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Electricity prices - what next?

AJJewsbury

Electricity prices look to be soaring. Seemingly the tariff I'm on isn't one of those covered by the government's price cap and it looks like the price per kWh for this coming year will be over 80% higher than a year ago. Presumably everyone else will see similar increases soon - when the price cap is next revised in April if not before - or even higher increases as the delay means their suppliers are even more out of pocket. Presumably gas prices will increase by even larger proportions.

It seems the recent inflation is primarily down to demand exceeding supply in the international wholesale gas market causing the price to rocket.

Because of the way the UK wholesale electricity market is organised, if I've understood it correctly, the most expensive generator needed at any point in time effectively sets the price for the entire market. One interesting consequence of this seems to be that those renewable/nuclear generators who have agreed a fixed 'strike price' with the convernment (which for recent wind was lower than the typical price for gas generated electricity) have to charge their customers the full market price, but can only keep the 'strike price' and have to return the remainder to the government/regulator. Effectively renewable customers are in a way subsidising fossil fuelled generation, rather than the other way around - which presumably wasn't the intention.

Hopefully things will stabilise a bit as winter passes - but what's the long term outlook?

"Reforms" to the wholesale electricity market to better protect the whole from changes in price of just one fuel?

An acceleration in the move from using imported fossil fuels for generation to more locally sourced energy (mostly renewables)?

A greater emphasis on demand reduction (more efficient appliances/lighting, significantly better insulation for buildings)?

More "time shifting" of demand - to times of day were there's non-gas generating capacity available?

Another look at minimising distribution "losses" - look again at BS 7671 appendix 17 perhaps?

   - Andy.

Parents

  • No one has yet described how our offshore wind (much of which may well go offline today due to strong winds) can ever provide this 24/7 supply, deal with surges, or rapidly changing supply conditions, like the end of a TV programme when hundreds of thousands of kettles are turned on at once.

    Isn't that the same issue when we had mostly thermal (coal and nuclear) stations that were incapable of rapid adjustments in output - the solution then was to build the likes of the Dinorwig pump-storage system - specifically designed to deal with events like 'TV pickup' - even in the days of just 4 TV channels and so much greater 'synchonising of kettles' it seemed to work well, even if they had to resort to closely watching the TV for the exact timing of the start of the advert break and keep the turnbines 'spinning in air' for a few minutes beforehand to minimise the start up time. As far as I know it's still there and still working (along with a few other smaller sister plants).

    If there's spare wind capacity, then a similar if a little slower effect can be achieved by altering the angle of the turbine blades to catch less wind, but keep the whole thing pointing into the wind as normal. The blades can then be returned to their normal operating position within a few tens of seconds to increase generation.

    Shorter bursts of demand can also be fed from battery storage systems (there are already several multi-10s-of MW/MWh sites in the UK).

        - Andy.

  • in reply to AJJewsbury

    Yes they do that Andy, but there is a windspeed where the blades must be locked with brakes to pevent damage. That is the problem, the range of variable pitch, particularly at low wind speeds. The efficiency of blades is in reality quite small at low wind speeds, but this is a critical area to collect power and affects the entire machine design. Making the blades suitable for higher speed makes the low end much worse.

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  • in reply to AJJewsbury

    Yes they do that Andy, but there is a windspeed where the blades must be locked with brakes to pevent damage. That is the problem, the range of variable pitch, particularly at low wind speeds. The efficiency of blades is in reality quite small at low wind speeds, but this is a critical area to collect power and affects the entire machine design. Making the blades suitable for higher speed makes the low end much worse.

Children
  • in reply to David Stone

    The aerodynamics of turbine blades is rather more sophisticated than this impression would suggest. Let me also point out some incoherence in the formulation of this contribution: "windspeed where the blades must be locked ... that is the problem... particularly at low wind speeds." 

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