw the only grid power i have needed since early april (before that actually) has been between 2:30am and 5:30am when energy is at as clean as it can be and i am generating till well gone the end of the peak (usually at 7pm)........... not everyone can do that, but if everyone who can do it , does do it then it will surely make a significant dent.
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The last thing we need is more unreliable solar and wind in the UK.
Something right at least
Storage on the scale needed to carry renewables just isn't feasible with current tech and material constraints.
Take the frequently mentioned 'batteries'
800MWh of utility-scale energy storage capacity added in the UK during 2022
Solar Media Market Research analyst Mollie McCorkindale offers insight into the market's progress in 2022, another record-breaking year.
www.energy-storage.news
So able to supply about 7% of the UK's peak demand for electricity on a day like today for barely over an hour in optimal conditions
And even the large expansions in capacity isn't going to get round the issue of covering days and weeks of dips not just hours...
Hydrogen is woefully inefficient (round-trip efficiency of 18%-46% according to fairly recent figures from MIT), expensive and dangerous (hence why 'green hydrogen only accounts for around 2-3% of current hydrogen generation)and Hydro potential is limited largely already utilised where most suitable and causes ecological issues
and the amount of Gas we have needed has remained stubbornly high despite massive investment in renewables.... I wonder why?
Nuclear hasn't let us down successive governments have by chronically underinvesting in nuclear....
On any given day the Nuclear capacity available in the UK provides a reliable and very consistent, throughout the day, backbone to electricity generation. Solar and wind are all over the place and mostly gas and some other sources (inc occasionally coal) fill the gaps
All whilst paying to keep those plants in reserve beacause renewables can't be relied upon and storage will only buy us few hours worth of supply (at high cost) and nothing like enough to cover the dips in generation... for example when generation drops nearly a 1/3 from estimates for half of the year!
When the winds not blowing electricity generation between 2.30am and 5.30am is as 'clean as it can be' is it? That's nonsense isn't it....
For example if the UK could still generate 25% of its power used through Nuclear then there would be zero need for any fossil fuel usage between those times regardless of whether the wind was blowing (or blowing too much) or not and all for very little CO2 being released....
And well done you have installed solar panels (and a battery?) in a very marginal area for solar power that only just about made sense I am going to assume because the government is massively subsiding them indirectly by putting up everyone's energy bills, including the poor who cant generally afford to install solar currently, to subsidise the few that can install solar (disproportionally the richer in society)
A future of more renewables is one of massive expense, to have many of the turbines and panels disconnected at times because they are producing too much whilst having to build silly amounts of redundant capacity to even try and make up for the dips that storage cant bridge for more than a few hours in most cases (hydro provides some longer term storage but rather low instantaneous output in the UK) all whilst dealing with a less reliable grid that will inevitably lead to the literally dark days of years gone past when the power goes altogether more frequently in whole areas
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Soldato
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how do you work that out? I even paid vat on my install and don't get any FIT payments.
so swing and a miss !
(ok I only paid 5% vat so the best you could accuse me off is paying less into the tax coffers than I could have..... but 5% of something is more than a higher percentage of nothing if I had done what you prefer and not installed them.
if we didn't have any solar or wind which is what you seem to be championing we would be using more fossil fuels. the current situation may not be perfect but the fact you would prefer we didn't have what we do have blows my mind.
we need more nuclear I think is the only area we agree on......
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So a fairly horrendous return (in amount of years till break even) on a fairly high upfront investment then... from an industry that still needed billions of pounds of subsidy, disproportionally from poorer energy bill payers money, to get to where it is now to offer what you paid for?
Oh and using quite rare materials which aren't available in enough quantities for too many to get on board
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Soldato
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give up...... wrong again. (well return is subjective but mine will have covered ittself in all likelihood in 8 years max. (ahead of schedule at the moment but energy prices will hopefully sort themselves out).
however I didn't do it as an investment. happy to cover my costs. so long as I break even eventually I am happy (but it will do more than that I am sure)
btw the subsidies renewables have gotten is a drop in the bucket compared to the subsidies fossil fuels have gotten over the years. surely you can admit that?
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Soldato
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If you could clarify which ones those were again it would be helpful. In the current electricity generation every single market participant has a subsidy or equivalent.
Please don't insult everyone's intelligence like this.
An industry paying less tax than others think they should or being able to write costs of against tax bills isn't a 'subsidy' no matter how many times people claim it to be true..
A subsidy is when the government taxes, takes or borrows money and hands it out in payments, directly or in kind (like they did with FIT payments and grants for solar installations and now GSHP's and ASHP's)
And of course there are of course some very good national security reasons why the government would like to maintain a certain level of domestic oil production though not over taxing them to the point they become uneconomical (the same reasons don't apply to domestic solar installations).
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Soldato
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UK has biggest fossil fuel subsidies in the EU, finds commission
Subsidies for coal, oil and gas are not falling despite EU pledges to tackle climate change
www.theguardian.com
note I said over the years. I would argue so what if renewable needs some subsidies now
anyway I am done. even Australia is moving away from coal now and agree renewables need to increase.
Again please don't insult everyone's intelligence with this nonsenceUK has biggest fossil fuel subsidies in the EU, finds commission
Subsidies for coal, oil and gas are not falling despite EU pledges to tackle climate change
note I said over the years. I would argue so what if renewable needs some subsidies now
anyway I am done. even Australia is moving away from coal now and agree renewables need to increase.
From the article you posted....
Paying less tax that others think an industry should be paying *isn't* a subsidy
Solar befits from exactly the same sort of *tax breaks* that fossil fuels get and *also* has benefitted from subsidy both for installation and, for eligible cases, ongoing generation.
There are also some universal good reasons to tax fuels and energy (inc renewables and fossil fuels) at lower rates than luxury foods, cars etc.
20% VAT on fuels would be passed on in costs to the consumers and would be very regressive affecting those on the lowest incomes the most
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Soldato
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are you saying fossil fuels have never had subsidies (even ignoring tax breaks in the UK) because that is my point. historically they have had subsidies..... so it's a bit double standards to have an issue with renewables getting them now if needed to get them off the ground. how about nuclear? (something I admit we need). has that never got subsidies either?
sometimes they ARE necessary.
Fossil fuels have had some comparatively small subsidies for things like exploration (very little of which has been going on recently)....
The equivalent for solar would be government grants for R and D or to set up domestic production capacity.....
Like I said there are some very sound national security reasons to maintain a certain level of things like oil production that are not applicable in the same fashion to renewables like solar.
And, like you Guardian article shows, when people talk about 'subsidies' for the fossil fuel industries in the UK what they actually mean, almost all of the time, is 'paying less than the highest rates of taxation and or being able to use costs to reduce tax bills' *not* subsidies
Fossil fuels are currently subject of colossal additional taxes in any case
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/CYQWMP4CEBJKRJFSIXIB5AHNRQ.jpg)
Analysis: UK tax sweetener won't stop plummeting North Sea oil, gas output
Once one of the world's key energy sources, Britain's North sea oil and gas output is poised for a further slump after shrinking by two thirds in the past 20 years, leaving the country increasingly dependent on imports.
www.reuters.com
To characterise them as 'subsidised' industries is a joke
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ergh because they are extracting uk sovereign territory limited natural resources, that belong to us all -
if such industries were partially/all state owned like Norway there would be no dichotomy.
those industries characterization as subsidized - if they are being left with disproportionately high average profits versus other industries with similar risks - seems appropriate labelling.
They may be true but had no relevance as to whether the industry can be characterised as a subsidised one or not.
Nonsence on stilts!
By this ridiculous metric Apple are 'subsidised' because they are left with disproportionally high average profis vs other similar industries with similair risks!
How Much Profit Does Apple Make Per iPhone? - FourWeekMBA
It costs Apple $501 to make an iPhone 14 Pro Max, and the company sells it at a base price of $1099. This makes Apple's base markup on the latest iPhone model at 119% Apple is the only tech company able to sell its tech products at a such a premium, thanks to a combination of hardware, software...
fourweekmba.com
I know there is often a desire to want to pervert the meaning of words to suit an agenda but there is a clear difference between an industry or product not being taxed as much as some would like and the goverment paying towards the cost of a product or paying towards its production or extraction.
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@Caracus2k what's your short, medium and long term strategy for moving away from fossil fuels?