Where is the kWh price heading in 2022?

[AliG]

Another 60p on the gas price today.

 

Probably adds another £600 to predictions tomorrow.

 

As @SimonD said at this rate we would simply be giving all of our money to the owners of gas.  They must think we are stupid/crazy.

Amazing how little coordinated effort there is to do something. This is worse than COVID.

 

Gas price now more than 15x what it was 18 months ago.

[ProDave]

9 minutes ago, AliG said:

Gas price now more than 15x what it was 18 months ago.

Has any single commodity ever gone up that much in a year?  150% inflation on the gas price.

[AliG]

40p to 700p. So plus 1650%!

 

I am sure there have been worse isolated incidents. Like electricity prices in California when Enron went bankrupt.

 

But I am not aware of anything on a large scale like this. The oil price was up about 5x from depressed COVID levels at its highs.

 

In the 70s and early 2000s the oil price went up 5-10x over a number of years. That was a global issue though.

[Pocster]

F me wish I bought pv and batteries and wasn’t laughed at …

[Temp]

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

Has any single commodity ever gone up that much in a year?  150% inflation on the gas price.

I thinks it 1500% 🤣

[SteamyTea]

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

Has any single commodity ever gone up that much in a year?

Divorce.

Not that  would dare call a wife a chattel.

[Temp]

The main problem is that Russia is only running the Nordstream pipeline at 20% of capacity and will shut it for three days next week for unplanned maintenance. 

 

Gazprom are saying "the pipeline's only remaining compressor requires maintenance". I guess we can expect that compressor to "fail" mid winter.

 

 

[ProDave]

7 minutes ago, Temp said:

The main problem is that Russia is only running the Nordstream pipeline at 20% of capacity and will shut it for three days next week for unplanned maintenance. 

 

Gazprom are saying "the pipeline's only remaining compressor requires maintenance". I guess we can expect that compressor to "fail" mid winter.

 

 

In a way I wish they would shut the bloody thing now and we would refuse to buy anything from Russia.

 

God what a shambles the whole EU energy policy has been, to place ourselves so dependant on potentially unfriendly states.

[Temp]

"UK imports no fuel from Russia for first time on record"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62659391

 

I think the problem is more countries like Germany and Poland(?) are dependent on Russian gas in winter and that's pushing up gas prices for everyone. They are trying to fill storage tanks as fast as possible in case Russia turns off the tap.

 

[Onoff]

18 minutes ago, ProDave said:

so dependant on potentially unfriendly states.

 

Just wait until the Chinese control / switch off our infrastructure and telecoms!

[ProDave]

1 minute ago, Onoff said:

 

Just wait until the Chinese control / switch off our infrastructure and telecoms!

Then I will say "told you so"  if the internet still works.

[saveasteading]

5 minutes ago, Temp said:

UK imports no fuel from Russia

Unless it has come via an intermediary.

 

Actually they test it and know where it came from.

Russia selling happily to India it seems.

 

Come the winter will the oil companies supply UK and Norway at the old price   and to Germany etc at market rate?...I think we know.

[AliG]

7 hours ago, Onoff said:

 

Just wait until the Chinese control / switch off our infrastructure and telecoms!

I see this one a lot.

 

Makes no sense to me. If China builds a nuclear power station in another country they won’t be running it and able to switch it off. The locals would be running it.

[Onoff]

45 minutes ago, AliG said:

I see this one a lot.

 

Makes no sense to me. If China builds a nuclear power station in another country they won’t be running it and able to switch it off. The locals would be running it.

 

I think it's why the US and Australia have been so strict on telecoms gear from China connected to their networks? Fear of backdoors. Aren't our emergency service radio systems reliant on Chinese tech? Trojan horse stuff.

 

I believe John Deere have been able to disable some highly expensive farm machinery looted from Ukraine.

 

Didn't the Russians give massive support to the UK anti fracking industry?

 

Too many add ups with our politicians turning a blind eye for their own short term gain.

 

I'm fine with being labelled a conspiracy theorist btw.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, Onoff said:

I'm fine with being labelled a conspiracy theorist btw.

Did you watch this in your youth?

 

[Radian]

1 hour ago, Onoff said:

I'm fine with being labelled a conspiracy theorist btw.

 

OK, you're a conspiracy theorist.

 

Although I just found this while poking about in my brand new Miele dishwasher's firmware:

Quote

(15) Andrey A. Chernov

Copyright (C) 1997 by Andrey A. Chernov, Moscow, Russia.
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met.....

 

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, Radian said:

Copyright (C) 1997 by Andrey A. Chernov, Moscow, Russia.

Still on dialup then.

[joe90]

What I don’t get is if British Gas are making more profit then surely they are charging more than the markup on the raw materials 🤷‍♂️.

[Marvin]

1 hour ago, Onoff said:

I'm fine with being labelled a conspiracy theorist btw.

Having theories is a good way to develop solutions to problems.  Using the common sense approach is often a good way to check your sanity.  and @joe90 comment above is just that!

 

 

[Marvin]

2 minutes ago, joe90 said:

What I don’t get is if British Gas are making more profit then surely they are charging more than the markup on the raw materials 🤷‍♂️.

Yup! Avoiding the rocket science answers is almost always the best approach.

[andyscotland]

11 minutes ago, Radian said:

Although I just found this while poking about in my brand new Miele dishwasher's firmware:

 

Copyright (C) 1997 by Andrey A. Chernov, Moscow, Russia.

 

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met.....

 

To be fair that generally means the manufacturer has included public domain open source code that the author has allowed to be used without payment so long as they get a credit.

 

It's the closed source code manufacturers add that you need to be worried about!

[Marvin]

14 hours ago, AliG said:

As @SimonD said at this rate we would simply be giving all of our money to the owners of gas.  They must think we are stupid/crazy.

 

No. They think we're desperate. You'll have to decide the answer to that one yourself.

Edited August 25, 2022 by Marvin
further thought

[AliG]

42 minutes ago, joe90 said:

What I don’t get is if British Gas are making more profit then surely they are charging more than the markup on the raw materials 🤷‍♂️.

 

 

https://www.centrica.com/investors/results-centre/2022-interim-results/

 

British Gas also produce gas. The profits of their residential distribution business almost halved in the first half of the year to 90 odd million.

 

The profits of their gas production business on the other hand went up more than 10 fold to over 900million.

 

Basically non Russian owners of energy assets are making out like bandits as they can sell all the gas they can produce at massively inflated prices.

 

The media has absolutely no interest in reporting things calmly and sensibly so just lets people be confused by the thought that their gas supplier, British Gas, is making lots of money. It’s not even called British Gas any more, the company is called Centrica, BG is just their energy supply brand. If BG is doing well then all energy suppliers must be doing well. Energy suppliers are of course majorly hurting, it is energy producers that are doing well.  Norway must be making an absolute fortune. We can’t charge a windfall tax on Norway!

 

One possible solution would be to exert political pressure on countries like Norway to sell gas at below the market price. They won’t like it but it is totally immoral of them to be taking advantage of a situation caused by a war. Now I’m all for free markets, but within reason. They could be selling gas for twice the previous price and still making a fortune. They need to be able to do this to offset times when prices are low. No one offered to pay extra when prices collapsed due to COVID. But prices are not symmetrical, they cannot go lower than zero but can go up infinitely in theory. This ceased to be a normal market when Russia invaded Ukraine and restricted supply.  Windfall taxes are a roundabout way of taking away excess profits but they cannot totally fix things as net importers of gas cannot tax net exporters.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

14 minutes ago, AliG said:

British Gas also produce gas.

Yes.

15 minutes ago, AliG said:

But prices are not symmetrical, they cannot go lower than zero

They do. Not unusual to be paid to take gas. Happened a while back when a new interconnect opened.

It is often cheaper, overall, to give something away than store it. Much depends on the interaction between the accountancy methods and the companies economic modelling.

[Stones]

It's quite interesting to see how vested interests are using this emergency (having been escalated from its previous crisis status). The Ch Exec of Scottish Power (seemingly supported by the bulk of the industry in the UK) , has proposed freezing prices and the govt loaning energy companies the excess required to buy energy at whatever the market price is over the next two years, with that money being paid back by bill payers over the next 20 years - basically the governments original £400 help proposal on steroids. What he neglects to mention is that it neatly takes the risk away for the industry in terms of non payment and potentially cutting people off, and will allow their generation arms to continue making money hand over fist where that generation is fixed cost.

 

Easy to see that the government will be seduced by this approach, neatly kicks the can down the road and they can present it as keeping bills down, as a loan to industry rather than public debt and to keep the green transition alive. 

 

Telling people to use less, turn down the thermostat, wear a jumper etc simply is not a political option for the government, even though it is what's actually needed.