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Re:UK energy bills are soaring to record highs by theplumber on Saturday August 27, 2022 @08:16AM (#32618129)
If this is a war time situation why don't we build alternatives(i.e renewables) like in a war situation?
Re:UK energy bills are soaring to record highs by rjsw on Saturday August 27, 2022 @08:39AM (#32618318)
There are renewables and nuclear, the artificial market in the UK fixes the wholesale price for electricity generated by them to the price for electricity generated by gas.
Re:UK energy bills are soaring to record highs by iso1631 on Saturday August 27, 2022 @09:02AM (#32618477)
My understanding of the big off shore wind farms is the government funds them at a set strike price of £x per MWh, subsidises anything below and keeps anything above?
Re:UK energy bills are soaring to record highs by ZeroGravitas on Saturday August 27, 2022 @09:31AM (#32618757)
In the article it suggests after the cap goes up, this will be paying back £11 per customer per year, rising to £18 in January.

So it helps, a bit.

Re:UK energy bills are soaring to record highs by jl6 on Saturday August 27, 2022 @08:28AM (#32618214)
They are - renewables investment is at an all time high. But it takes time to build and bring online and investment in storage hasn’t kept pace with investment in generation.
Re:UK energy bills are soaring to record highs by pydry on Saturday August 27, 2022 @08:32AM (#32618252)
Thats coz when we max out renewables 40% of electricity still comes from gas. Theres literally zero point in storage until renewable generation starts edging towards 100% at least sometimes.

Investment has started though - there's coire glas, which is taking about 5 years to build. 5 more of them and we could go 99% renewable on solar and wind alone.

Re:UK energy bills are soaring to record highs by makomk on Saturday August 27, 2022 @09:49AM (#32618986)
A substantial proportion of renewable capacity is already lost to curtailment in the UK, and supposedly this could be reduced by storage. This happens well before renewable generation hits 100% even some of the time for various reasons (transmission capacity bottlenecks, the need for a certain amount of dispatchable power to ensure grid stability, and so on).
Re:UK energy bills are soaring to record highs by theplumber on Sunday August 28, 2022 @06:43PM (#32632816)
All time high is not enough for a war situation.
Re:UK energy bills are soaring to record highs by paganel on Saturday August 27, 2022 @08:32AM (#32618250)
Because most of those alternatives are just economic Wunderwaffen. It’s going to be a very bad landing for the common people in the West, not sure if it will also bring systemic change, but something will have to give. I just hope we’re not at the 1932 metaphorical moment.
Re:UK energy bills are soaring to record highs by kergonath on Saturday August 27, 2022 @08:52AM (#32618415)
> Wunderwaffen

That is a great analogy. Our technologies will improve, but it is madness to voluntarily depend on future advances that might or might not happen and might or might not be practical. We need Liberty ships (cheap, effective, reliable energy production units, however imperfect), not just sit here doing nothing because we’ll somehow figure out energy storage later, or we’ve read a pop sci article touting a new technology that’s unlikely to ever be practical.

We also need to realise that we need a total effort, not military but similar in scale to what we did during WWII. We need to build now all we can that is low-carbon, because half-arsing it won’t be enough. We also need to reduce consumption as much as possible. Keeping something close to a current western way of life will be hard enough, but things like humongous cars, SUVs and pickup trucks are madness. Even Teslas are very problematic and detrimental overall. So is living in the desert, and mass migrations even within countries need to be planned to avoid utter chaos.

Energy production is just the sharp tip.

Re:UK energy bills are soaring to record highs by ClumsyPilot on Saturday August 27, 2022 @08:21AM (#32618167)
Because in the conservative ideology when government has a plan, that's socialism