Wut? Where did you get vomit from? Do you... "think" that people on these drugs lose weight through *vomiting*? As opposed to, ya know, blunting appetite and slowing gastric emptying?
People on this site get weirder and weirder, ISTG
Sam D is very good, and I think his analysis is broadly correct, but I would be wary of treating him as apolitical. He's a leading thinker for the centre-right, along with Sam Bowman (Sam Freedman completes the clever-Sam-centrist trifecta, but is on the left rather than right).
Despite the snark, I’ll treat this as though it’s good faith and describe the actions needed to lower energy prices for consumers in the UK:
1. Reform or buy out a chunk of the 35 GW RO fleet
2. Rebalance levies and system charges so cheap wholesale prices can actually flow through
3. Make time-of-use pricing the default, not an opt-in
4. Accelerate flexible storage and demand response by creating some carefully targeted contracts for availability
5. Re-tune the CfD regime so consumers capture falling build costs faster
6. Make retail suppliers actually pass through wholesale savings
7. Reform gas marginal price setting for electricity by creating (1) a clean power pool for CfD + subsidised-renewable generation, or (2)
split-market pricing (infra-marginal renewables in one market, marginal thermal in another) or (3) better locational signals + storage incentives so gas sets the price for fewer hours
It’s a complex market and the devil is in the details, all while populists are shouting loudly. It’s not easy and the government is not very sure-footed to put it politely. But the issues are not about the inherent characteristics of the power plants, they’re about price signals and investments.
Why do we need to build enough storage to avoid a 1-in-37 year Dunkelflaute through storage alone? We don’t ever just use storage, we use a whole bunch of mechanisms including demand shifting, interconnectors, demand reduction, dispatchable low carbon (eg CCS gas, biomass), firm renewables, overbuild, curtailment-to-fuel, and gas peakers. If we use gas peakers once in 37 years instead of several times a year, we are still going to be way ahead of where we are today
You’ve not accurately described how the UK covers mismatches between supply and demand in its energy market. What matters is not matching each GW of wind with a GW of dispatchable backup, because that focuses on matching suppy not demand. If we do a wind overbuild of 3x demand, we don’t need 3x of dispatchable backup.
What matters is to ensure there’s enough supply to meet demand even when wind output is low. The dispatchable element of that is achieved through gas peakers, pumped hydro, BESS (1GW in 2020, 7GW in 2025, 127 GW in pipeline with 77.9 GW / 162.5 GWh approved thus far), interconnectors, merchant sales of demand cuts (peak shifting, which consumers love when they are able to access it, as they can cut their bills substantially by just running washing machines overnight etc), and several other mechanisms.
The UK has always had excellent availability all the way through the transition. It’s not surprising you focus on this, because the US does not. But that’s really just table stakes in the civilised world. We can and do focus on more than just that.
The UK has about three *billion* trees. Sit back down, you nobber.
I agree with most of that, but it's worth pointing out that this is really a time-limited blip.
Today, about 60% of renewables capacity (35GW) and a higher percentage of generation comes from renewables sites operating under pre-CfD support schemes or merchant projects. While later rounds of CfD include huge projects, those aren't yet fully online.
What the government should do, in my opinion, is buy those contracts out and shift them to some sort of capped mechanism, because this problem only goes away once all generation is switched. I think there's a place for spot pricing in the UK mix, eg to encourage investment in storage (which is what happens today, and working more or less as intended from 2020 to 2025 when deployed capacity increased five-fold and the pipeline of projects is huge). But even there, the projects would actually now benefit from switching away to PPAs or CfDs or some mechanism that has less volatility on both the upside and the downside. That would be in the interests of investors and consumers and the government. But it would take an adroit government to get it right. Sadly, we've not got one of those. I miss the days when we did. It's been sodding decades.
it's not the tax revenues. It's that marginal cost encourages investment in cheaper energy. However, that's not been true for a long time, because CfDs mean that most renewables producers don't see the benefits of high gas prices. It's only the operators of the oldest renewables projects (pre-CfDs) who make bank. I think that's stupid and we should just buy them out. It would be cheaper.
If you want to get into the nitty gritty, it's worth talking to ChatGPT about this. Energy markets have some unique characteristics that make pricing more complex. I really dislike the current system and I'm sure we can do better, but it's not easy.
You are spot on about the original intent behind spot pricing for energy markets -- it's designed to encourage investment into the cheapest sources.
It is possible to construct a different system that would provide reasonable incentives for producers while also cutting prices for consumers, although it's tricky -- you'd need to buy out the existing older renewables contracts that were used prior to the CfDs being put in place, and replace them with PPAs, and then you'd need to maintain a spot market for dispatchable power that worked for both gas peakers and storage. So it's complex. TBH, I think a more competent government would have pushed hard on doing this and seen it as crucial for maintaining political support. Obviously the detail is sufficiently complex that there's no point trying to explain it all to the public; but it could reasonably be described as a fairer system that delivered lower costs for everyone.
When we have low wind nights (not "windless", that never happens):
1. We turn on fucking gas peakers and don't worry about it. These nights are a small proportion of the overall year
2. We do, in fact, use storage, and we can use much more of it in the future, as costs continue to drop rapidly
These things aren't all or nothing. If we turn on the gas peakers 100 times in year X and then 50 a decade later and then 10 a decade after that, that's a great improvement. If we can eventually get it down to zero, that's super, but that's a problem for the distant future, the main challenge for the moment is replacing the bulk of our use of high carbon sources, which is completely feasible if we can keep the political will.
Base load is the wrong concept -- dispatchable backup is what's needed. Can be provided from gas peakers or storage.
There's a Swiss one that works somewhat like what you described, but I don't know of the Aussie one.
For your brother's sake, along with the sakes of all the other workers, let's hope there was some meaningful regulatory oversight in how that infrastructure was built. It's not as though US industry has ever really given two shits about the health of workers, whether farm laborers, meatpackers, or miners. And particulates are pretty fucking bad for you, especially PM2.5s emitted during incomplete combustion cycles.
Also of note is that the obvious way to build EV charging for trucks is with batteries and, where there's decent insolation, solar canopies. Reduces opex, reduces the size of the draw on the local grid, etc
No amount of careful planning will ever replace dumb luck.
