Conversion a month ago from the pending shutdown: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41443347
and three days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41695587
[dupe] you new here?
Some unobjectionably good news, surely.
Bittersweet.
Glad to be moving away from coal, but the lack of serious investment in anything but wind energy has left the UK with the highest electricity prices in the developed world, factories and industry closing their doors, the most vulnerable in society choosing between heating or eating and a very real prospect of blackouts this winter.
We dreamed of a future of energy abundance, almost too cheap to meter. We have the technology in nuclear to do just that and perhaps we will one day.
So celebrate Britain turning off 500MW of emergency buffer supply and try your best to ignore the 50GW of coal power that China brought online in the 12 months of 2023 alone.
Wind power is not to blame for the high price of electricity in Britain. Some of the wind power is being purchased at 4p/kWh.
Commodities are priced at the margin, and the marginal price in the UK is imported liquified gas.
I wouldn't blame wind, but from the sidelines one would expect shutting down all the coal plants is linked to the high cost situation.
You can’t ignore the high prices when the wind doesn’t blow while saying the low prices when there is an excess of production is the true cost. This is called cherry picking.
The cost of intermittent power sources includes the dirty fossil fuel peaker plants built and ran to back them. Think of them as batteries.
Intermittent power sources more or less are financial engineering parasites to the grid at this point. It could be fixed but no one has the political will to do so. Eventually you run out of other people’s power and the chickens come home to roost.
The most obvious investment I’ve made in the past 15 years was natural gas. Until chemical battery storage catches up (doubtful) or there is a return to rationality in this space I expect the party to continue.
I hate it. I think solar and wind are great technologies that are currently horrifically misused by folks getting rich off the backs of regular people.
Why doesn’t the UK just deploy large battery banks like Tesla Megapack?
It's a work in progress for sure, but it's certainly not cheap. Getting enough battery storage will be a mammoth task.
From the aricle, Europe's (then) biggest battery could supply just 2 hours of power to 300k homes - compared with ~ 35 million homes in the UK.
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/uk-builds-europes...
In a word: Math.
Wasn't suggesting it was the cause, just pointing out we seem to have done little to invest in other forms of power.
Wind has its place, but it will struggle to provide consistent base load or grid inertia that we'll lose from shuttering coal, gas and nuclear.
How much is a result of Brexit and losing trade agreement with Europe?
More or less none. Energy prices are a domestic mismanagement issue and pre-date the Brexit situation, unfortunately.
No I meant the comment about businesses and factories shutting down.
I'm curious, was is profitable? I don't mean to diminish other factors for keeping it alive, just wondering?
I don't think any of your claims are supported by available data. Would you be able to provide some citations to give evidence for what you say?
Going through point by point:
> has left the UK with the highest electricity prices in the developed world
Since when? As of 2023, high, but not highest. [1]
> factories and industry closing their doors
Could you provide evidence that factories and industry are actually on the decline in the UK? Second, can you provide evidence it is related to energy prices?
It seems the data contradicts this type of correlation [2]. Energy prices spiked in 2021 and are now down, to very similar levels as they were over the last decade.
> the most vulnerable in society choosing between heating or eating
Citations needed, and also to demonstrate that this is a new phenomenon. Considering energy prices are lower in the UK than recently, this decision would not be due to an increase in energy prices.
> very real prospect of blackouts this winter.
According to [3]: " The risk of blackouts in Britain will be lower this winter as new gas generation capacity and greater electricity imports from Europe should ensure a larger buffer against potential shortages"
> We dreamed of a future of energy abundance, almost too cheap to meter
Who is we? Was this a party platform? Propaganda? Just something you were lead to believe?
> We have the technology in nuclear to do just that and perhaps we will one day.
First claim is not supported. Is it possible to actually produce that much nuclear energy. Also, energy markets are global. Excess energy is sold, it is not necessarily divided out locally for free. Further, stupid cheap energy would create it's own demand, migration of energy usages.
> So celebrate Britain turning off 500MW of emergency buffer supply
A single plant is the buffer supply?
> ignore the 50GW of coal power that China brought online in the 12 months of 2023 alone.
That is a what-about-ism
‐----- [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/589765/average-electrici...
[3] https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/energy/article/black...
I believe the claims may be based off of the recently published Foundations essay: https://ukfoundations.co/
Specifically, the "Britain: the first energy superpower" section: https://ukfoundations.co/#footnote-source-6
It would be interesting if they had put places apart from France in some of the cost analysis, since France has (by my understanding) extremely low costs for industrial electricity. Comparing most countries to France would end with "well we're not doing better than some of the best", but doesn't provide the full context.
(If I'd be cynical, I'd guess graphing more countries would show that the UK is not unique here, but I don't know).
Bit surprising that even in this supposed high priced environment, renewable energy seems to not have a market in the UK (at least according to this article). Lots of the world seems to be creating those markets!
The UK and France have been rivals for centuries - old habits die hard! :^)
Renewables have seen significant growth over the past decade, particularly offshore wind, for which the UK is ideally positioned: https://grid.iamkate.com/
I sense you might not be arguing in good faith, but here's at least a mild effort to placate you.
> Since when? As of 2023, high, but not highest.
Since 2024, at least. [1][2]
> Could you provide evidence that factories and industry are actually on the decline in the UK?
Tata Steel is the most topical one, production moving to India. Easy to find sources for that, it's all over the news.
> Energy prices spiked in 2021 and are now down.
False. Industrial prices have grown every year since 2011 [3]
> The risk of blackouts in Britain will be lower this winter...
Right, so you agree with me that there's a risk of blackouts then?
> Who is we? Was this a party platform? Propaganda? Just something you were lead to believe?
It's a reference to a nuclear energy optimism from the 20th century. Some reading material for you. [4]
> Is it possible to actually produce that much nuclear energy.
Of course it is. Energy is hard to sell long distance in large quantities. We're perfectly capable of building more supply than demand (FYI that's how the grid operates to this day) and we should certainly be encouraging more demand to improve living standards.
> A single plant is the buffer supply?
No, I never claimed that it was. But coal power has been used mainly to provide a buffer supply only as needed to prioritise cleaner generation in recent years so it's accurate to say we're turning off (some) buffer supply.
> That is a what-about-ism
It is, but I rather enjoy paying attention to the wider world instead of navel gazing and virtue signalling.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/26/britain-burd...
[2] https://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/uk-household-electricity-price...
[3] https://www.ibisworld.com/uk/bed/industrial-electricity-pric...
[4] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/history-10...
> Tata Steel is the most topical one, production moving to India. Easy to find sources for that, it's all over the news.
But that's not particularly down to the price of energy is it?
"Electric arc furnaces do not require coal. Tata's plan is to switch from transforming iron ore into metal, and instead take scrap steel from demolished bridges, buildings, cars – anything usable – and melt it down again using electricity. The circular process promises huge carbon savings compared with blast furnaces."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/12/ste...
left the UK with the highest electricity prices in the developed world
Wha? Fair play if you think the US is not a developed country, but £0.255/kWh is towards the lower end of what electricity costs in California. Hawaii is at or above those rates.
Neither California or Hawaii are good metrics to compare against. California is a mess of self inflicted high costs, and Hawaii is too small to have any industry and too far away from anything for cheap transporting of goods.
My own electric rate in the middle-north continental US is only a third of the £0.255/kWh rate.
No, they're both perfect. The comment I was responding to put forth the idea that the UK is an outlier when it's not far off from the cost in big chunks of the US. What's going on in California is no more self-inflicted than the UK choosing to ditch coal or choosing to be heavily reliant on Russian gas.
I was referring to this article which quotes the IEA for industrial energy costs at around $0.085/kWh, versus $0.34/kWh in the UK.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/26/britain-burd...
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/en/rate-information/electric-rat...
PG&E's non-residential rates aren't that much cheaper than their residential rates. The rate schedules are comically complex so I can't give you insight into what the differences are, but they're showing average rates of $0.42/kWh (A-1, Commercial), $0.19–$0.32/kWh (E-20, Industrial), $0.20–$0.32/kWh (B-20, Industrial), $0.51/kWh (AG-1A, Agricultural), etc., etc.
As was pointed out by another commenter California and Hawaii are outliers, but then again so is Texas (where the uncapped market rate plans socked people with $9,000/month residential bills). Thing is both Texas and California are huge markets, so while parts of the US are much cheaper, parts of the US that are each larger than the UK are quite a bit more expensive.
Honestly I had no idea how pricey the non-residential plans are and I feel like there are almost certainly incentives that would cut the net cost significantly.
0.25 GBP per kWh ($0.33) is at the top end of prices on this list:
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
https://www.pge.com/content/dam/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/...
https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/documents/billing_and_payme...
I'm pretty sure SDGE (San Diego) rates are higher than PG&E across the board, but I'm too lazy to look it up since PG&E covers a huge swath of California and is already eyewateringly expensive.
As long as we aren't just paying other people to mine/burn coal instead.
Not all coal is equal. Some burns more cleanly, some is easier to extract and process
Though you make a good point it could be zero sum (or worse or better). Yet, it might be truly better to pay someone else to burn coal if its cleaner to process and burn compared to domestic supply.
Just a shame that we're increasingly purchasing power from abroad as we don't seem to be very good at building nuclear power stations.
Most things get cheaper as you build more of them. However, those economies of scale never seem to kick in for nuclear as a) we don't build enough of them and b) the safety are requirements are always going up.
Sizewell C is being built by EDF, a French company. And it seems that every time they go over-budget they hold their hand out and the British Government coughs up some more. I read that it is likely to cost in the region of £40 billion.
Are you thinking of Hinkley Point C? My understanding was that there has been no additional funding provided. The project is way over budget, but it is EDF and its owner (the French taxpayer) who appear to be on the hook.
The project is funded by a pre agreed electricity price for the plant once it is operational, and private investment.
It is however likely to impact negotiations for Sizewell C which has not yet been greenlit, as funding terms amenable to the U.K. government and EDF have not been reached. EDF want terms that would cause cost overruns to be born by energy consumers, to avoid a repeat of Hinkley Point.
France built a bunch of them, they're still expensive and hard projects. People talk about economies of scales but there are only so many power plants you need to build in the world.
I'm sure there are strategies that could, at the very least, make things predictable. I think the biggest trouble with huge projects isn't so much the cost as it is the uncertainty.
Nah, people always spin this as "the horrible evil communist government is killing 800 JOBS!!!". Happened in Australia a few years ago - the parties on both sides only spoke about it as purely a negative thing because of loss of jobs, not a peep about carbon emissions or other pollution.
Jobs are the dumbest argument anyway.
It's obviously better to produce X with 0 jobs than X with 100 jobs. Most people just don't seem to understand that economically instead of accruing some benefit to 100 people, everyone else gains marginally instead.
I absolutely hate political parties harping on about job creation, like that's the goal. No, the goal is value creation, hopefully for society as a whole, in the most efficient way possible.
The problem is that value creation is meaningless to people who are losing their jobs. Homelessness sucks.
Is there a tracker of energy prices pre coal shut down and post coal shut down?
Predictions is that it'd go up, due to the unreliable nature of wind, solar. Hence the minimum price is the cost to turn on a power generator and fill in the gaps.
Coal was barely used, just one power station left. Variable liad is natural gas mostly, plus hydro, imports etc.
Interesting XKCD comic on the amount of coal dug up in UK since the industrial revolution: