Beelbeebub

This is clutching at straws a bit. In the actual report they call out that renewables have lowered the daytime price putting downward pressure on the cap and the quote was from the regulator itself so one would assume they are aware of the context. But if we wear our steixlty logical hat - whilst we cannot say that a rise in renewables certainly lowers prices we can say that a rise in renewables does not invariably lead to a rise in prices. In fairness they do also say that the loss of revenue for thermal plants during the daylight hours means the costs have to be put into the price of thermal power when it is needed pushing that bit up. They also note that a drop in the Lng prices in late 2025 helped lower wholesale costs, though that has now been reversed. They say that grid scale battery systems are starting to mitigate those fluctuations by providing a customer during daylight to recharge and providing cheaper than thermal power on the evenings further displacing thermal power. Bear in mind the displacement of thermal power during the day doesn't markedly increace the fixed (capital, depreciation etc) costs of thermal power it just concentrates them into a smaller output. So the overall cost of having a thermal plant on the grid is roughly the same regardless of it running or not, so it's not true to say the intermittency makes it more expensive (beyond some increace in maintance and fuel burns for start/stop running) overall. If it costs you £100m + fuel to keep a plant up and ready it is still cheaper to run it once and get low cost elec the rest of the time than to run it 365 days a year. Again, the report explicitly calls out the rise in the price of coal and gas on the international market as historical upward cost pressures and not the increace in renewable generation. Despite being a big exporter of coal and gas the thermal plants have to compete with international buyers so when coal jumps up the cost per Mwh from an Australian coal plant burning Australian coal also jumps up. There will be inevitable challanges and it will not be easy. But we need to get away from the narrative that there is a sensible choice between doing it and just staying as we are and lowering prices by drilling.

My understanding was that the high voltages are occurring away from the sub stations and out on the local network. Imagine you and your neighbour were both fed of a single extension cable plugged into the substation down the road. If you both export 5kw each, during the day the total is 10kw down a little B&Q extension cable. And if you both consume 5kw each that 10kw has to flow back up the cable. Putting a battery to absorb that at the substation wouldn't help the poor extension cable. 10kw would have to flow down during the day, and 10kw back at night. But if you both had battery packs capable of absorbing the power during the day and giving it back at night, the cable would see 0kw - essentially you'd be off grid.

Whilst solar has obvious advantages in Australia, the UK generates more from renewables (125Twh vs 100Twh) and Australia has a lot more distance for grid infrastructure.

How would they stabilise the voltage? As I understand it the voltage spikes and sags are more related to the lines between the house and substation. The voltage at the substation is much more stable than the voltage at the homes and jas to be set so that, at max draw, the furthest property is still above the legal limit. Unfortunately this means when there is zero draw the voltage is already high and if that hose starts to pump power in, it rises higher *at the house* so their neighbour sees higher voltage too. A battery at the substation wouldn't be able to raise or lower the voltage by much or for very long. Lowering the grid voltage to 230 rather than 240, which I believe they are doing, would help. I did see some plans for "solid state transformers" which looked to be giant inverters to change the voltage output up or down on real-time. Traditional ones can do so via changing the tapping on the winding but that is normally a maintance task. These could lower the substation voltage when generation was high so the max voltage on the network was on limits and then, when the power is demanded, raise the sub station voltage to ensure the min voltage on the network is above the limit.

But batteries at the substation won't help with the last mile of transmission. Pretty much by definition they are at thr junction between the low (relative to grid voltages! 😁) 240v system and the higher transmission voltages. If DNO's wanted to reduce the peak loading on their local network and avoid having to upgrade - then that might be an incentive for them to put batteries in customer's houses. But I'm not sure shirt term peak loads are that much of an issue for DNOs because of diversity. Their problem might be the sustained medium loads that never used to exist eg heat pumps and car chargers. That said, if you have an electrically heated street or estate, it would have been the case it would be sized for a sustained storage heater load overnight from everyone. So 4 or 5kw per house overnight. If you swap that out for heatpumps your load drops to maybe half or even 1/3 continuous. Which leaves the rest availible for charging cars overnight.

That may be a technically and economically better solution, but it may be difficult to create the incentives for that to happen. The hardware needs to go into the substation area, which is owned and operated by thr DNO, who has no interest in the consumer or the wholesale market. The energy Co doesn't have access to that facility. Putting the batteries at the consumer's end is, whilst less economic, much easier - especially if it's just shipping a box to the consumer who plugs it in and connects it to WiFi.

I think the plug in battery systems might end up being the better solution. A 1 or 2kwh plug in unit - especially if linked to time of use tariffs - could make a big difference to bills and the current 4-pm demand peak. I keep thinking that octopus or similar could offer a tariff where you get a plug in battery and got a guarenteed low price for Xkwh a day. Say you pay £1 a day all in for 5kwh with the rest charged at normal rates - maybe a roll over/forward facility up to 10kwh in a single day. The energy supplier would make their profit by charging the battery at cheap periods and thus reducing their volume a at high price periods. If such device were just a suitcase sized box delivered to your door, connected to WiFi and plugged in somewhere it could get really good uptake.

https://www.aer.gov.au/news/articles/news-releases/aer-releases-final-default-market-offer-2026-27 If renewables are going to make the grid more expensive how come they are making it cheaper on Australia? The combined range of price changes (flat rate and time of use) are: New South Wales: Residential -3.4% to -7.7%, Small business -9.0% to -20.9% South East Queensland: Residential -7.2% to -10.7%, Small business -10.4% to -14.0% South Australia: Residential -1.1% to +1.4%, Small business -6.8% to -12.1% AER Chair Clare Savage said.. “The reductions compared to last year reflect easing costs across most components of the DMO, particularly in wholesale energy, where we’ve seen lower electricity contract prices, reduced spot price volatility, and increased output from wind and battery generation during evening peaks.” “Despite uncertainty created by conflict in the Middle East, wholesale energy costs have not increased.” Of course australia did see diesel almost double before falling back to (currently) about 25% more than pre war levels which is painful - but underscores the advantage of switching transport away from fossil fuels.

I see this point come up alot, but wouldn't it only apply if the person overloaded the circuit to begin with? If you have a standard ring on a 32a breaker they can run several appliances together, say 3, up to the 32a limit, but the typical 2.5mm cables are only rated for 20a and the whole concept relies on both ends of the ring taking the load so no one part ever sees more than 20a. A person could run more than 32a of load if the additional current was provided by the solar but as long as the wiring run from the solar to the load wasn't exceeding 20a it would be fine. So a tumble dryer plugged into the same double socket as the solar would be fine. The problem might occur if the loads and sources were too far apart or unbalanced but that is a statistical risk the ring main system accepts anyway.

there are premade rubber cable entry "patches" for cable and pipe entry.

Yes, this is (I think) more of a modern problem. In the past our politicians were somewhat more serious. You may disagree with various historical politicans and they may have made disastrous decisions and mistakes but it seems (at least in hindsight) that they took the job of being a politician seriously. They would sit for hour long serious TV debates where they would delve into complex matters. The interviewers and opposition acted in good faith and followed up. Look at the TV debates of the 70's and even 80's. The vast majority of government work carried out by the professional civil service and their advice was taken seriously. This was why someone with no particular ecperice ofnhealth/defence etc could fulfil the role. Now, as mentioned, politicans don't act in good faith. It's all soundbites, misquotes and blaming the "deepstate" for stopping you doing what you want to do (mainly because it's a massively stupid thing to do). One of the Trump appointees - possibly homeland security, recently floated the idea of cutting the number of federal customs and border staff at airports im cities that weren't cooperating with ICE. At the time everyone thought it was just some off thr cuff remark because to cut staff at NY, Washington etc airports - some of the biggest in the US, would cause absolute carnage with most of the economic fallout being borne by the cities that the travelers were eventually heading for rather than the ones they first landed in. Anyone with an ounce of understanding of international travel, tourism etc would contemplate such a scheme. Anyway, it looks like they might be serious.... Because Trump's primary criteria for appointments is personal loyalty rather competence.

There's an intersitn flip side to this which is the tendency of people who are really skilled in a given area to not think of their skill/knowledge etc as exceptional and think everyone else is of a similar ability. This is what sometimes males excellent skiers, artists, scientists etc bad teachers. "you just bend the knees and turn the skis!" they shout at their poor student. It's can also lead to disastrous political consequences when politicans, who may be immersed in a complex and counterintuitive policy area, put questions to the public assuming the answer is obvious to everyone.

I remember when diesels were slow, noisy and heavy.

That graph is by the oil industry. It's including absolutely everything they suspect might be out there. It includes unknown discoveries ie fields we don't even know exist yet and even unknown improvements to extraction technology to get more oil than we think we can at the moment. And even then, after all that optimism, production still falls 50%. The question of whether or not the costs of extracting that last little bit of oil are worth it or not is seperate from the question of what good that little extra bit will do.

This is the point ☝️ Some politicans are selling the idea that the UK could be Saudi Arabia or texas if only thr "woke" politicans would get out of the way and allow the oil companies to drill, lower our bills and increace our energy security (out of the goodness of their hearts). It's bollocks. Our high energy prices and energy insecurity would not be made better by all the drilling in the world and the very things that will help are opposed by the same politicans.