Where is the kWh price heading in 2022?

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, oldkettle said:

Green energy is not a short or a medium term solution, this is my point. 

Why isn't it the solution?

Wind power in the UK produces about 70,000 GWh a year.

If Hinkley Point was running, it would produce less than half that.

 

[oldkettle]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

Why isn't it the solution?

 

Because you are only looking at electricity ?

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1032260/UK_Energy_in_Brief_2021.pdf page 12

electricity is 24.1/120.9 of what's used (or rather was in 2020 which is not a great reference point by itself)

 

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1043311/Energy_Trends_December_2021.pdf page 1, about the 3d quarter of the year

"Unfavourable weather conditions meant that renewable generation fell to 24.3 TWh, the lowest value in four years and down 17 per cent on the same quarter last year. As a share of total generation, renewable generation fell 4.0 percentage points to 35.9 per cent. Wind generation was particularly affected, down 30 per cent on the same period last year as wind speeds dropped to their lowest level this century. The share of generation attributed to fossil fuels increased to 44.8 per cent, 2.5 percentage points up on the same quarter last year." So - how much more needs to be built to get us to 80%? And how much new infrastructure will be required? And how much are you going to have to replace every year once you get to 80% coverage?

And don't get me started on the storage.

 

There is no way whatsoever to replace most of our current usage of fossil fuel with electricity in the next 10 years. This doesn't mean not building renewable generation - but I'd rather it had zero subsidies. We are told it's profitable - well, with these oil/gas/coal prices they bloody should be. No need for us taxpayers topping it up. In the meantime, "drill, baby, drill" and use whatever we can to make sure Russia and similar actors don't rip the benefits of their behaviour. 

[SuperJohnG]

[Gus Potter]

On 07/03/2022 at 22:05, SteamyTea said:

I had the great pleasure of showing David Elliot around my university back in 2006.

He tells interesting stories about nuclear power decision making in government.

One of my mentors was Professor Ian MacLeod of not least Strathclyde University. He taught me about the importance of having a robust energy mix that could withstand environmental and geopolitical shocks. He has been lobbying the Scottish Gov for years about this.. fell on deaf ears.

 

It's often overlooked but folk don't realise that natural gas is used to make the precursors for things like plastic.. heart valves and so on. Ineos at Grangemouth in Scotland is prime example. Wind turbines make electricity but no byproducts for say your electric cars.. that need also needs a lot of plastic and faux leather.

 

Coal fired power stations make fly ash that we use in low carbon concretes and as a retarder! So we now buy fly ash from China.. who are building apparently a new coal fired power station every week..

 

 

[SteamyTea]

9 hours ago, oldkettle said:

Because you are only looking at electricity ?

Yes, but it does go back to what the IEE said 30 years ago about decarbonising and replacing existing generation capacity.

The electrification of all energy sources are not a new 'thing' that needs to shock people.  The UK has consistently had a bad record of investing in the energy sector and has changed policy every few years.  There has been no long term plan, and infrastructure planning has been, generally, left to town councils to approve.  The same town council departments that hamper people building a home, or demand that a window has to be moved six inches.

6 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

It's often overlooked but folk don't realise that natural gas is used to make the precursors for things like plastic.. heart valves and so on

Yes, and for every lifesaving heart valve, we make several tonnes, if not hundred of tonnes or unnecessary products from plastic.

No one is saying that transitioning off fossil fuels will be easy, just worth it.

 

If I had said in 1974, 'I have seen the future of motoring, it weights 2 tonnes and does 20 MPG", I would have been laughed at.  Almost 50 years on we are driving SUVs and supplementing them with secondary vehicles that are slightly more economic on fuel.

6 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

Coal fired power stations make fly ash that we use in low carbon concretes and as a retarder! So we now buy fly ash from China.. who are building apparently a new coal fired power station every week..

Think that policy changed about a decade ago.  They were starting, from a very low base, if you look at kWh/year.person, rather than TWh/nation.

 

It is worth noting that energy is not all about solar and wind (actually the same thing), but also hydro, geothermal, tidal, and nuclear.  It is the  mental shift from combustion to non combustion that is hard part, not the actual technology used.

 

 

[SimonD]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

The UK has consistently had a bad record of investing in the energy sector and has changed policy every few years. 

 

Yup, the UK has been poor at investment in most if not all national infrastructure for far too long. And it still doesn't realise the importance here as even with the Net Zero transition, it's relying on 'the market' for said investment.

 

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Yes, and for every lifesaving heart valve, we make several tonnes, if not hundred of tonnes or unnecessary products from plastic.

No one is saying that transitioning off fossil fuels will be easy, just worth it.

 

and what is good about this challenge is that our beloved engineers and scientists are having to use their imaginations to find and  create sustainable replacement materials. Plastics from funghi is just one small fascinating area in this. It's actually leading to a better understanding of the world.

 

Edited March 9, 2022 by SimonD

[Bitpipe]

18 hours ago, oldkettle said:

 

Short term / medium term / long term. Long term - yes, sure, let's all have passive houses with great cheap storage and PV or whatever will be the latest tech in 30 years. Short term - we can't insulate 10mil properties to a high standard quickly and doing it badly seems to be a waste of resources. So solve the problem of energy dependency short term, then move on to the medium term tasks. Green energy is not a short or a medium term solution, this is my point. 

 

Ok, two separate issues here.

 

'Green' energy, aka low carbon or renewable is one thing, reducing our energy requirement is another. Both seem sensible goals to always be working towards and both get us closer to energy independence (not having to import energy and needing less overall).

 

And nothing is 'short term' in the energy world, apart from maybe sourcing LPG or oil from a different country.

 

 

Edited March 9, 2022 by Bitpipe

[Bitpipe]

19 hours ago, pocster said:

Unless you are one of my tenants 🙁

 

Or one of my teenage kids. Suddenly baths are back in vogue - moot point as they have replaced the 45 min shower.

[SteamyTea]

14 minutes ago, Bitpipe said:

two separate issues here.

Both very good points.

 

I sit and have a coffee overlooking the inner harbour and chat to 'an old fellow'. Was a brickie until he retired. 

He was adamant that renewable energy was so expensive that none of us could ever afford it.

Pointed out that it is the cheapest to deploy, and if we changed our planning policy, it would be even cheaper.

 

Only now has he realised what I have been saying for a few years is true.

[SteamyTea]

27 minutes ago, SimonD said:

Plastics from funghi is just one small fascinating area in this. It's actually leading to a better understanding of the world.

Cellulose, the first commercially useful plastic was plant based.

Many polyurethanes are as well.

Last week's comic was all about chemistry.

 

Endlessly recyclable plastics could fix our waste crisis

Katharine Sanderson

Untold amounts of plastic waste is polluting our land and seas. Now, we’re using chemical tricks to design infinitely and easily recyclable materials

 

../../../../wp-content/newsci_images/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWFnZXMubmV3c2NpZW50aXN0LmNvbS93cC1jb250ZW50L3VwbG9hZHMvMjAyMi8wMy8wMjEwMjQwMS9TRUlfOTA5NTg2NjguanBn.jpeg  

Graham Carter

 

One thing chemists do superbly is make bonds between atoms. We are now wading through the consequences of that success: plastic waste that ends up burned, landfilled or floating in the oceans. Plastics are polymers, long chains of molecules linked by strong chemical bonds. This is why they can be hard to degrade or recycle. Snipping apart those chemical bonds, to return to the small molecular building blocks, is often a tricky chemical problem.

There has been varying success in dealing with the main plastics we use. The low-hanging fruit is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is used to make plastic bottles. It can simply be shredded and remoulded into fresh bottles. No chemists need apply.

It is a different story with most other important plastics. Take polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is ubiquitous in double-glazed windows and plenty besides. “PVC’s an absolute nightmare,” says chemist Anthony Ryan at the University of Sheffield, UK. There is no known way to recycle it, and even if you did, you would end up with vinyl chloride, a toxic compound that can increase the risk of cancer.

One job for chemists, then, is to devise new reactions that can break plastics into molecules that can be reused. Susannah Scott at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has recently had success doing this with polyolefins, a class of plastic that includes polyethylene. She developed a technique that uses a catalyst to break down these plastics into smaller molecules without having to use bucketloads of heat. These smaller molecules could be used in detergents, paints or pharmaceuticals.

We also need to design new plastics and plan from the start what will happen to them after they come to the end of their life. Chemists are starting to invent plastics that can be recycled infinitely or that break down into materials that nourish the soil.

One example is the plastic devised by Ting Xu at the University of California, Berkeley. Xu added tiny enzyme-containing capsules to the plastic. The material can be processed, heated and stretched into useful objects. But when its life is over, all you need do is soak the stuff in lukewarm water for a week or so. This releases the enzymes, which digest the plastic into small molecules. We will need plenty of new materials like this if we truly want to eliminate the scourge of plastic waste.

[joe90]

Just had an Email from Octopus energy to say my standing charge is doubling soon but prices guaranteed to be £50 below the cap. They also re iterate they are a non profit organisation and have doubled their hardship fund for those struggling to pay. At least they have not gone bust like so many others. Self generating using PV with the price of panels  coming down in price is my next project to ponder.

[Pocster]

38 minutes ago, Bitpipe said:

 

Or one of my teenage kids. Suddenly baths are back in vogue - moot point as they have replaced the 45 min shower.

Stick a coin meter on the shower

[Pocster]

5 minutes ago, joe90 said:

Just had an Email from Octopus energy to say my standing charge is doubling soon but prices guaranteed to be £50 below the cap. They also re iterate they are a non profit organisation and have doubled their hardship fund for those struggling to pay. At least they have not gone bust like so many others. Self generating using PV with the price of panels  coming down in price is my next project to ponder.

Wouldn't even ponder it Joe. PV and a battery for certain.

[Bitpipe]

27 minutes ago, pocster said:

Stick a coin meter on the shower

 

I set a 20 min timer and go down to plant room and kill the hot water. Half the time they seem to be sitting on the bog on their phone with the shower running in the background...

 

[ToughButterCup]

3 minutes ago, Bitpipe said:

... Half the time they seem to be sitting on the bog on their phone with the shower running in the background...

 

One of ours managed to perfect the art of showering - well gently irrigating is a better descriptor - while whispering  sweet nothings  into a phone jammed against one shoulder. For thirty minutes at a time.  How he didn't break his neck in the process, I'll never know.

 

Oh the joy of throwing the switch on the shower circuit  just before ( his consequently un-showered ) mum and dad I left to celebrate Friday night.  And the pub, joy of joys, (then) didn't get a phone signal on any network. 

 

Ah, never mind, what a shame. 😈

[oldkettle]

3 hours ago, Bitpipe said:

Ok, two separate issues here.

 

'Green' energy, aka low carbon or renewable is one thing, reducing our energy requirement is another. Both seem sensible goals to always be working towards and both get us closer to energy independence (not having to import energy and needing less overall).

 

And nothing is 'short term' in the energy world, apart from maybe sourcing LPG or oil from a different country.

 

I agree that there are two separate issues and I agree both are not bad (with caveats). Again, my point is neither can be sorted quickly.

 

And yes, as you said, even LPG can be sourced. Learn to build bloody quickly (terminals?) because the country needs it - this is called priorities. Short term Venezuela has massive reserves which can be used, at least they are not planning to build nukes to annihilate any of their neighbours unlike Iran. Coordinating what is needed (oil/gas/coal/???) for each country and where it comes from is important and can help a lot. Oil supply is relatively flexible and coal likely is as well (need to check). Getting Australia to supply coal to Europe rather than China is hopefully an option. In any case renewable production is not the solution short term.

 

A caveat about "lower our usage" goal. Actually, "unlimited cheap energy" is an amazing way of making people around the world wealthier so hopefully we will not come to rationing energy and/or taxing it even more but rather will work on cutting usage where it's worth doing (i.e. heating) and expanding usage in other areas once we sort the supply side.

 

And plastic is not the enemy.  As @pocster quoted above, there are (or may be) good solutions, we just need to give scientists the incentive and time. Solving "single use plastics" issue is not urgent whatever many think and neither is bloody "climate change".

 

 

[Bitpipe]

6 minutes ago, oldkettle said:

 

I agree that there are two separate issues and I agree both are not bad (with caveats). Again, my point is neither can be sorted quickly.

 

I don't think any infrastructure based energy independence are quickly, nuclear power stations have a long design, approval and build time and require eye watering amounts of capital. Coal and gas would not be far behind. Ironically, renewables such as wind and solar are relatively quick to deploy and connect to the grid.

 

 

 

6 minutes ago, oldkettle said:

And yes, as you said, even LPG can be sourced. Learn to build bloody quickly (terminals?) because the country needs it - this is called priorities.

 

We have fairly recently built LPG terminals and more coming on line in the next few years - here is one by example https://avonmouth.flogas.co.uk

 

6 minutes ago, oldkettle said:

 

Short term Venezuela has massive reserves which can be used, at least they are not planning to build nukes to annihilate any of their neighbours unlike Iran.

 

Both Venezuela and Iran are being courted by the US now and Saudi is coming off the naughty step - Biden rumoured to be visiting soon after giving them the cold shoulder after the journalist execution in Turkey.

 

6 minutes ago, oldkettle said:

 

Coordinating what is needed (oil/gas/coal/???) for each country and where it comes from is important and can help a lot. Oil supply is relatively flexible and coal likely is as well (need to check). Getting Australia to supply coal to Europe rather than China is hopefully an option. In any case renewable production is not the solution short term.

 

The UK has only 3 coal fired plants left, all due to be decommissioned in the next few years. While I suppose these could have their useful life extended, it would be difficult to do while staying aligned with the climate commitments that UK is legally bound to, as would building new ones.

 

6 minutes ago, oldkettle said:

 

Actually, "unlimited cheap energy" is an amazing way of making people around the world wealthier so hopefully we will not come to rationing energy and/or taxing it even more but rather will work on cutting usage where it's worth doing (i.e. heating) and expanding usage in other areas once we sort the supply side.

 

At what cost though? The impact of 'bloody' climate change is globally acknowledged to be real and effects are staring to be felt worldwide. Once that genie is fully out of the bottle you can't put it back in.

 

[SteamyTea]

13 minutes ago, oldkettle said:

Learn to build bloody quickly (terminals?)

What planet are you on.  It would take 15 years to get a gas terminal though planning, then another 5 or so to build it.

South Hook, took 6 or 7 years to build, and that was on the old ESSO refinery site what already had the infrastructure.

 

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, Bitpipe said:

At what cost though?

One of the costs of climate change is migration.  But that is alright, the UK can set up a 'sorting hat' somewhere, maybe New Zealand.  They could use a few sheep to do it, got to be faster than what we are currently doing.

[Onoff]

1 hour ago, Bitpipe said:

that UK is legally bound to

 

What would happen if we just said b@ll@cks? Perhaps we'd get banned from Eurovision.

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, Bitpipe said:

The UK has only 3 coal fired plants left, all due to be decommissioned in the next few years. While I suppose these could have their useful life extended, it would be difficult to do while staying aligned with the climate commitments that UK is legally bound to, as would building new ones.

 

The present energy crisis will trump CO2 reduction for the vast majority of people.  I would say keep these remaining coal burners running as long as they are fit to run, to cut down our dependence on gas and keep them going 24/7. 

 

That should not alter the longer term targets of renewable energy and CO2 reduction, and should make us speed up the progress towards that.

[SteamyTea]

3 minutes ago, ProDave said:

The present energy crisis will trump CO2 reduction for the vast majority of people.

Or we could keep explain that RE can deliver at <£55/MWh and FF is now costing >£80/MWh.

Even utility scale PV is cheaper than coal now.

 

So maybe, to get around the planning problems, the government should be fitting, free of charge and obligations, PV to all suitable roofs.

Let us say there are 10 million suitable properties, and each can have, on average, 2 kW_p.

So 20 GW_p of installed capacity.

If this was done at scale, and in an organised manner, probably cost £3000 per installation.

So £30bn.

A estimate on generation would be 2 MWh per installation per year, so 20 TWh/year.

 

I am sure the government can raise £30bn easily enough, it is going to be paying 10% of that as a council tax rebate, 

[CotswoldDoItUpper]

Am I missing something… I’ve fixed my bulk LPG supply at 35.7p/l inc vat. This is about 5p/kWh. An LPG generator would have to work at an efficiency below 18% efficiency to make it not worth it. 
what efficiency are lpg gennys? This might be. Better option then PV!

 

think this one would cost 28.5p/kWh running at half load. Obv more cost effective at full load. Anyone want to check my maths? 
 

https://www.hampshiregenerators.co.uk/product/generators/lpg-generators/greengear-ge3000uk-3kw-portable-lpg-powered-generator/

Edited March 9, 2022 by CotswoldDoItUpper

[ToughButterCup]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

....

I am sure the government can raise £30bn easily enough, 

...

 

You are too kind. 

[AliG]

1 hour ago, CotswoldDoItUpper said:

Am I missing something… I’ve fixed my bulk LPG supply at 35.7p/l inc vat.

I think LPG is around 70p now.