Two bits of news on the US electricity market

[Alan Ambrose]

I know there are differences between the US and UK markets, but I think it does give some possible scenarios for the UK:

 

Complicated behaviour but price is trending upwards quite quickly, also grid limits are having a big impact:

 

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/whats-happening-to-wholesale-electricity

 

Big commercial consumers are being aggressive about trading in the power market themselves:

 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-pushes-power-trading-ai-142646215.html

 

Does that mean the domestic consumer is increasingly vulnerable?

[SteamyTea]

The USA grid is much more 'point to point' than the UK grid, so bottle necks are much more frequent.

They also had a dash for gas about 15 years back due to the advances in deep directional drilling and fracturing.

As gas is a global commodity, and the global price has risen, the USA is paying a higher price for the home market than Trump will let on.  Oil prices are down though.

 

We already have a trading scheme for large domestic users (TRIAD) and this is what some domestic suppliers are playing with when they offer time if use pricing. There may come a time when the ToU included paid disconnection.

That will catch a lot of people out.

 

The UK also has a much more regulated market than the USA, with quality of services being much higher up in importance.

 

Really hard to compare USA and UK price structures, but easier to compare USA and EU zone  they have greater similarities.

[Alan Ambrose]

Yeah, but the general factors - PV farms & windpower in remote places grid-wise and lumpy new datacentre consumers are still challenges that affect both.

 

There was a Stanford professor who was forecasting super-cheap electricity coming along real soon now based on the economics of PV - is that out of the window now?

[Crofter]

I'm currently in the US and I've been struck by how little domestic PV there is. Whole streets of brand new houses and not a panel in sight. 

They're also far behind us with offshore wind. There's a few turbines in New England and people are misplacing their excrement over it. They don't seem to be aware that the rest of the world has thousands of these turbines already.

Trump has called a halt to an 80% finished project which will have interesting legal repercussions. There are fleets of huge construction vessels now sitting idle. It's pretty crazy.

[ProDave]

12 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

Yeah, but the general factors - PV farms & windpower in remote places grid-wise and lumpy new datacentre consumers are still challenges that affect both.

Talk of new data centres for all this AI investment that is due to land.

 

Now here is a thought.  There is more wind power in Scotland than can currently be transported south, and still they are building more.  Why not build these power hungry data centres up here to use up some of that spare power?  I bet they won't do anything sensible like that though.

[-rick-]

12 minutes ago, Crofter said:

I'm currently in the US and I've been struck by how little domestic PV there is. Whole streets of brand new houses and not a panel in sight. 

They're also far behind us with offshore wind. There's a few turbines in New England and people are misplacing their excrement over it. They don't seem to be aware that the rest of the world has thousands of these turbines already.

Trump has called a halt to an 80% finished project which will have interesting legal repercussions. There are fleets of huge construction vessels now sitting idle. It's pretty crazy.

 

Watched a video on this recently. Solar panels are very expensive there. They have tariffs on panels to protect local manufacturers so they haven't seen the cost reductions the rest of the world has due to China's build out (though they do have domestic manufacture). Permitting is apparently a complete hodge podge depending where you live and it might take many months to get approved to install solar (and that's in areas that are actively encouraging it). The utilities have also been hostile to exporting in many areas.

[-rick-]

14 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Now here is a thought.  There is more wind power in Scotland than can currently be transported south, and still they are building more.  Why not build these power hungry data centres up here to use up some of that spare power?  I bet they won't do anything sensible like that though.

 

I saw some positive language about this a while ago but the bulk of data centres won't get built in Scotland. Tech companies want them near the high bandwidth fibre nodes and where the expertise lives which is mostly around London.

[JohnMo]

14 minutes ago, Crofter said:

I'm currently in the US and I've been struck by how little domestic PV there is. Whole streets of brand new houses and not a panel in sight. 

They're also far behind us with offshore wind. There's a few turbines in New England and people are misplacing their excrement over it. They don't seem to be aware that the rest of the world has thousands of these turbines already.

Trump has called a halt to an 80% finished project which will have interesting legal repercussions. There are fleets of huge construction vessels now sitting idle. It's pretty crazy.

But a normal car isn't, it's a V8 truck. Everything is cheap, so why would the normal person care.

 

Electric is between 15 and 17 cents per kWh, so well under half what we pay?

[-rick-]

10 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Everything is cheap, so why would the normal person care.

 

Electric is between 15 and 17 cents per kWh, so well under half what we pay?

 

Everything is relative. Food costs quite a bit more in the US. Houses have been built without energy efficiency in mind so the average consumer uses more electricity than we do.

 

200A 240V service is the norm in the US (at least for new construction).

 

Because of tarriffs and the immigration crack down (nobody left to tend the farms), food prices are going up like crazy. Electricity prices also going up by 20-30% wlil be felt quite strongly.

[JohnMo]

6 minutes ago, -rick- said:

 

Everything is relative. Food costs quite a bit more in the US. Houses have been built without energy efficiency in mind so the average consumer uses more electricity than we do.

 

200A 240V service is the norm in the US (at least for new construction).

 

Because of tarriffs and the immigration crack down (nobody left to tend the farms), food prices are going up like crazy. Electricity prices also going up by 20-30% wlil be felt quite strongly.

So give it another 10 years they maybe paying European prices, my heart bleeds for them. They don't have to consume so much electricity - forgot they need a huge walk-in fridge for all the food they buy at Costco and Walmart, because it's so expensive.

[-rick-]

It wouln't shock me if its 2 years. The amount of planned data centre build in the US is mind boggling and they can't build power plants anywhere near as fast. Gas-turbine manufacturing capacity is booked solid for years.

 

Edit: The more dissatisfied the US population are with Trump the better IMO. His project need to very visibly completely fail if democracy is going to survive. Unfortunately, it's going to impact us in a bad way whatever happens.

Edited September 21 by -rick-

[Crofter]

31 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

But a normal car isn't, it's a V8 truck. Everything is cheap, so why would the normal person care.

 

Electric is between 15 and 17 cents per kWh, so well under half what we pay?

We thought everything would be cheap here too, but it really isn't. 

Fuel is quite cheap- we pay $4/gal which is just under $1/litre, not sure what the current price is in the UK. 

Food *can* be cheap but only if you buy the lowest quality, and you really have to shop around. Eating out is hugely expensive even before the obligatory tip.

 

I don't what it costs to own and run a house here, but the houses are massive. A friend was gobsmacked when I said we'd built a 450ft² house. Even our 'big' house, about 1000ft², was a quarter the size of his.

Peering in the windows of estate agents I have yet to see anything under 2500ft², and that's for a two bedroom flat.

 

They're way behind the curve on EVs too- about 10% of new car sales. Compare that with the UK at nearly 30% or China at 50%. Sadly with the fuel and solar prices the way they are there's simply no financial incentive.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, -rick- said:

Tech companies want them near the high bandwidth fibre nodes and where the expertise lives which is mostly around London.

Not Porthcurnow then, the data hub of the world

[-rick-]

19 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Not Porthcurnow then, the data hub of the world

 

Funnily enough, in a previous life I was involved in sourcing US-UK data connections for my firm and we cared about lowest latency and also reduncancy so I got to see a lot of NDA details about various fibre links coming into the UK. A lot of international links do indeed land in Cornwall, but things are much more diverse these days that you might think. Also, the telcos don't usually break out of the cable in Cornwall as there's not enough demand for it. First real possible connection (at least for the fastest cables) was around Slough (at least when I was involved in this).

Edited September 21 by -rick-

[SteamyTea]

3 hours ago, -rick- said:

the telcos don't usually break out of the cable in Cornwall

Nor do they fit 3/4/5G masts on the Lizard, the home of radio communications.