Energy Prices (Strictly NO referrals!)

NeilF said:
You'll have to explain how Octopus Compare is useless?

From my understanding it downloads your actual past months usage, from Octopus, which I believe is even on an hourly basis. Maybe someone can confirm if the data is hourly or daily, and if your specific tariff is in the list? The fact it happily loads the Agile tariff suggests hourly.
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he told you "But as soon as you factor in time of use and how this impacts how you use your electricity"

IE, you will adapt your usage to the specific tariff. So unless your comparing two tariffs that have the exact same low cost periods the tool is useless.

When I was comparing Go to Agile I had to download my half hourly data, download agile history and do it in a spreadsheet. The compare tool was junk for this scenario as it couldn't take account of my switching load to make best use of that.
Eg when I am on Go I put the dishwasher on between 0:30-5:30am, when I am on Agile I put it on to match a cheap period on agile. Which varies by day.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
he told you "But as soon as you factor in time of use and how this impacts how you use your electricity"

IE, you will adapt your usage to the specific tariff. So unless your comparing two tariffs that have the exact same low cost periods the tool is useless.

When I was comparing Go to Agile I had to download my half hourly data, download agile history and do it in a spreadsheet. The compare tool was junk for this scenario as it couldn't take account of my switching load to make best use of that.
Eg when I am on Go I put the dishwasher on between 0:30-5:30am, when I am on Agile I put it on to match a cheap period on agile. Which varies by day.
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Ahhh! Gotcha! Yeh, that makes sense. Ta!

At least for people who are on daily/monthly/fixed rate tariffs it's a pretty fair comparison tool. eg: Seeing how the current Tracker is stacking up against the 12m or 14m fixed rates etc.
 
NeilF said:
Understood, but even if we double - at huge expense - our wind farms, there'd be regular periods of only 10-20% wind power. We can't import 30+% of our energy from France & co surely, especially when other countries dependent on unreliable renewables may be requiring huge imports too at the same time?

But yes, we definitely need the majority of our energy produced by reliable sources as you suggest like nuclear. Milliband's net zero nonsense of predominantly wind and solar etc is going to end horribly IMHO.
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I disagree with this. yes maybe we need a nuclear backbone but given how much hinkley point is costing I do not see how anyone can suggest wind and solar is too expensive!
I hear a lot about small nuclear reactors but how many of them have been made right now and at what cost?
if recent large scale projects have shown anything (millennium dome, euro tunnel, hinkley point and HS2) projected costs for a large scale infrastructure are complete nonsense where as wind farms and solar installations are a known entity..

we may as well say nuclear fusion will solve our issues imo as that is about as likely as cheap nuclear fission!.
I think we need to keep our existing nuclear going as long as we safely can, but for now fall on gas when we absolutely to until we have somewhere to store hydrogen as already suggested as one thing is sure, if we treble our wind and let's say quintuple our solar then for >75% of the time we are gonna have more energy than we can possibly use.

it doesn't help how rubbish a lot of our housing stock is. I bet some houses in the UK would over half their heating energy use if they had insulation like in a modern (good quality) build.
 
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bigmike20vt said:
I disagree with this. yes maybe we need a nuclear backbone but given how much hinkley point is costing I do not see how anyone can suggest wind and solar is too expensive!
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France, who is heavily invested in nuclear, and who you suggested we fall back on in times of need :), have cheaper electricity than us :)

As regards Hinkley, yeh, hard to believe it's 5yrs behind schedule and its going to be the most expensive nuclear plant ever built. Suggestion is at least it's been a learning exercise, and future development(s) will be slicker. eg: Sizewell C.

But frankly, we're 20+yrs behind where we need to be with our nuclear plants. We need them now, not in 5-25yrs.



bigmike20vt said:
but for now fall on gas when we absolutely to until we have somewhere to store hydrogen as already suggested as one thing is sure, if we treble our wind and let's say quintuple our solar then for >75% of the time we are gonna have more energy than we can possibly use.
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Agreed, we need to up our own domestic gas drilling/usage for a period of time.

As for your triple wind and quintuple wind, 3x0 + 4x0 = 0 :) There will be times, say over night, with very low wind, where we'll still fall significantly short, which brings us back to my suggestion we'd then need to fall back on an entire parallel info structure.
 
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NeilF said:
France, who is heavily invested in nuclear, and who you suggested we fall back on in times of need :), have cheaper electricity than us :)

As regards Hinkley, yeh, hard to believe it's 5yrs behind schedule and its going to be the most expensive nuclear plant ever built. Suggestion is at least it's been a learning exercise, and future development(s) will be slicker. eg: Sizewell C.

But frankly, we're 20+yrs behind where we need to be with our nuclear plants. We need them now, not in 5-25yrs.




Agreed, we need to up our own domestic gas drilling/usage for a period of time.

As for your triple wind and quintuple wind, 3x0 + 4x0 = 0 :) There will be times, say over night, with very low wind, where we'll still fall significantly short, which brings us back to my suggestion we'd then need to fall back on an entire parallel info structure.
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Suggest before you carry on you go and read up on the UK electricity pricing structure and how it works, and then compare to most of Europe.
You will then understand why what you wrote about nuclear and pricing is wrong.

Also probably good to go and check the NG transition plan. You can then revise your 3x0 + 4x0 equation which whilst true isn't real world.
Even when wind and or solar are very low they never really hit zero. But they do, and can go very low.
Its where the grid storage, home storage, demand tailoring, V2H, V2G, sending excess to hydrogen etc all play a part.
 
bigmike20vt said:
part of the reason France have cheap electricity is it is nationalised imo, add to that we are subsidising their energy with our own (because France invested in our renewables when we didn't)
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Possibly? Probably? But of note is surely the type of renewables in question? ie: Reliable nuclear instead of unreliable wind? ie: I believe we have 10x the windfarms of France. And France produces insanely more (reliable) power from nuclear than we do?
 
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