Energy Prices (Strictly NO referrals!)

platinum87 said:
I asked bard


The cost of building an 11 terawatt battery storage system would depend on the type of battery technology used. For lithium-ion batteries, the cost would be approximately $100 billion. For other battery technologies, such as pumped hydro, the cost would be lower.

Here is a breakdown of the cost of building an 11 terawatt battery storage system using different battery technologies:

  • Lithium-ion batteries: $100 billion
  • Pumped hydro: $50 billion
  • Compressed air energy storage: $60 billion
  • Flow batteries: $80 billion
The cost of building an 11 terawatt battery storage system would also depend on the location of the system. For example, the cost would be higher in areas with a high cost of land and labor.

Overall, the cost of building an 11 terawatt battery storage system would be significant, but it is a cost that is becoming more affordable as battery technology continues to improve.

Here are some additional factors that would affect the cost of building an 11 terawatt battery storage system:

  • The size and capacity of the individual batteries
  • The efficiency of the battery system
  • The lifespan of the batteries
  • The cost of maintenance and repairs
The cost of building an 11 terawatt battery storage system is a complex issue, but it is one that is becoming increasingly important as the world transitions to a cleaner energy future.

The cost of lithium-ion batteries for energy storage has been declining in recent years. In 2019, the LCOE (levelized cost of energy) for lithium-ion battery storage was $187 per megawatt-hour (MWh). By the first quarter of 2023, the LCOE had dropped to $150 per MWh for battery storage with four hours' discharge duration. This is a decline of 76% since 2012.

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Feels cheap to me, i suspect the number is wrong?
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I presume you mean 11TWh (TerraWattHours)

11TWh = 11,000 GWh

11,000GWh divide by 50GW (UK peak demand at moment) = 220 hours or about 9 days.

That's a chunky amount of storage.

11TWh = 11,000,000,000 kWh ( a kWh being a reasonable unit of storage for this question)

$100,000,000,000 for batteries divided by 11,000,000,000 kWh is less than $10/kWh. That is really cheap. I thought $100/kWh was the current holy grail for battery storage

www.statista.com

Battery price per kwh 2024 | Statista

The cost of lithium-ion batteries per kWh decreased by 14 percent between 2022 and 2023. Lithium-ion battery price was about 139 U.S. dollars per kWh in 2023.
www.statista.com www.statista.com

I think it will need a step change in technology to hit $10/kWh because batteries are not an immature technology look at that statista graph.

edit: Bugger that graph is paywalled don't know if you be able to read it. But it shows Li-On battery prices per kWh going from $730 in 2013 to a plateau of $150/kWh in 2020-2021-2022


edit 2: also if anyone notices a blunder in my calcs let me know although they do line up with what I've previously done on a fag packet.
 
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PlacidCasual said:
I presume you mean 11TWh (TerraWattHours)

11TWh = 11,000 GWh

11,000GWh divide by 50GW (UK peak demand at moment) = 220 hours or about 9 days.

That's a chunky amount of storage.

11TWh = 11,000,000,000 kWh ( a kWh being a reasonable unit of storage for this question)

$100,000,000,000 for batteries divided by 11,000,000,000 kWh is less than $10/kWh. That is really cheap. I thought $100/kWh was the current holy grail for battery storage

www.statista.com

Battery price per kwh 2024 | Statista

The cost of lithium-ion batteries per kWh decreased by 14 percent between 2022 and 2023. Lithium-ion battery price was about 139 U.S. dollars per kWh in 2023.
www.statista.com www.statista.com

I think it will need a step change in technology to hit $10/kWh because batteries are not an immature technology look at that statista graph.

edit: Bugger that graph is paywalled don't know if you be able to read it. But it shows Li-On battery prices per kWh going from $730 in 2013 to a plateau of $150/kWh in 2020-2021-2022


edit 2: also if anyone notices a blunder in my calcs let me know although they do line up with what I've previously done on a fag packet.
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Only minor issue I can see is you used peak, you want daily total consumption.
Its probably not out by more than 30% or so however.

I do see however the UK total for 2021 was 334.2TWh, so per day that would be average of around 9.15TWh
(Electricity demand increased in 2021 to 334.2 TWh, up by 1.2 per cent from 2020.)

So 11TWh for a fortnight seems a smidge low.
I would go with 13TWh for a fortnight being the capacity required to store two weeks worth. (For both capacity required and usage figures)
 
PlacidCasual said:
I presume you mean 11TWh (TerraWattHours)
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guess bard misunderstood - and is looking to provide a battery for an (instantaneous) 11TW power for an undefined period - like to power the Hadron collider -
it doesn't permute the two units interchangeably in its neural brain.


e: TagEnergy and Harmony Energy have completed construction on the UK’s largest battery storage facility with a capacity of 99MWh. The $38m (£30m) development has a throughput of 49.5MW and lies near Luton, in the southeast of the UK. => 3.3 T£ for 11TWH
www.power-technology.com

Largest UK battery energy storage facility comes online

TagEnergy and Harmony Energy have completed construction on the UK’s largest battery energy storage facility with a capacity of 99MWh.
www.power-technology.com www.power-technology.com
 
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-27% for gas end of the month. Not sure that decline would continue into winter when its needed, we'll be lucky if it doesnt go back up. Pays to have a backup..


platinum87 said:
Does anyone know or bother to answer.

How much would it cost to build battery backup storage which is equal to 2 weeks of energy used in the UK
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Can I say something silly and state its already been 'built' but left unused. Someone in engineering could calculate the mass of potential energy going through the Severn estuary everyday. I doubt its all going to be captured, efficiency wont be 100% but that line of thinking is far more likely to work where every day with turbines deployed its free energy. It should pay for itself and in any case the diversity and known quantity of produced energy daily would be useful.
I believe its correct to equate it to a battery, they can store or decide to release the energy on demand.
 
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You don't need the 'mega battery' to provide the long term power and therefore do not need to size for weeks of storage. A battery can come in various forms and the classic Lithium based storage is great for a quick instantaneous spike in demand before something bigger and less expensive can spin up such as thermal mass storage engines or physical such as gravitational potential mass storage.
 
NZXT30 said:
So Octopus agile is trending on the masses of hotukdeals now. Is the tariff as good as dead?
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Oh man thats bad news, I guess they will add a waiting list and the 9 month rejoin restriction to that now as well.

Before it had escaped those restrictions as it wasnt known to the masses.
 
ci_newman said:
Why would it be as good as dead? Octopus will still be making a killing out if it as they are selling their own generated electric
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Octopus have shown they dont like too many people on these tariff's, so there is a reason for it.

I expect the cheap electric has a limit, but also they were eating losses allowing only a 30 day cooldown period, because now if someone leaves agile for SVR, Octopus then have to hedge that energy, but the customer can still only after 30 days jump back on agile which then carries a risk to octopus (the risk being agile unit rates lower than what they paid for the hedged energy), I assume they accept as is only low numbers, but with electric tracker after it went on hotukdeals they have shown they werent willing to have that risk when the numbers get bigger.
 
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McPhee said:
The right answer is to get on Agile now, and also join the Tracker wait list. Agile isn't quite as good as Tracker at the moment for a typical household. But it's a lot better than the SVR.

The price difference between the two depends heavily on the current wholesale price. Agile is a simple 2.2x wholesale, with a 12p/kWh premium applied between 4pm and 7pm. The formula for Tracker varies quite a bit by region, but averages out to around 1.2x wholesale + 7.5p per kWh. So lower wholesale prices favour Agile, while higher prices favour Tracker. At present, Agile averages around 1p per kWh more than Tracker. The impact of that on your bill will depend on the distribution of your use - heavier peak time use will increase the price difference. For me, personally, the two tariffs work out to basically the same (no load shifting beyond charging the car overnight).

As we move in to the second half of the year, it seems reasonable to assume that Tracker will work out a lot better.
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Wow those seem quite healthy margins, didnt realise they were that high. Also with the formula you posted the risk of cost spikes would seem to be considerably lower on the tracker.

So 40p wholesale would be costing 88p outside of 4-7pm on agile or £1 for 4-7pm, on Tracker it would be 55.5p. Thanks for this info, I think I am going to get myself on the electric tracker waiting list. I think that spike differential makes it worth it, and even now as you said tracker over an average day is slightly cheaper.

The main selling point Agile had over tracker is gone now (it was 21p SC which for 2023 standards is very cheap) with SC now similar to tracker SC.
 
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Richie said:
The new SC for me, when I come off my fixed, from Eon Next is:

Elec - 61.3p/day
Gas - 27.11p/day

Both include VAT of 5%... That's for a "loyalty fix" for 12 months... If I just go onto SVR:

Elec - 64.75p/day
Gas - 30.57p/day

So essentially £1/day before I have done anything, or £30/month.

Bear in mind that in early 2022, my full monthly bill was £33 (Monthly DD) and it shows how things have increased massively in 12-18 months.


Taking the SoLR into account, have operating costs increased that much? Genuinely?
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I've been a bit slack on keeping an eye on things recently. I'm with Eon currently but their flex rates online at this moment in time don't look that different to what I'm currently paying.

Current is:

Elec STD: 47.2p
Elec Unit: 32p

Gas STD: 27.7p
Gas Unit: 10p

NextFlex is saying

Elec STD: 49.6p
Elec Unit: 30.29p

Gas STD: 29.11p
Gas Unit: 7.61p

With my current usage swapping will save at most a few quid a month. Not sure why the standing charge rates you've been given are so high though. I guess I'll wait until July 1st and see what happens?
 
Gixer said:
Not sure why the standing charge rates you've been given are so high though. I guess I'll wait until July 1st and see what happens?
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Because different regions in the UK unfairly pay different SC rates... Something OFGEM don't appear to give two ***** about.
 
silversurfer said:
Can I say something silly and state its already been 'built' but left unused. Someone in engineering could calculate the mass of potential energy going through the Severn estuary everyday. I doubt its all going to be captured, efficiency wont be 100% but that line of thinking is far more likely to work where every day with turbines deployed its free energy. It should pay for itself and in any case the diversity and known quantity of produced energy daily would be useful.
I believe its correct to equate it to a battery, they can store or decide to release the energy on demand.
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indeed we (and be we i mean people more skilled than I) definitely need to make use of water, be it rivers or tidal. I think a trial is underway at the moment looking at tidal power on the Thames.

I always thought the River Thames already had hydro power...... but it seems i may have been wrong. as absolutely bone headed as it seems to me i think the plans that i thought were already implemented were shelved.

the Thames barrier - as a non expert - also seems like an opportunity for hydro.
 
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Just had notice of my price reduction from July.

Electricity is down 9% and gas down 27%.

Nice work, Shell. Split it so that the majority of the reduction is on gas, when it's the time of year that practically zero gas is used due to no heating :rolleyes:
 
Feek said:
Just had notice of my price reduction from July.

Electricity is down 9% and gas down 27%.

Nice work, Shell. Split it so that the majority of the reduction is on gas, when it's the time of year that practically zero gas is used due to no heating :rolleyes:
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Havent they both been reduced by 2p per kw…..so a 2p reduction on 33p (leccy) is 9% and a 2p reduction on 10p (gas) is 20%

so showing the % is wrong really. Because they have both been reduced by the same monetory value.
 
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Welshman said:
Havent they both been reduced by 2p per kw…..so a 2p reduction on 33p (leccy) is 9% and a 2p reduction on 10p (gas) is 20%

so showing the % is wrong really. Because they have both been reduced by the same monetory value.
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Dunno, I didn't look at that, I just shouted at clouds (because I'm an old man).
 
Folks... are there any downsides to switching suppliers for gas/elec at the moment provided the SC/unit rates are lower? I'm not going to miss out on anything re the price cap right?
 
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