Re:Coal Prices Rising Exponentially
by tialaramex on Monday October 11, 2021 @01:53PM
(#28830983)
But for example this week electricity prices are very high, and yet it's somewhat windy. Something like 4GW plus or minus of wind power over the weekend. Not enough that the high price of gas doesn't dictate the market price of electricity, but enough that a clawback of £100 per MWh (not at all unlikely with current prices) would be something like £20M to the exchequer.
> we can expect high electricity prices to coincide more and more with times when renewables are producing very little power and low prices with times when they're producing lots of it.
Yes to some extent that's true, and we should expect demand management to play a big role in reducing the impact on ordinary households. Alec Watson (Technology Connections) did a video about how his home is set (in summer) to cool over night when power is cheap, so he wakes up in a cold but not yet uncomfortably so house, and during the day the cooling is off, so it gets warmer but unless the day is especially miserable it still isn't actually hot inside until the evening, at which point electricity is cheaper again and it begins cooling back down. This way he gets air-conditioning, in a climate where it's not entirely essential but certainly desirable, yet doesn't pay peak prices for it like his neighbours. Imagine if more people did that!
The UK could use a lot more storage. What it has is mostly black start capacity re-purposed as normal storage, but it is a bit short on non-picturesque mountains to modify. It also, of course, decided it didn't want to be part of the EU, where there's an entire continent of renewable energy sources to trade with, several hours difference in dawn time and considerable variation in weather - the UK is still connected to their grid with several Gigawatts of ties but now trades as an outsider.
> we can expect high electricity prices to coincide more and more with times when renewables are producing very little power and low prices with times when they're producing lots of it.
Yes to some extent that's true, and we should expect demand management to play a big role in reducing the impact on ordinary households. Alec Watson (Technology Connections) did a video about how his home is set (in summer) to cool over night when power is cheap, so he wakes up in a cold but not yet uncomfortably so house, and during the day the cooling is off, so it gets warmer but unless the day is especially miserable it still isn't actually hot inside until the evening, at which point electricity is cheaper again and it begins cooling back down. This way he gets air-conditioning, in a climate where it's not entirely essential but certainly desirable, yet doesn't pay peak prices for it like his neighbours. Imagine if more people did that!
The UK could use a lot more storage. What it has is mostly black start capacity re-purposed as normal storage, but it is a bit short on non-picturesque mountains to modify. It also, of course, decided it didn't want to be part of the EU, where there's an entire continent of renewable energy sources to trade with, several hours difference in dawn time and considerable variation in weather - the UK is still connected to their grid with several Gigawatts of ties but now trades as an outsider.