Somehow? It’s a well established and publicised fact that it’s due to the price of gas. It’s so well established that anyone posting a comment here about the high price of electricity without mentioning it has an ulterior motive.
It's also widely misunderstood. Just because the spot price of electricity is set by the price of gas doesn’t mean the consumer pays that price for all of their electricity.
A lot of wind and solar are on Contracts for Difference. That means when market prices go above the agreed level, the generator pays the difference back through the scheme, which reduces supplier costs rather than the generator simply keeping the whole windfall.
This is particularly relevant when e.g. the price of gas goes way up due to the Iran war, it doesn't mean that the consumer ends up paying more for the energy from wind
So who's working on fixing it? It's not like "the price is fixed to the price of gas" is some iron law of nature. Meanwhile you have folks seeing these three things together:
- England is 90% renewables
- Renewables are a really cheap source of energy.
- England has very high energy prices.
And the obvious conclusion is that someone is lying. It's eroding support for renewables among those that don't have time to investigate how or why the spot price of gas sets the overall energy price.
The thing is, it's nowhere near 90% in general. 90% is the generation right now, with sunlight and good wind. On the site you can see that renewables were 66% in the last 24h, 46% in the last week, and 42% in the last year. I don't think it's possible to have 90% renewable generation overall without massive energy storage.
>It's not like "the price is fixed to the price of gas" is some iron law of nature.
It kind of is.
Gas is the only source of electricity currently which can be scaled up and down at will and on demand.
Even once grids eventually go 100% green we will probably still use (green, synthesised) stored gas as the power source of last resort on cold, windless nights after batteries and pumped storage have been depleted.
It's not only the price of gas but also the price of the co2 emissions. I'm really surprised the uk didn't get rid of it when they left the eu. It's one of the most stupid things possible. It only makes everything more expensive.
That would make British people less poor for once so they decided against it. Managed economic decline and mass immigration go hand in hand with globalism and ‘global warming’ extremists.
If you’ve got even a passing interest in the UK energy market you’d know this is because of the wholesale price of gas, not the actual wholesale cost of solar and wind.
If you really want to pay less for green energy, which is cheap when it’s plentiful (like anything) get on a variable tariff and install some storage.
> In the UK, the marginal unit is almost always a gas-fired power plant. As a result, one widely cited academic analysis found that gas set the price of power 97% of the time in the UK in 2021.
Stop seeing this through the eyes of a consumer. On a macro scale, your country is not handing hundreds of millions of pounds a day over to other countries. Now imagine if it still was. You'd be even worse off.
Almost every normal person sees this through the eyes of the consumer because paying the electric bill is their primary interaction with the issue. What you're describing is politically a tough sell.
Somehow? It’s a well established and publicised fact that it’s due to the price of gas. It’s so well established that anyone posting a comment here about the high price of electricity without mentioning it has an ulterior motive.
It's also widely misunderstood. Just because the spot price of electricity is set by the price of gas doesn’t mean the consumer pays that price for all of their electricity.
A lot of wind and solar are on Contracts for Difference. That means when market prices go above the agreed level, the generator pays the difference back through the scheme, which reduces supplier costs rather than the generator simply keeping the whole windfall.
This is particularly relevant when e.g. the price of gas goes way up due to the Iran war, it doesn't mean that the consumer ends up paying more for the energy from wind
So who's working on fixing it? It's not like "the price is fixed to the price of gas" is some iron law of nature. Meanwhile you have folks seeing these three things together:
- England is 90% renewables
- Renewables are a really cheap source of energy.
- England has very high energy prices.
And the obvious conclusion is that someone is lying. It's eroding support for renewables among those that don't have time to investigate how or why the spot price of gas sets the overall energy price.
>England is 90% renewables
The thing is, it's nowhere near 90% in general. 90% is the generation right now, with sunlight and good wind. On the site you can see that renewables were 66% in the last 24h, 46% in the last week, and 42% in the last year. I don't think it's possible to have 90% renewable generation overall without massive energy storage.
>It's not like "the price is fixed to the price of gas" is some iron law of nature.
It kind of is.
Gas is the only source of electricity currently which can be scaled up and down at will and on demand.
Even once grids eventually go 100% green we will probably still use (green, synthesised) stored gas as the power source of last resort on cold, windless nights after batteries and pumped storage have been depleted.
My understanding is that legislation is in the works to fix that. But we’ll see.
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It's not only the price of gas but also the price of the co2 emissions. I'm really surprised the uk didn't get rid of it when they left the eu. It's one of the most stupid things possible. It only makes everything more expensive.
That would make British people less poor for once so they decided against it. Managed economic decline and mass immigration go hand in hand with globalism and ‘global warming’ extremists.
If you’ve got even a passing interest in the UK energy market you’d know this is because of the wholesale price of gas, not the actual wholesale cost of solar and wind.
If you really want to pay less for green energy, which is cheap when it’s plentiful (like anything) get on a variable tariff and install some storage.
how does the wholesale price of gas explain how the UK is the most expensive in the world/europe?
tldr: Marginal Pricing
https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-why-does-gas-set-the-price-of...
> In the UK, the marginal unit is almost always a gas-fired power plant. As a result, one widely cited academic analysis found that gas set the price of power 97% of the time in the UK in 2021.
Stop seeing this through the eyes of a consumer. On a macro scale, your country is not handing hundreds of millions of pounds a day over to other countries. Now imagine if it still was. You'd be even worse off.
Of course they are sending millions of pounds a day to other countries. In this case China for the panels.
They're not burning panels.
Almost every normal person sees this through the eyes of the consumer because paying the electric bill is their primary interaction with the issue. What you're describing is politically a tough sell.
It worked before, so start the buses:
"We send the UAE £350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead"
"We send Saudi Arabia £350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead"
"We send Qatar £350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead"