Insightful piece on more or less today.

[MikeSharp01]

Caught  really interesting and easy to understand piece on the BBC's more or less programme today. It explains why our electricity prices are so high, how they are made up and how marginal pricing works. Catch the piece at 12 minutes in. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002fj8f

[SteamyTea]

But Little Tim Hartford's mate got 3 hours of gardening for 300 quid, not 1 hours gardening for 300 quid.

I better write to him before September.

[MikeSharp01]

9 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

But Little Tim Hartford's mate got 3 hours of gardening for 300 quid, not 1 hours gardening for 300 quid.

I better write to him before September.

I hadn't spotted that one I must re-listen. 

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, MikeSharp01 said:

I hadn't spotted that one I must re-listen. 

It was not a good analogy, or was it a metaphor, maybe a similarity.

 

I actually thought it was quite a good explanation of the electricity market's marginal pricing.

Odd though, as usually in business, marginal pricing reduces the price up to a limit, where a step change happens i.e. the factory reaches capacity and a new factory has to be built.

I suspect this has come about because there is over capacity in the market i.e. we have more than enough plants, but the high cost of keeping them operational needs payment.

[ProDave]

It was a good explanation of the totally mad electricity pricing market.  Explained well with the employing 3 different people to do your gardening and you HAVE to pay them all the same rate and that of the highest bidder.

 

Then lots of waffle about taxation.

 

But NOBODY I mean NOBODY is talking of restructuring the the electricity market so we stop this nonsense of paying the cheap providers the same price as the highest cost supplier.

 

Until we do that nothing is going to change.  We are NOT going to solve this under the present system just by building more renewable generation.  

 

And all the time we have this ridiculous system, anyone (such as the PM) telling us we just need more renewables to bring the price down, is being economical with the truth.

 

Someone on another forum summed this up well.  Renewables will never supply all our needs all the time, we need backup in the form of storage and alternative generation to bring on line when needed (gas)  so we will always be paying effectively for 2 parallel systems so it will always be more expensive.

[SteamyTea]

8 hours ago, ProDave said:

nothing is going to change

The pricing structure will change.

Reform have started the ball rolling, even if they call the auction system a subsidy (factually wrong), it does open up the topic for debate in parliament.

Trump did a similar thing in the USA during his first term as president. What happened was that Texas, the oil trading capital of the world, invested heavily in wind and solar.

 

The bottom line is that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of generation, so investment will head there  because the returns are better.

Why would they invest in new generation, even if it is replacement generation, when the cost is double for the same wholesale price.

What I think is the problem is the general perception about power generation, these are long-term projects with even longer term paybacks, but still profitable (unless you are French).

Too higher priority is currently being put on 'intermittency', all generation is intermittent, gas especially. The gas supply has to be managed, it is not as if the bulk natural gas supply is infinite. We don't notice this as consumers, but the large generation companies have to carefully manage and arrange for future deliveries, which is why the price of natural gas is volatile.

If we relied on coal fired generation, even assuming we had 60 GW of capacity available, how much do you think a tonne of coal would cost, more than the current price of about £100/tonne, before processing.

 

Edited July 17 by SteamyTea

[Pocster]

Get solar , get batteries- stop whining !

It was ALWAYS predictable that energy prices would increase and undoubtedly still will .

Look back at old threads on here ‘mocking’ pv, battery …. 

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, Pocster said:

Look back at old threads on here ‘mocking’ pv, battery

Still an expensive way to supply power. 

Large scale solar is so cheap, compared to domestic scale, you can't really compare the two.

It is even cheaper where land, and associated planning restrictions, are not pushing up the development costs.

[Pocster]

Just now, SteamyTea said:

Still an expensive way to supply power. 

Large scale solar is so cheap, compared to domestic scale, you can't really compare the two.

It is even cheaper where land, and associated planning restrictions, are not pushing up the development costs.

Yes - if it worked that way . It’s cheap let it be cheap for everyone . But it doesn’t work like that . Fission power eventually super cheap; but never cheap for us . Large scale cheap yes ; but never fully passed on to consumer ever 

[Roger440]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

The pricing structure will change.

 

 

 

No it wont. Not in any meaningful way.

 

Mucho cash is being made. Vested interests will make sure that continues.

 

As pocster says, electricity prices are a one way bet.

 

And for one overiding reason. Its in nobodies interest, apart from us consumers to reduce prices. Everyone involved in making and selling electricity is doing very nicely with the current arrangement.

Edited July 17 by Roger440

[Roger440]

3 hours ago, Pocster said:

Get solar , get batteries- stop whining !

It was ALWAYS predictable that energy prices would increase and undoubtedly still will .

Look back at old threads on here ‘mocking’ pv, battery …. 

 

And in my case a nice genset as well as connection costs are ridiculous.

[Simon R]

10 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Still an expensive way to supply power. 

Large scale solar is so cheap, compared to domestic scale, you can't really compare the two.

Yes, but given the time its going to take to upgrade the grid and do all the other work required for storage it's still worth 'acting local, thinking global' if you can afford it.

With an 9.2kWh battery and 3.6kW inverter installation net consumption from the grid is just a megawatt since 10/2022 when the system was installed. Exports to the grid help reduce the need for gas generation....yes, piddling amounts but it helps. It's not all good as my solar will be exporting at times when other cheaper solar sources are available and I'll be drawing from the grid on cloudy days.

Generation pricing is currently wrong and needs to be fixed basing it on gas pricing with the current generation mix is just wrong. 

[SteamyTea]

37 minutes ago, Simon R said:

With an 9.2kWh battery and 3.6kW inverter installation net consumption from the grid is just a megawatt since 10/2022 when the system was installed

That is impressive.

But not wanting to dampen things, you have also paid for a better insulated house, a heat pump (I assume) and probably tough out the odd days with thicker jumpers.

But it does show that a lot can be done, relatively affordably.

[ToughButterCup]

14 hours ago, Pocster said:

....

Look back at old threads on here ‘mocking’ pv, battery …. 

 

Way back then ( ...old threads...) I think the core of the argument against pv and battery installations - at that time - was the initial upfront cost and payback time. 

 

That equation is now different.  I've lost 'track' of the cost / benefit analysis.

How long does ( should / might) it take -now- to repay (say) 10K's worth of battery installation?

[Simon R]

On 18/07/2025 at 08:19, SteamyTea said:

But not wanting to dampen things, you have also paid for a better insulated house, a heat pump (I assume) and probably tough out the odd days with thicker jumpers.

But it does show that a lot can be done, relatively affordably.

No heat pump but we do have a 2.5kWh A2A unit for heating and cooling. We run the house at 22C all year. 

[SteamyTea]

4 minutes ago, Simon R said:

No heat pump but we do have a 2.5kWh A2A unit for heating and cooling. We run the house at 22C all year. 

So heating and cooling is done with a heat pump.  A2A is the most efficient for this, for many reasons.

What do you do for hot water?

[Simon R]

On 21/07/2025 at 12:35, SteamyTea said:

So heating and cooling is done with a heat pump.  A2A is the most efficient for this, for many reasons.

What do you do for hot water?

OK, yes, A2A is a heat pump, it just differentiates it from the air to water kind. For hot water it's a gas combi boiler. Last year our gas consumption was 120 units so in the region of 1,320 kWh for showers baths and a little washing up. Fortunately Utilita have a tariff with no standing charge.

[JohnMo]

22 minutes ago, Simon R said:

Fortunately Utilita have a tariff with no standing charge

But the unit cost makes up for it, especially the first few. You have to use 86p worth of energy at a high rate before cheaper rates apply, so first 4 or 5kWh is 20p+ per kWh!

 

I just ditched gas because it made no financial sense to keep it.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, Simon R said:

Fortunately Utilita have a tariff with no standing charge

I think last month my standing charge was greater than my usage charge.

[Pocster]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

I think last month my standing charge was greater than my usage charge.

In a brothel ?

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, Pocster said:

In your brothel

 

[Kelvin]

On 18/07/2025 at 09:34, ToughButterCup said:

 

Way back then ( ...old threads...) I think the core of the argument against pv and battery installations - at that time - was the initial upfront cost and payback time. 

 

That equation is now different.  I've lost 'track' of the cost / benefit analysis.

How long does ( should / might) it take -now- to repay (say) 10K's worth of battery installation?

Our house has a fairly high consumption which makes the sums a bit more sensible. We fitted 19 x 445W PV panels (East/West), 24kWh of battery storage and a wholehome backup gateway for £13,000. The payback seems to be between 5 and 7 years depending on how optimistic/pessimistic I am with the numbers. We’ve had one power cut since it was installed and I only knew about it because it sent me a notification to say it was off grid. 

[SteamyTea]

On 18/07/2025 at 08:34, ToughButterCup said:

How long does ( should / might) it take -now- to repay (say) 10K's worth of battery installation

I think the problem is two fold.

How much electricity do you use.

What percentage of the PV yield can you utilise.

 

There is a third/forth option and that is your personal views on environmental issues and aversions to power cuts.

 

So it really boils down to each individual having a different formula.

[JohnMo]

On 18/07/2025 at 09:34, ToughButterCup said:

How long does ( should / might) it take -now- to repay (say) 10K's worth of battery installation?

That depends, what is your cost of energy now, and what could it be.  Even with a pret ty rubbish week for solar, we have used nearly all of it. So over the week our average cost for a unit of electric works to be 3p. Also depends on the export profile you can get, I don't anything, but my payback is more than acceptable.

 

Other thing, why are paying 10k for a battery, our GivEnergy AIO, was no where near that cost for 13.4kWh.  On Octopus Cosy I only need to charge to 50% each time to get me through day with no solar. Don't expect to pay more that 12p per kWh even on the coldest day with zero solar.

 

Simple maths average 20kWh per day over the year, flat rate tariff is 25p/kWh, Cosy is 12p, so a £1000 per year saved. I will get 6 months with a real cosy close to 4p. So saving per year gets closer £1250.

[Kelvin]

The week before the system was installed we spent £36 on electricity (includes charging the car) The week it was installed we spent £6 also including charging the car. However we also exported £5 of electricity to the grid which we didn’t get paid for as we don’t have the export MPAN number yet. I’ve put the system into self-consumption mode currently. I did have it in ‘AI’ mode but what it was doing was dumping any energy in the battery to the grid outside of the cheap tariff window and adding some energy back through the cheap period and then using PV to charge it the next day (it looks at the weather forecast)