Power for People (to sell locally generated renewable energy to local people)

As I understand it the community owned company generates and sells  the electricity; and pay the DNO to distribute it for them.


Andy Betteridge

The email seems to imply that this Act will result in lower costs than at present and the end user will be local.

Surely the energy goes where it goes depending upon local demand at that instant. No or low demand compared with surplus electricity available (such as if we had a much bigger building and thus more sq.metres of roof space) may result in users further afield?

I cannot help but think that the existing method of selling surplus electricity is the easiest/cheapest option due to economies of scale.


Clive

I assume it is this act as far as I can see it does not consider the question of distribution at all, and without any provision for that it serves precious little purpose, except to clarify that a generator can be a single person. - unless you are indeed supposed to run your own cables, as if you use the local DNOs cables then well, we can already do that.


Perhaps unsurprisingly, when it was first read on 06.09.2019 there was no debate on it at all, and the idea has not been taken any further since.

notes on it's (non) progress it would need to be re-introduced in the new parliament to make any further progress    .


At the 'bill' stage it is only a proposal for a new law, or a proposal to change an existing law, presented to see if Parliament want to debate it. They did not.

It seems to be a proposal for local energy suppliers. I can see no advantage from the proposal.

Whatever the arrangement, Mr McDonnell will nationalise it anyway. Can’t have any one making profit from the plebs!

lyledunn:

Whatever the arrangement, Mr McDonnell will nationalise it anyway. Can’t have any one making profit from the plebs!  Must have the plebs making a profit for the Politburo

Fixed that for you Lyle - FOC


OMS

Well I always regarded you as the bigger brain OMS, so I will run with that!

It seems the jist of the problem they're trying to solve is that any energy company, no matter how small, is currently required to "employ technical specialists and set up bespoke computer systems in order to interface with complex grid balancing codes and network agreements" - which presumably costs pretty penny so making the whole venture completely uneconomic if you're only going to sell a few thousand kWh to a couple of neighbours. I can see a point there - if the Hovis delivery boy's bike had to pay road fund at the same rate as a HGV because both were classed as commercial vehicles, there wouldn't have been many corner shops doing deliveries up cobbled hills.


On the other hand, if their ambition for having a huge number of such local generators, alltogether providing a signifficant proportion of the nation's electricity needs, and if we don't want to risk having the entire grid collapse under the slightest mishap then presumbly someone is going to have to subject their output to the various grid balancing codes etc. - and somone is going to have to pay for that. So initially at least I'm not sure that a simple exemption from those responsibilities would be sensible.


Maybe what they need is to create their own organisation to do what's needed once, on behalf of all the little local generators across the country, and gain the economies of scale that way. Although you don't have to go far down that route to be able to call such an organisation just another energy supplier company - or even just tag the operation onto the side of one of the existing companies - I can think of a couple at least off the top of my head that already specialize in rewables. Which then perhap suggests than a change in the legislative structure isn't really needed.


(or I might have the wrong end of the electrode, again)


  -  Andy.