the thing with solar is that if everyone is creating their own power there becomes even more grid unpredictability and the more people that get them the more unsustainable it becomes as nobody is buying any electricity which will make the price of electricity go up even more. We will reach a point where the grid wont want anybody exporting any electricity and the only option will be to give it away for free or use it yourself/store it. 
 

Also on the subject of stability. Deeside CCGT has recently been converted into a Syncronous compensator. This basically uses electricity to spin its large rotor for no other purpose than to have a large rotating mass connected to the grid. 
 

With the energy market being what it is today I see us having CCGTs for the next 15-20 years still in one form or another.

 

Let’s not forget Drax who our Government are paying handsomely to cut down forests, ship thousands of miles for us to burn releasing more co2 back into our atmosphere than a Gas or Coal plant would have done. 
 

Same with the interconnectors, we are importing energy from Europe where France and Germany are still burning coal just so we can look ‘green’. It’s an absolute joke

Edited 31 December, 20241 yr by SuperbTWM

1 hour ago, SuperbTWM said:

the thing with solar is that if everyone is creating their own power there becomes even more grid unpredictability and the more people that get them the more unsustainable it becomes as nobody is buying any electricity which will make the price of electricity go up even more. We will reach a point where the grid wont want anybody exporting any electricity and the only option will be to give it away for free or use it yourself/store it. 
Also on the subject of stability. Deeside CCGT has recently been converted into a Syncronous compensator. This basically uses electricity to spin its large rotor for no other purpose than to have a large rotating mass connected to the grid. 
With the energy market being what it is today I see us having CCGTs for the next 15-20 years still in one form or another.

Let’s not forget Drax who our Government are paying handsomely to cut down forests, ship thousands of miles for us to burn releasing more co2 back into our atmosphere than a Gas or Coal plant would have done. 
Same with the interconnectors, we are importing energy from Europe where France and Germany are still burning coal just so we can look ‘green’. It’s an absolute joke

 

UK Grid suppliers must make their business decisions like anybody else, they buy or produce at some cost and offer that electricity at times and amounts they look to make a profit.  All quite a gamble with so many variables.  UK governments has the dual task of providing both reliability of supply and cheapest possible costs to customers, not an easy brief.

 

Visited Hinkley Point man years ago, when doing Mech Eng, It had the old Magnox reactors at Hinkley A and then the AGR at Hinkley B, I do occasionally dip in to the pprogree on Hinkley C, 12,000 people working there, quite a way to spend £46B but very interesting to one who has porked in power generation albiet from a MArine Engineering standpoint mostly.  This power station, and Sizewell if they also build one there, should provide a nice chunk of Base Load. 

 

I can see the UK electricity market getting smarter, especially as the percentage of those with home Smart meters that can report half hourly like mine does and millions others. 

Whilst Octopus has reflected the market with Agile which follows the market, even going negative but also up to £1 a kWh sometimes, then we have Intelligent Go which provides floors and ceilings and guarantee of several hours of electricity per day at about a third of the normal daily rate, then there is my simple GO tariff that just gives me 5 hours of cheap ie 8.5p per kWh which is fine for me to charge up my electric cars and home batteries and I think we all know that the UK electricity market will evolve. Brother has the HEat Pump Cosy tariff which is tri-rate I think. Octopus want him to avoid the Tea time electricity peak rate period and take advantage of the cheap night time tariff of course which he can set the under floor heating etc to do.            

 

I expect electricity price to have peaked in real terms and fall from now on, particularly for the smart users.  Like other places in the world ie California, and I expect many others, electricity users will get financially penalised for using electrical power at peak times ie that 1730 to 2230 time, possibly with prices approaching £1 a kwh, but at other times the price will be more like 25p per kwh with sub 10p per kWh. Despite Martin Lewis bleating I think the Daily charge may stay where it is as to reflect the massive infrastructure costs of getting lecky from the offshore turbines, the standby gas power stations, Hinkley Point C, the hydro Great Glen project etc. 

 

Octopus, and the UK government, want to see us replace our home gas boilers with heat pumps to really bring down the CO2, as well as have standby batteries instead of gas power plants. Just a matter of time and I think it is a few years away and not decades.       

 

Yea its intereting times for sure, lots of technology invovled now around using generating and storing electricity at home

 

Whats amusing to me, having worked in the power industry all my life is that 10 years ago when we were paying 12p a unit running 60 year old coal technology pushing 25% efficiency, plus carbon tax on top of that. Now we have mainly renewables with a big dependancy on Gas for our flexible generation which can be over 60% efficient, ok Gas prices have gone up dramatically but from what I can see the only reason why electricity prices are so high is because the Government has rushed into a net zero target, closed all our generation and now margins are very tight.

 

These margins have been so tight for the past 5/6 or so years they introduced the capacity market to secure supply where generators bid their lowest price they can make money. The problem with that is, the final capacity secured at the most expensive price then applies to all the generation, making it very lucrative to those that can generate power relatively inexpensively.

 

If we went back to a more competative energy market and electricity was a lot cheaper, there would then be very little drive for people to make use of solar panels and battery storage solutions, in fact, these systems wouldn't be able to pay for themselves because the savings just wouldn't be there.

 

This drive for being net zero set by our Government in the quest to look good is one of the main reasons why old people and low income households are struggling to keep their houses warm

3 hours ago, SuperbTWM said:

the thing with solar is that if everyone is creating their own power there becomes even more grid unpredictability and the more people that get them the more unsustainable it becomes as nobody is buying any electricity which will make the price of electricity go up even more. We will reach a point where the grid wont want anybody exporting any electricity and the only option will be to give it away for free or use it yourself/store it. 
 

Also on the subject of stability. Deeside CCGT has recently been converted into a Syncronous compensator. This basically uses electricity to spin its large rotor for no other purpose than to have a large rotating mass connected to the grid. 
 

With the energy market being what it is today I see us having CCGTs for the next 15-20 years still in one form or another.

 

Let’s not forget Drax who our Government are paying handsomely to cut down forests, ship thousands of miles for us to burn releasing more co2 back into our atmosphere than a Gas or Coal plant would have done. 
 

Same with the interconnectors, we are importing energy from Europe where France and Germany are still burning coal just so we can look ‘green’. It’s an absolute joke

Interesting - does that Synchronous Compensator operate in the same manner as a Rotary UPS? 

17 minutes ago, Warrior193 said:

Interesting - does that Synchronous Compensator operate in the same manner as a Rotary UPS? 

 

Its basically just a giant motor and flywheel repurposed from a mid 90's 'dash-for-gas' powerstation. This was a 2+1 unit station so I assume they have converted or will convert both Gas Turbines to be a compensator.

 

If a system event occurs that results in a dip in frequency, the fact that this is syncronised to the grid will stop the frequency from dipping for fractions of a second and may prevent circuit breakers from tripping open, allow automatic transformer tap changing to occur, grid switching or maybe even chance for those thermal units who are in frequency response mode at the time, to load up.

 

This probably differs from a Rotary UPS by the fact that it doesn't really feed back power in the event of a total loss of power, its just there for the 'inirtia' lost by the closure of our coal powered fleet

6 hours ago, SuperbTWM said:

Whats amusing to me, having worked in the power industry all my life is that 10 years ago when we were paying 12p a unit .......

 

If we went back to a more competative energy market and electricity was a lot cheaper, there would then be very little drive for people to make use of solar panels and battery storage solutions, in fact, these systems wouldn't be able to pay for themselves because the savings just wouldn't be there.

Interesting. My solar PV were installed over 9 years ago. Quoted return on investment was 11 years. Despite the low import prices, the FIT scheme was able to level the playing field. Once FIT went away, there was a limbo period with solar. Not much install and ROI was getting better at an extremely slow rate as tech improved. Then came the electricity price hike, and following on from that, I saw quite a few new solar installs in my neighbourhood. ROI came down to 5-10 years depending on roof suitability.

 

I agree it's a bad state of affairs when there's people who cannot afford to pay their bills.

 

But on the flip side, making solar installs financially viable is absolutely the right way forward. Price for home storage have came down drastically and removal of VAT makes installing home storage almost a non-brainer for anyone staying in their property for +5 years.

 

Making more and more demand as flexible as possible should help stabilise and reduce reliance on flexible generation.

On 31/12/2024 at 14:24, SuperbTWM said:

Yea its intereting times for sure, lots of technology invovled now around using generating and storing electricity at home

 

Whats amusing to me, having worked in the power industry all my life

May I get your view on virtual power plants?

 

Something like this:

 

12 hours ago, wyx087 said:

May I get your view on virtual power plants?

 

Something like this:

 

 

The sunshine/solar belt is sometimes stated as being between 35 N and 35 south which does include a great many peoples of the world.

 

If we can get solar efficiency form its current 24% or so to 50% or so we could widen that belt.  It does give us issues in this 50N latitude.

 

I occasional look at small wind turbines for homes but there seems to be a big lack of supporting data on what to get and what power one might get in average winds.  They can link to the same batteries/solar generators I suppose but would need a wind turbine controller of the right size for the turbine. Still in its infancy but maybe one day will compliment solar power generation at the micro home level.

 

 

Edited 3 January, 20251 yr by lol-lol

13 hours ago, wyx087 said:

May I get your view on virtual power plants?

 

Something like this:

 

 

I think Home battery storage is the only real way having solar panels 'works' for people like me that will be at work all day while the solar panels are exporting back into the grid for very little (unless you were an early solar adopter on one of the more lucrative deals). Making use of that power in the evenings and not having to pay to import power is where you make all the savings. Even just having a battery and charging it 'off peak' to use in the day could well give you a decent return. Even better if you can choose to export back to the grid at peak times and make even more money back.

 

There are a few  problems for me personally though:

 

One is the the expense, for a quality system that offers battery back-up in the event of the loss of a grid connection (not essential for everyone but I do suffer from occational power loss) costs a fortune and I can't make the sums work for me for it to be worth it.

 

Also, space is an issue, installers tend to want to put the solar inverter in the loft which is a big no from me and there is nowhere else really to put it unless I put some sort of enclosure on the side of the house.

 

Having an electric car would help as I would pretty much be guaranteed to use up all of my cheap power however we don't at present, as again, the cost of them outweighs the savings. If I was out looking for brand new Diesel cars it would probably make sense. Having a heat pump is also one way to make sure you are making sure of your 'free' energy, but again, large initial costs vs gas, don't have room for a great big hot water cylinder and its not going to make me a millionaire by saving 10 Bob on Gas

 

All this new tech works but you have to do calculate how long it would take to pay for itself and make sure the equipment isn't worn out by the time it does. A lot of people were conned into getting heat pumps when the Government started incentivising them. Through no fault of the technology, they were installed by people who didn't know what they were doing, did not do the correct heat loss calculations and installed units that were either too big or too small and are now costing them a small fortune in electricity and essentially gave them a lot of bad press.

 

 

59 minutes ago, SuperbTWM said:

the solar panels are exporting back into the grid for very little (unless you were an early solar adopter on one of the more lucrative deals). Making use of that power in the evenings and not having to pay to import power is where you make all the savings.

Unless you are on a decent FiT then at the moment it makes financial sense to send everything you produce back to the grid, then charge your batteries overnight at less than half the cost your energy company has paid you for exporting. 
 

Since our panels and batteries were installed in February’24 we haven’t used ANY peak rate electricity, we’ve also been paid £1,600 for what we’ve exported 👍🏻

Edited 3 January, 20251 yr by Gizmo

6 minutes ago, Gizmo said:

In less you are on a decent FiT then at the moment it makes financial sense to send everything you produce back to the grid, then charge your batteries overnight at less than half the cost your energy company has paid you for exporting. 
 

 

That does sound like a good deal!

Thanks for that. Everyone's different. Solar and home battery obviously doesn't work for everyone and indeed it is an expensive initial investment.

 

In your professional experience, what do you make of VPP with respect to overall grid operation? Does it work from local DNO perspective?

 

https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/virtual-power-plant

15 minutes ago, wyx087 said:

Thanks for that. Everyone's different. Solar and home battery obviously doesn't work for everyone and indeed it is an expensive initial investment.

 

In your professional experience, what do you make of VPP with respect to overall grid operation? Does it work from local DNO perspective?

 

https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/virtual-power-plant

 

I think on a large scale the National Grid would have to find some way to have full control over these systems. Either that or they would have to be frequency controlled in some way. Currently, any generation under 100MW can export to the grid without any notification, this is because a chunk this small does not cause any disruption ot the grid. We are only talking a few KW here but if you populated every house with one of these that could be exporting randomly you suddenly have a very large capacity of generation that can start and stop anytime resulting in complete chaos and it would be very hard to manage.

 

These systems also have no ability to import or export MVArs for power factor correction, this is typically done by large thermal plants but I believe some of the more modern wind farms are capable of doing the same.

Just for info, the price of wholesale electricity yesterday at 17:30 was £2900 MW/hr. At the time of this post it is roughly £150 MW/hr

 

These are sort of rediculous swings we are paying for due to the poor decisions of our Government who decided to shut all our coal fired power stations and rely on renewable generation.

No, plenty electricity and just The National Grid can not cope with getting what is available from the North across the border to England.

They rather pay to have it bought from abroad.    The Coal had to come from abroad anyway.

There is Hydro, Gas & oil burning and Diesel Farms on standby. 

 

Then the UK Government Dithered about getting the Nuclear built as some decommissioned and others have their life extended. 

They knew well they were not getting new Nuclear in Scotland.  Unless a Tory Government in Scotland and that is never happening.

 

They had a ban on Wind Turbines in England.  Obviously why spoil views in England while you can burn coal or wood pellets. Imported. 

So too slow with Battery Storage and the UK Government have rather had a reliance on overseas energy than taking electricity from Scotland. 

Now they have too. 

 

PS

Not enough storage capacity for gas in the UK, just another UK Government decision. 

Edited 9 January, 20251 yr by Ootohere

47 minutes ago, Ootohere said:

No, plenty electricity and just The National Grid can not cope with getting what is available from the North across the border to England.

They rather pay to have it bought from abroad.    The Coal had to come from abroad anyway.

There is Hydro, Gas & oil burning and Diesel Farms on standby. 

 

 

The price speaks for itself, 43GW demand, only 8GW of wind. All available CCGT's were on, We don't have any oil fired anymore and diesel/Open cycle Gas is £££££ hence the price.

 

Funnily enough we never ran our Open cycle GT yesterday despite us running it profitably at only £300 MW/hr just before Christmas

Damn shame that in Scotland & Wales the tariffs have to be anything to do with what it costs to buy in for England. 

 

http://gridwatch.co.uk

 

Edited 9 January, 20251 yr by Ootohere

2 hours ago, SuperbTWM said:

Just for info, the price of wholesale electricity yesterday at 17:30 was £2900 MW/hr. At the time of this post it is roughly £150 MW/hr

 

These are sort of rediculous swings we are paying for due to the poor decisions of our Government who decided to shut all our coal fired power stations and rely on renewable generation.

You are paying perhaps.

 

Not me and many people, we are on batteries drawing 0 from the grid.

If electricity was a sensible price you wouldn't have to have batteries, it's a solution to a problem we have created.

The electricity is not even being generated where and when it can be because the National Grid is not taking it so paying not to generate.

The batteries are so it can be stored, like the Pumped Storage is. 

 

Those Coal Fired Power stations were being paid to be on standby. 

The contracted prices being paid were ridiculous. 

 

 

Edited 9 January, 20251 yr by Ootohere

The South of the UK gets cold and the whole of the UK must pay up because they need the heating turned up. 

 

Would it have cost any less to be firing up Coal Fired Power Stations, if there were still any? 

 

Edited 9 January, 20251 yr by Ootohere

21 minutes ago, SuperbTWM said:

If electricity was a sensible price you wouldn't have to have batteries, it's a solution to a problem we have created.

Electricity have never had a constant wholesale price. What domestic customers pay should reflect that to start with.

Therefore, battery has always been a solution to get off-peak price. Fluctuating demand is not a recent problem.

 

But the extreme price as you pointed out earlier is indeed going to be more and more prevalent. I personally think it will be a necessary price to pay on the journey to net-zero.

32 minutes ago, wyx087 said:

Electricity have never had a constant wholesale price. What domestic customers pay should reflect that to start with.

Therefore, battery has always been a solution to get off-peak price. Fluctuating demand is not a recent problem.

 

But the extreme price as you pointed out earlier is indeed going to be more and more prevalent. I personally think it will be a necessary price to pay on the journey to net-zero.

 

Yes I am well aware but if a little more thought and planning went into it and the plan to remove coal was better executed then it would be a much easier journey, especially as I think the Net zero thing is just a bit of a con, especially when the rest of the world are not following suit.

 

If everybody had a battery and only used off-peak power then night time demand would equal day time demand and the price would be the same, what then? how is that sustainable?

 

52 minutes ago, Ootohere said:

Would it have cost any less to be firing up Coal Fired Power Stations, if there were still any? 

 

 

Probably, still plenty of coal about.

 

13 minutes ago, SuperbTWM said:

 

Yes I am well aware but if a little more thought and planning went into it and the plan to remove coal was better executed then it would be a much easier journey, especially as I think the Net zero thing is just a bit of a con, especially when the rest of the world are not following suit.

 

If everybody had a battery and only used off-peak power then night time demand would equal day time demand and the price would be the same, what then? how is that sustainable?

 

Probably, still plenty of coal about.

 

 

Steam plants fired by coal takes hours to warm through before one can apply high loads. Gas plants are much quicker but both are dinosaurs to hydro electric pump storage and battery station supplied power from wind, solar and nuclear plus interconnector power from other countries who are already in surplus much of the time.

 

15 minutes ago, SuperbTWM said:

rest of the world are not following suit.

There's evidence China is moving at a staggering pace:

EV: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-ev-sales-to-overtake-traditional-cars-2025-report-says-2024-12

Energy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China

Capacity and yearly installs:

 

Australia have lots solar and battery projects.

 

Can't speak for America or Africa though.

 

23 minutes ago, SuperbTWM said:

If everybody had a battery and only used off-peak power then night time demand would equal day time demand and the price would be the same, what then? how is that sustainable?

Goal is no longer matching supply to demand. It will be the reverse.

If everyone had batteries, supply fluctuation due to renewables wouldn't be any problem. Everyone charge up with cheap energy from cheap renewables. Everyone wins, net-zero achieved, totally sustainable.