Electricity price hike

[recoveringbuilder]

My current fixed rate tariff ends on October 1st , using some of the comparison sites they won’t quote at all at the moment, if I choose to move to another tariff with my current provider my yearly bill will jump from£985 a year to £1300 a year on a two year fixed deal, this seems excessive, there’s only two of us in the house! 
wondering if it’s time to look into solar panels and if there are any government grants available?

[Ferdinand]

Unlikely for solar panels now. So cheap subsidy is no longer required.

 

Grants currently are under the ECO programme I think for basic stuff. There ay be others around.

 

For switches at the moment, I would consider the "big suppliers" (there's a filter on MSE Cheap Energy club) as they are most likely to be fully hedged wrt immediate market turmoil.

 

But I would sit on it for a few days, as it feels as if there may be some Govt intervention or guarantee of some sort, since media are being rather hysterical.

 

Ferdinand

 

[SteamyTea]

8 hours ago, recoveringbuilder said:

if I choose to move to another tariff with my current provider my yearly bill will jump from£985 a year to £1300 a year on a two year fixed deal, this seems excessive, there’s only two of us in the house

If you are with a small 'challenger' provider, you may find they disappear.

I don't see how only being two of you in the house changes the house base load, that is a function of size and internal temperature.

 

Changing your car could possibly save you £350 a year.

[nod]

I just get the feeling of De ja vu with all this 

Didn't the poets that be push is all towards diesel cars with promises of cheaper prices Well at least cheaper till we had all swapped from petrol to diesel powered cars 

 

On our previous build the installation of solar panels had a Sap productive saving of 2-300 pounds per year While it may of helped to save the planet From a financial point it was and is for our next ones A no brainier 

 

Switching  between the larger suppliers seems one of the better options at the moment 

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, nod said:

Didn't the poets that be push is all towards diesel cars with promises of cheaper prices Well at least cheaper till we had all swapped from petrol to diesel powered cars 

That was to do with lowering CO₂, not price.  When I bought my first new car (a 205) in 1987, there was no price difference (on performance) and the diesel had better seats and radio.

 

1 hour ago, nod said:

Switching  between the larger suppliers seems one of the better options at the moment 

I have always stuck with them, never been enough of a difference to swap (I am in a higher energy cost part of the country).

[AliG]

This is a temporary situation which is painful for  energy suppliers and customers but will resolve itself. Wind speeds are picking up considerably which should reduce gas demand.

 

I will be feeling the pain soon, my current fix has gas at 2.1p/kWh. It looks like I will have to pay 4p ish when it runs out.

 

Funnily enough increased use of renewables will be the way out of this in the long run as they will likely have more stable prices. The cost of renewables is majorly driven by the depreciation of the installed equipment and less impacted by fluctuating commodity prices.

 

Spot electricity prices will always be volatile and indeed could get more volatile with less reliable renewable capacity, but contracted baseload capacity should fall in price as the price of renewable equipment fails.

 

Recently there has been a lack of wind, leading to higher gas use. Currently 60% of wind capacity is onshore, but most new capacity is offshore which is more reliable.

 

I did a lot of research into hydrogen power pros and cons recently and found that one of the main assumptions for increased use of hydrogen in the future is massive drops in electricity prices as more renewables are installed and they get cheaper. I was very surprised at this and it seemed an overly optimistic assumption to me, but it bodes well for prices being reasonable in the long run.

 

It certainly makes he maths much better for installing PV. You shouldn't need a subsidy. A 4kw system installed at around £4000 would generate around 3000kWh a year of electricity. That is almost £600 of electricity or a 15% ROI at current prices.This calculation shows why high prices will not continue, the return on adding new capacity will be very tempting.

 

It also starts to make the calculations on installing Powerwalls and such look a lot better.

[SteamyTea]

14 minutes ago, AliG said:

This is a temporary situation which is painful for  energy suppliers and customers but will resolve itself

While I agree the price volatility is a short term, the legal and political implications of Nord Stream may hamper long term price drops to Europe.  We have seen this before in 2006.

While our investment is wind energy is impressive, it is still on going and a long way from completion.  In 2020, wind energy contributed about a quarter to the electrical mix (75.61 TWh).

1,514,226 TWh was the UKs primary energy in 2019.

So wind power is 0.005% of our energy mix.

[George]

57 minutes ago, AliG said:

This is a temporary situation which is painful for  energy suppliers and customers but will resolve itself. Wind speeds are picking up considerably which should reduce gas demand.

 

I will be feeling the pain soon, my current fix has gas at 2.1p/kWh. It looks like I will have to pay 4p ish when it runs out.

 

Funnily enough increased use of renewables will be the way out of this in the long run as they will likely have more stable prices. The cost of renewables is majorly driven by the depreciation of the installed equipment and less impacted by fluctuating commodity prices.

 

Spot electricity prices will always be volatile and indeed could get more volatile with less reliable renewable capacity, but contracted baseload capacity should fall in price as the price of renewable equipment fails.

 

Recently there has been a lack of wind, leading to higher gas use. Currently 60% of wind capacity is onshore, but most new capacity is offshore which is more reliable.

 

I did a lot of research into hydrogen power pros and cons recently and found that one of the main assumptions for increased use of hydrogen in the future is massive drops in electricity prices as more renewables are installed and they get cheaper. I was very surprised at this and it seemed an overly optimistic assumption to me, but it bodes well for prices being reasonable in the long run.

 

It certainly makes he maths much better for installing PV. You shouldn't need a subsidy. A 4kw system installed at around £4000 would generate around 3000kWh a year of electricity. That is almost £600 of electricity or a 15% ROI at current prices.This calculation shows why high prices will not continue, the return on adding new capacity will be very tempting.

 

It also starts to make the calculations on installing Powerwalls and such look a lot better.

PV has always looked good when you assumed you used 100% of the generated electricity. But until recently this wasn't an option... although the extra £8k needed for a house battery does knock down the ROI considerably.

 

I've a 4kW on a FiT which is ending soon. Will certainly look at a house battery in more detail but I'm wary of being an early adopter!

[AliG]

8 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

While I agree the price volatility is a short term, the legal and political implications of Nord Stream may hamper long term price drops to Europe.  We have seen this before in 2006.

Yes, we have got ourselves into a right mess here. It reminds me of the situation they got themselves into in California in 00/01 where when the spot price of electricity soared the regulated utilities were not allowed to pass it through to consumers and quickly went into bankruptcy protection. This of course was totally unreasonable and eventually they got paid. I am not sure what the best course of action today is. We could just switch on the pipeline, knowing that in the long run we won't need it. We could temporarily switch coal power stations back on. We could let people feel the pain so they reduce energy consumption. My 2020 fix was considerably cheaper than in 18 and 19, hardly likely to encourage efficiency.

 

The fix for short term volatility is to have as more supply under long term contract, although I would also suggest capping the payments to spot suppliers. Much as they need high payments to guarantee supply, paying £2500 per mWh of electricity as we were last week is nonsense. 60x the normal price, equivalent to £2.50 a kWh. Luckily the percentage of electricity supply that is carbon driven and more exposed to commodity price volatility is falling all the time. It looks like it is down to about 1/3 of supply now. Commodities are a funny thing though with spot prices being driven by marginal producers and hence able to get crazy. 

 

Again the way out of it is renewables which will mean that we don't have to worry so much about importing energy and can put more supply under contract. As you say this is a long term (20 year) project, but the more that gets installed the better it gets.

 

I used to think that nuclear was the answer, but massive price increases due to safety concerns mean that renewables make a lot more sense now. They are also a lot easier to build!

 

Very little can be done in the short term as demand is quite inelastic.

[AliG]

1 minute ago, George said:

PV has always looked good when you assumed you used 100% of the generated electricity.

Fair, if you used half of it and exported half though then the return is still very respectable, a lot better than money in the bank.

 

I have looked at the Powerwall and historically did not believe it was economical. If you thought current prices would continue then it probably would be. The question is life expectancy. For solar panels they last almost indefinitely. A Powerwall has a 10 year warranty and I think that is for 70% of original capacity. The problem is that you could cycle it almost once a day.

 

A 10-15 year lifespan means you need well over a 10% ROI to make a reasonable return.

 

I will revisit the maths once I have a smart meter and can look at the savings from Octopus Go (If it remains available). I would save around £1700 a year according to the Octopus website, but Go might save me around half of that. A net saving of £800 a year would not be enough and I am a massive user of electricity (17000kWh a year). For a more  normal user the sums would be worse.

[ProDave]

10 minutes ago, AliG said:

We could let people feel the pain so they reduce energy consumption.

I doubt there are many people who waste much.

 

I am constantly looking for ways to reduce our usage but have failed, because nothing is on that is not on for a purpose.

 

I guess I could watch less television in the evening.  Wear my clothes for longer before putting them in the wash so fewer washes.  Shower only once a week?  But none of those options are attractive.

 

Bear in mind less than half of our energy use is heating the house and hot water.  You would think there was scope for some non heating use savings but I can't find them.

 

Re solar PV, I self use probably 95% of what we generate without batteries so I have concluded at the moment battery storage is really only viable if you have substantially more than 4kWp

[SteamyTea]

4 minutes ago, AliG said:

It reminds me of the situation they got themselves into in California in 00/01 where when the spot price of electricity soared the regulated utilities were not allowed to pass it through to consumers and quickly went into bankruptcy protection.

Wasn't there some dodgy, inter-state trading going on as well.  And who can forget Enron.

 

Ramping up RE capacity is the way to go, maybe we will start to build large turbines on land again, that would get the installation cost down.

 

6 minutes ago, AliG said:

The fix for short term volatility is to have as more supply under long term contract

And more storage.  Thermal storage is by far the cheapest, so back to cylinders and night heater.

Though if 30 million houses each stored 10 kWh/day, that is only 0.3 TWh, or 109 TWh/year.  Not much greater than our current wind generation.

11 minutes ago, AliG said:

£2500 per mWh

That would sort it, £2.5bn/kWh.

[AliG]

4 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

That would sort it, £2.5bn/kWh.

I should have checked, just assumed MWh was the same format as kWh.

 

[AliG]

12 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I doubt there are many people who waste much.

 

I am constantly looking for ways to reduce our usage but have failed, because nothing is on that is not on for a purpose.

 

I think people on here are at the extreme end of being energy efficient.

 

Most people have no idea, almost a quarter of people have never changed supplier which could save you an enormous amount for almost no effort.

 

I took my dad to get his ingrowing toenails taken off the other day. There was a car sitting idling the engine outside when I went in and still sitting idling when I came out over half an hour later. It was about 19C outside, so neither cold enough to need heating nor warm enough to need AC. It is also illegal.

[epsilonGreedy]

10 minutes ago, AliG said:

I should have checked, just assumed MWh was the same format as kWh.

 

 

I thought you were just teasing him.

 

There ((2 x 2 x 2) - 1) mis-capitalizations of mwH and kwh. I have only used half them so far, much fun ahead. 

Edited September 20, 2021 by epsilonGreedy

[epsilonGreedy]

29 minutes ago, AliG said:

We could temporarily switch coal power stations back on. 

 

 

We have already done that, currently coal is generating 3% of our electricity. Do we have much more coal capacity to fire up beyond the current 1GW?

 

You say offshore wind is more dependable which is true however the availability capacity of offshore wind is still well below 50%. For most of the past month wind power has contributed 10% of its BBC Headline installed capacity.

 

I think the consumer price outlook is very turbulent until the latter end of the decade. Hinkley C will, fingers crossed, start contributing 3.2GW from 2026 and a further doubling of wind capacity will make a meaningful dent in the UK gas consumption.

[SteamyTea]

52 minutes ago, AliG said:

Most people have no idea, almost a quarter of people have never changed supplier which could save you an enormous amount for almost no effort.

That does not save energy, just consumer cash.

We need, in the short term, reduce energy usage.

By far the easiest way to do that is to hike the price up.

Start the Week was about climate activism today.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000zsdg

Was an interesting listen.

I often think we forget why we are transitioning out energy model. 

[SteamyTea]

52 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

mis-capitalizations of mwH and kwh

I still think you are a (expletive deleted).

[AliG]

10 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

That does not save energy, just consumer cash.

My point is that if you can't even be bothered firing up Uswitch (other energy comparison sites are available) then you probably don't really care about energy efficiency either.

 

If I left my family to their own devices they would, for example, leave the heating on whilst we are on holiday for two weeks so that it is warm when they get home. At the recent price of around 4p/kWh that could be around £80 a week at the height of winter.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, AliG said:

If I left my family to their own devices they would, for example, leave the heating on whilst we are on holiday for two weeks so that it is warm when they get home

With the size of house you have, be cheaper to not bring them back.

[epsilonGreedy]

This thread prompted me to do a bit more reading. Previously I predicted blackouts in the mid 2020's, but now this coming winter is starting to look a bit iffy.

 

https://www.ft.com/content/7c31ca15-aa4f-4a32-bb90-ebc1341ed374

 

The UK also in effect operates a “just-in-time” approach to gas supplies.

 

The UK and parts of continental Europe are more reliant on wind turbines for electricity generation, but remarkably still weather in recent weeks has slashed wind’s contribution to the grid. That has largely been backfilled by natural gas, boosting demand for the fuel.

 

“It’s far from inconceivable that we could have a problem in the event of a very cold winter.”

 

I think it is time to boost my own onsite gas storage facility from 4 x 47kg gas bottles to 6 bottles.

 

 

[Ferdinand]

3 hours ago, George said:

PV has always looked good when you assumed you used 100% of the generated electricity. But until recently this wasn't an option... although the extra £8k needed for a house battery does knock down the ROI considerably.

 

I've a 4kW on a FiT which is ending soon. Will certainly look at a house battery in more detail but I'm wary of being an early adopter!

 

When did you start?

 

I  thought the first FiTs in UK were ending in around 2033-34 (2008 - 2010 plus 25 years)).

[Ferdinand]

Just a note to energy analysts.

 

Our World in Data now have some really good tools for this.

 

https://ourworldindata.org/energy

 

[epsilonGreedy]

6 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Just a note to energy analysts.

 

Our World in Data now have some really good tools for this.

 

https://ourworldindata.org/energy

 

 

I like that site.

 

The Covid effect will make trend spotting difficult for a few years. The drop in nuclear generation was showing up in the data up to 2019 even before the recent batch of unscheduled permanent and temporary shutdowns.

[SteamyTea]

I think we should keep a list of the smaller/newer energy companies that get mentioned in the news.  These will probably be the ones that vanish.

 

Heard Dale Vince earlier, so will Ecotricty survive (does depend on the government bailout).

And Chris Burk from Colorado Energy.

Edited September 20, 2021 by SteamyTea