From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Contracts for Difference subsidies are still costing energy users a lot of money. Between April and September 2023, subsidies of £640 million were paid out, nearly all for offshore wind.
The average strike price was £171/MWh, against a market price of £83/MWh.
Total generation covered by CfDs was 7.3 TWh.
Most renewable output is still subsidised via Renewable Obligations. For the 6 months to June 2023, the latest data available, subsidies for ROCs amounted to £3.0 billion on generation of 37.2 TWh.
$170/MWH is about what the wind companies wanted from the NY PSC. Interesting. About 5x more than the cheaper than fossil fuel $0.O3/MWH the Left claims.
The £171 the UK wind turbines wanted is worth about $207/MWh US – I really don’t know how the Brits can afford it anymore.
Neither do we
They can’t – that’s why energy consumer debt is currently just under £3Bn and rising
Brits seem to want more government than they are getting, and energy+water price is their preferred form of increased tax. Opinion polls show more than 90 % support, combined, for the parties that promote this policy.
It is nearly impossible to operate a functioning modern society while relying 100% on generation that has only 22% – 36% capacity factor and could expose further unreliability with sudden drops down to 5% CF or less. It becomes far too costly to back-up those unreliable generation sources with battery backup which requires even further available generation sources on a 100% renewable grid dedicated to recharging them.
Redundant redundancies are necessary and even they aren’t dependable 24/7 unless sourced by 100% reliable generation that isn’t subject to the whims of weather.
But if you’re going to use 100% reliable energy sources, the renewable and battery become the expensive redundancy that is truly unnecessary.
Yep battery backup is a non starter.
The UK Royal Society published a report in September 2023 entitled ‘Large scale electricity storage policy briefing’
Using a model based on 37 years worth of weather data they found
“variations in wind supply on a multi decadal timescale as well as sporadic periods of days and weeks of very low wind generation potential. For this reason some tens of TWHs of very long duration storage will be needed. For comparison the TWhs needed are 1000 times more than is currently provided by pumped hydro, and far more than could be provided cost effectively by batteries.”
They concluded that batteries would only provide short term grid balancing services.
Another way of looking at the storage required is that it equates to having 1.2bn EVs – almost the entire global vehicle fleet – parked up to provide backup for just the UK.
That is so expensive!
As a retail customer in Ontario Canada, I’m paying a bit less than even the £87/MWh wholesale rate mentioned for the UK.
Actually only 7.1¢ CDN per KWh off peak, and 10.2 and 15.1 the rest of the time.
10.2¢/kWh or $102CDN/MWh which works out to £61.
To be fair, I have to mention that on top of the electricity cost, the utility adds on an almost equivalent amount to cover transmission and other services, so it works out to 17¢/kWh or £102/MWh all in.
So it’s really crazy that the wholesale price and the strike prices are so high, especially for a tiny, concentrated country like the UK, where no one is really all that far from a coast – so there should be efficiencies in transmission and distribution, and so.
If you want to know just how bad it is on the UK check out this latest fact sheet of energy prices
I live here and even I don’t know how we put up with it…
Electricity is currently from this month on 27p/kWh plus just over £0.50/day service charge. that translates as £270/MWh plus service charges.
Thanks for doing the conversion. After a lifetime of “cents-per-kilowatt-hour” I get confused when people switch to something else.Sure its just moving a decimal point around, the issue s familiarity.
Good news for heat pump owners!
Luckily, its turned a bit warmer and gas consumption is better than anticipated
As I understand it most heat pump owners wish that the were not heat pump owners 🙂
And current UK energy consumer debt is almost £3Bn – what an incompetently stupid idea to increase subsidies, hence bills, yet again
There’s a reason the green blob won’t remove green subsidies & levies, because if they did, everyone would see just how costly and useless renewables really are, the hoax would be outed and there would be zero business case to develop more wind & solar farms
Story tip
https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/10/19/uk-energy-secretary-north-sea-decline-jeopardises-uks-energy-independence/
At some point, reality bites
Do they have to shut down for the new gale force winds?
Any wind less than 7-9 mph/11.25-14.5 kph is insufficient to overcome inertial weight and produce electricity. Conversely any wind greater than 50-55 mph/80-88 kph and the turbines shut down for safety
Anywhere between 9-50 mph/14-80 kph and you will get
freecheapcleancostly, pricey and still emission intensive energy all day long, until the nacelle catches fireRemove all mandates, subsidies and tax preferences and watch how fast wind and solar dry up and blow away. Well we wish they would blow away, we won’t be that fortunate. We need to start right now assigning who is going to dismantle and haul all this useless crap off.
Dismantling is not the problem. Disposal is.