Electricity price hike

[AliG]

I am no engineer, but it seems to me that they would be prone to breaking and difficult to fix. The world is very good at finding the most efficient solution to a problem and seeing it win in the market. If these were better than wind turbines a large turbine manufacturer would make them and win market share.

 

Reading a couple of things in the good old DM today. Maybe I shouldn't read it!

 

1. This is all down to renewables - No it isn't it is down to reliance on gas and the high gas price. Less renewables would make us even more reliant on gas.

 

2. We are offering to subsidise the fertiliser plants that produce CO2 whilst gas prices are high. This seems like a sensible temporary solution. A lot of people are calling for them to be nationalised, the problem is not our non ownership of the plants, it is the price of gas which would be the same no matter who owned the plants.

 

One thing I have advocated, having worked in financial markets for my whole career and seen various commodities doing this kind of thing is that commodities trading should be limited to those properly involved in the markets. People don't need to buy shares or Bitcoin so if people want to speculate with them and send prices all over the place go right ahead. But commodities are necessary for people's day to day lives and extra volatility caused by speculators in the markets is unhelpful.

 

[bgmill]

44 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

 

To me at present this is no 48 in the parade of microwind red herrings.

 

I have seen nothing so far that suggests it will be practical. 

 

 

To be fair, they make it quite clear on the homepage that they don't have a minimum viable product yet but I'm sure something along these lines could make a good addition to a solar setup, especially here in the UK where there's probably more windy days that sunny days per year. It will also never be as productive as a traditional wind turbine but that requires planning permission, takes up more space, is expensive and looks pretty ugly too!

[SteamyTea]

3 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

I am fed up with BBC journalists claiming that a new windfarm will supply all the electricity for a city like Edinburgh when the truth is that on a few days each year when there is half a gale blowing across Scotland the new wind farm will briefly provide the city with all its electricity.

Can you show me a gas or coal power plant that has 100% capacity factor over a year.

3 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

Today those figures are something like 27% availability for onshore and 38% offshore.

Those are mean figures, find out the variability between different sites and different turbine types.

And, it is measuring different things. The MW / MWH, against a 100% capacity factor.

4 hours ago, LSB said:

17 hours ago, Dave Jones said:

https://vortexbladeless.com/

 

 

I wonder when this will be available and how much it will cost, and more importantly how reliable it will be

I love the idea of having this, but looking at their site it doesn't look like it is going to be any time soon.

There is a reason that the 3 blade wind turbine dominates.

[epsilonGreedy]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

There is a reason that the 3 blade wind turbine dominates.

 

 

Yes, it is far more effective at killing millions of birds.

[Ferdinand]

1 hour ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

Yes, it is far more effective at killing millions of birds.

 

Let's put that one in perspective.

 

Cats actually top the list when it comes to annual bird deaths in the United States. (Image courtesy of National Audubon Society.)

 

https://www.evwind.es/2020/10/01/the-realities-of-bird-and-bat-deaths-by-wind-turbines/77477

 

Similar data for the UK:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48936941

[AliG]

Self builders with massive amounts of glazing should probably be a specific category

[oldkettle]

7 hours ago, AliG said:

One thing I have advocated, having worked in financial markets for my whole career and seen various commodities doing this kind of thing is that commodities trading should be limited to those properly involved in the markets. People don't need to buy shares or Bitcoin so if people want to speculate with them and send prices all over the place go right ahead. But commodities are necessary for people's day to day lives and extra volatility caused by speculators in the markets is unhelpful.

Wow

I didn't expect this from a person in the business. 

And we need to ban developers because housing speculation is bad. And a lot of other things. This really works well - banning. 

☹️

As usual, the remedy that is worse than the illness. The law of unintended consequences is implacable. 

[AliG]

The government interferes in people's lives constantly and I would rather there was less government and intervention. For example I would downsize the DVLA and add the cost of VED to petrol and diesel. A massive reduction on bureaucracy and much harder to avoid. Of course we will need another system for electric cars, many of the suggestions that I am seeing are a bureaucratic nightmare.

 

But there are times where market actors act in only their own interests to the detriment of the population at large.This is where intervention is needed, we saw this at the time of the financial crisis.

 

Property developers are in the housing business, they build houses. However, there is an argument that people who simply accumulate land and sit on it are not exactly helping the property market. that is another thread, however.

 

For commodities, I am not clear what use having people trade multiple times the value of the underlying commodity per day is.

 

Long before the financial crisis I was very suspicious of much of the trading business of large banks. We tended not to invest in these businesses as the competitive advantage and sustainability of them was questionable. Regulatory action since the financial crisis has made these businesses considerably smaller and had banks focus on more value added, less risky activities. Many of these businesses have been "banned" by regulatory changes increasing the required capital and thus reducing returns. These operations in most cases are a fraction of the size they were 15 years ago. From a shareholder perspective, these business pay massive bonuses to staff when times are good and request funds from shareholders or in extremis taxpayers when times are bad. If you tot up the lifetime profits of the trading arms of companies such as UBS, RBS and Credit Suisse, then they have been disastrous for shareholders and great for staff.

 

I have seen quite a lot of data that suggest exchange traded commodities have seen more inflation and more price volatility than non exchange traded commodities where most market players are actually involved in the business.

 

I would also note the impact of energy traders on the situation in California 20 years ago which lead to the regulated utilities almost going bankrupt.

 

TBH though this is a small aside and much as I suspect trading might be causing some of the crazy short term moves, the main issue is the lack of contracted gas supplies.

[newhome]

I found this on MoneySavingExpert 

 

 

[recoveringbuilder]

Spoke to the greener energy company today and he said we would not benefit from solar panels, our south facing roof has two dormers as well as the middle part of the roof which changes direction, he reckoned we would not get the full benefits of the sunlight as these parts would overshadow the panels, he also mentioned there is no FIT now?! It actually made a nice change for someone to be honest with me and not try to sell me something that wouldn’t work as it should!

[AliG]

Octopus can be sneaky, you have to watch them.

 

I just did a quote on their website for Go and it still says 16.03p/kWh as the higher rate.

 

Looking today, the cheapest variable prices for me in Southern Scotland are 19.8p and the cheapest fixed prices are around 21p (Cheaper fixes were available yesterday but have already disappeared).

 

The energy price cap is currently set at 21p/kWh from October for 6 months. They may change it due to suppliers being in trouble but you could go on a variable rate and as things stand they cannot increase the price above 21p for some time, by which point things may be back to normal. I am not sure exactly which tariffs are covered by the cap so this would need checking.

 

Thus if you used Octopus Go and 25% of your consumption was at the 5p rate then you would be getting an average rate of 19.5p. So a small saving, but very dependent on your usage in the discounted period.

 

I have been waiting for my smart meter to consider moving to Octopus. I would also be crazy to move off my current fix which runs until December. However, when I have looked historically, Octopus Go would save me on electricity but the entire saving would be eaten up by their higher gas prices. Thus I would have to move to a separate gas supplier to make a saving. Not an issue for those only using electricity.

 

Octopus fixed gas price today is 5.565p/kWh. The cheapest I could find is 4.323p/kWh. So for me today I could save 7% on electricity whilst paying 29% more for gas unless I got my gas elsewhere. The October gas price cap is only 4p/kWh.

 

The point is be very careful when switching that you are getting as good a deal as it looks.

 

Also who came up with the way the cap is stated. Why not just sate 21p and 4p. These figures were quite difficult to find. I would guess they think people don't understand it.

 

Finally as things stand a lot of people could see their gas bill double and their electricity up 50%. This is going to be painful.

[oldkettle]

38 minutes ago, AliG said:

I have seen quite a lot of data that suggest exchange traded commodities have seen more inflation and more price volatility than non exchange traded commodities where most market players are actually involved in the business.

Isn't a simple look at the price of oil over the last 30 years enough to show that inflation has certainly not been excessive in this very actively traded market? Volatility - yes, but not the price. 

 

43 minutes ago, AliG said:

TBH though this is a small aside and much as I suspect trading might be causing some of the crazy short term moves, the main issue is the lack of contracted gas supplies.

 

Or to put it differently : we shot ourselves in the foot (and are planning to do more of that) by pretending we can do without fossil fuels way too soon. 

[Ferdinand]

14 hours ago, AliG said:

They may change it due to suppliers being in trouble but you could go on a variable rate and as things stand they cannot increase the price above 21p for some time, by which point things may be back to normal. I am not sure exactly which tariffs are covered by the cap so this would need checking.

 

 

 

I don't see that.

 

I see backing being given to the ones taking over from bust suppliers, as  we have a very strong mechanism to protect continuing supply.

 

To back the smaller non-hedged suppliers who have taken too many risks with their business models would be to give money to people who have built dodgy business models.

 

It seems better to let the failed operators pay the price, rather than profit from their risky behaviour,  and support the more cautious operators.

 

That is far more in line with a free-market philosophy, which seems to me the correct way to do it - since we have a market.

 

However we should have half  (=1GW) of our burnt French interconnector back up this week (worth about £10m a week to France, so Mons. Macaron unlikely to tantrum  about this one), plus wind becoming more autumnal, which should make the supply crunch in the UK potentially / less serious than the media are winding themselves up about. It is interesting that the support mechanism for fertiliser is only in place for 3 weeks, which seems a good call. 

 

Here's pasto-Pesto gubbing on about the end of the world in 3 weeks as he usually does, and my comment.

 

 

[ProDave]

13 hours ago, newhome said:

I found this on MoneySavingExpert 

 

 

Octopus  have told me my standard variable rate will rise to  20.24p in October.

 

Are they REALLY saying north of Scotland Octopus Go will be rising to 24.6855p?

 

Bang goes any saving switching to GO?  Good job I have not yet requested a smart meter.

[newhome]

21 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Octopus  have told me my standard variable rate will rise to  20.24p in October.

 

Are they REALLY saying north of Scotland Octopus Go will be rising to 24.6855p?

 

Bang goes any saving switching to GO?  Good job I have not yet requested a smart meter.

 
Mine is rising to 14.1p in October (EDF).

 

I guess with Go it depends how much you can use in the cheap period. If I had a smart meter I could flip all of my heating, DHW and car charging to run during that period so I would probably save money but would need to do the maths. 

 

[Ferdinand]

Well, my new supplier Avro just went bust, along with Green.

 

Supply started on September 13th ? 

 

Presumably I now hope that it takes some time to move me to the next supplier for a bit, so I get the current fix for as long as possible.

 

 

[Lorenz]

Just checking on my electric supplier Neon Reef and they are on the naughty step, as they have not paid their bill to OFGEM this month, that maybe an indication, really not liking a lot of things that are happening at the moment.

 

So five suppliers are looking at loosing their license, at the moment.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Lorenz

[AliG]

2 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Presumably I now hope that it takes some time to move me to the next supplier for a bit, so I get the current fix for as long as possible.

The people who went out of business last week took less than a week to switch over.

 

I just spoke to my mum whose tariff runs out on November 4th with Eon. She was offered a Fix around 5% above the cap or variable. She took the fix, if the gap was larger I would have told her to move to the variable, but it protects here from an even higher variable in 6 months.

 

The fixes being offered now are insanely high and I would just go with variable. It is quite unlikely this situation persists for more than a few months. My fix runs out in December, I am being quoted fixes at £10k a year versus my current one at £4k! If it hasn't resolved itself I will just go variable.

 

I am not clear how companies are taking people over at the moment as I would have tough that you would lose money on a new customer at the current variable cap. You can't have hedged the supply as you weren't expecting to have these customers. You would be betting that either they sign up to high priced fixes or things sort themselves out pretty quickly.

 

The Tesla still has free supercharging. I could be sneaky and use that. Elon can afford to take the hit.

 

 

[Sandybay]

Has anyone heard of this solar system? 

https://www.useallenergy.nl/contact/

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, AliG said:

I am not clear how companies are taking people over at the moment as I would have tough that you would lose money on a new customer at the current variable cap.

For interest I went on Uswitch this evening and after entering all my details "sorry no switches available at the moment" so nobody is taking new customers.

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, Sandybay said:

Has anyone heard of this solar system? 

https://www.useallenergy.nl/contact/

I don't speak Dutch, but wasn't that mentioned recently?  A solar PV system with solar thermal strapped on the back, feeding a water to water heat pump.

[Bitpipe]

4 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Well, my new supplier Avro just went bust, along with Green.

 

Supply started on September 13th ? 

 

Presumably I now hope that it takes some time to move me to the next supplier for a bit, so I get the current fix for as long as possible.

 

 

Moved to Green in May after coming off SSE which we were moved to when Tonik went pop.

 

Was in credit with Green due to low summer usage, requirement to pay one month upfront and they just took this months  DD before today’s news so question is is that balance protected?

 

I think I was in debt to Tonik by a few pounds so can’t remember what happened there.

[Bitpipe]

Regarding balances… 

 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/inews.co.uk/news/consumer/what-happens-energy-supplier-bust-rights-explained-companies-risk-gas-crisis-1213069/amp

I was in credit, will I get my money back?

Customers owed money by firms that collapse should still be able to recover their outstanding credit balances. According to Ofgem, the new supplier you are switched to should arrange for any credit to be paid back or taken off of your bill. The cost of energy during the period of the switch-over will also be deducted from your account balance. 

On the other hand, if you owe money to your old supplier, it’s not necessarily so simple. Debts may still be outstanding to your old supplier, insolvency administrators appointed on their behalf, or your new supplier, depending on who arranges to take on customer debts.

[Johnnyt]

How do I stand?

Moved house to self build on 27 August been chasing credit balance of Avro from last property gas/elec account of £365.

Have temp supply in not complete new property with BG and living in our motorhome.

 

Stuffed methinks as new supplier wont be taking over failed account

 

JT

 

PS I need to get my 10 kWp PV array online asap

 

Edited September 22, 2021 by Johnnyt
addition

[SteamyTea]

3 of us at work tonight, I am with EDF, one of the others is with Avro, and the other, Green.

Told them to take pictures of their meters in the morning so there is less argument about refunds.

 

I owe EDF money, why I have stuck to the variable with quarterly billing.  I get a lot more payment flexibility.