UK Households To Be Urged To Use More Power This Summer As Renewables Soar (theguardian.com) 127
Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from the Guardian: Households will be called on to boost their consumption of Great Britain's record renewable energy this summer to help balance the power grid and lower energy bills. Under the new plans, people could be encouraged to run dishwashers and washing machines or charge up their electric vehicles when there is more wind and solar power than the electricity grid needs. The plan will be delivered with the help of energy suppliers, which may choose to offer heavily discounted or free electricity to their customers during specific periods when the energy system operator predicts there will be a surplus of electricity.
Many suppliers already offer more than 2 million households the opportunity to pay lower rates for electricity used during off-peak hours but this will be the first time that the system operator will use this tool to help balance the grid. The National Energy System Operator (Neso) hopes that by issuing a market notice to call on energy users to increase their consumption it can avoid making hefty payments to turn wind and solar farms off when demand for electricity is low, which are ultimately paid for through energy bills.
Many suppliers already offer more than 2 million households the opportunity to pay lower rates for electricity used during off-peak hours but this will be the first time that the system operator will use this tool to help balance the grid. The National Energy System Operator (Neso) hopes that by issuing a market notice to call on energy users to increase their consumption it can avoid making hefty payments to turn wind and solar farms off when demand for electricity is low, which are ultimately paid for through energy bills.
A good problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A good problem (Score:5, Funny)
To smooth out even current excess power would require £20 billion in batteries alone. Since this is britain the project to do it would take 20 years and cost £150 billion and then get scaled back and cancelled at a cost of £300 billion
Re:A good problem (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plans to build a 1GW battery a mile away from me (in the UK), in open farmland. It's next to a solar farm, half a mile from 4 onshore wind turbines but, as expected, the usual crowd are having a strop and it's held up in planning. Not only are these batteries needed, it's far better than another crop of 600 houses!
As for free power during sunny/windy spells, my supplier offered that last summer. I used it to charge my PHEV and got around 100 miles of free driving out of it!
Re:A good problem (Score:5, Informative)
We have moved beyond NIMBYs to BANANAs - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.
The government promised to do something about them, but whatever they have done isn't enough.
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Re:A good problem (Score:5, Interesting)
So years ago I was helping out with a project to build an industrial tablet computer. They had picked Windows CE because the app developers were familiar with Windows. It was supposed to support a Microsoft technology called Silverlight, which was similar to Adobe Flash, for making the UI. Problem is, it just didn't work. Microsoft weren't interesting in fixing it either.
So I found Silvermoon, an open source version of Silverlight. It was a bit buggy, but we eventually got it working. While debugging some memory leaks, we found an interesting bit of code.
const int one = 65536;
To avoid using floating point maths, because back then some ARM chips either didn't have FPUs or they were slow, the code used the old trick of multiplying everything by 65536 (2^16) to create what is effectively fixed floating point maths using only integer instructions.
I just found it amusing that they decided to call the variable "one". It's actually a reasonable solution, and it did work.
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I always thought it had to do with a string of code from a private wow server code such as trinitycore or azerothcore. I never bothered to verify it and it seemed really random but eh, that's okay. I, too, am glad your question was answered!
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what is effectively fixed floating point maths
No longer floating if it is fixed ;)
More information here [wikipedia.org]
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It was supposed to support a Microsoft technology called Silverlight
That comment just made my eye twitch a little bit. I've only had the "pleasure" of working with Silverlight once. That was enough. What was their slogan? "It's like Flash, but worse!"
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I thought it might be something like that initially, but it seemed likely it would create a compiler error or warning on a system with 16 bit ints.
Re: A good problem (Score:3)
Re: A good problem (Score:2)
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Some people insist on treating their EVs the same as their old petrol vehicles. Run it down as far as they can and then charge it to maximum at the fastest HVDC charger they can find -where they pay the highest rates for the privilege.
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Perhaps he lives in a country where gasoline is super cheap.
I overheard a EV car sell a view days ago. The new owner has the luck that his father used to own a farm, and has a huge solar installation on it. So he gets electricity effectively for free.
He saves 800Euro per month on gasoline. He paid 6000Euro for the car.
Especially with the price hikes because of the war ... the car pays off in a bit more than half a year.
Re: A good problem (Score:2)
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And, not _everyone_ owns their home or apartment and/or has a garage to install a charger, so there's gonna have to be chargers every place (your job, the grocery store, on-street parking, huge parking lots full of chargers)... more than there are individual gas pumps.
If you have more output than usage, you're building too much... and then, there's cloudy days to deal with, and batteries failing randomly in the warehouse-sized "energy storage facility"... so, now you have to have a program to recycle/dispos
Re: A good problem (Score:2)
I have an EV and an ICE truck.
Gas is $3.60/gallon, truck gets 18 miles/gallon, so $0.20/mile.
I charge my EV at Tesla Superchargers, they are $0.36/KWhr, I get a reliable 3 miles per KWhr, so $0.13/mile.
IF I stay up late and hit the superchargers 'off-peak' I pay $0.18/KWhr, so $0.06/mile.
EV is cheaper, but not 'order of magnitude' cheaper.
Re:A good problem (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a study from a university, I've lost the link now, but they estimated that to be 95% renewables and 5% other, we would need about 100GWh of storage of all kinds. The government is estimating to hit out 2030 target of 95% renewables+nuclear we need about 30GHw of batteries and 5GWh of longer term storage.
For reference, as of the end of 2025, China had over 200GWh of battery storage installed, and it's increasing exponentially.
Another point of reference, the new Sizewell C nuclear plant has already hit £40 billion, and is still rising. So £20 billion for batteries, if accurate, seems like a bargain for ultra low carbon, clean power.
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Another point of reference, the new Sizewell C nuclear plant has already hit ã40 billion
This is the problem: the central government is incapable of building anything big, because everything becomes a political football to be endlessly fucked with. Compare the endless shenanigans of HS2 to the the non central government shenanigans of crossrail.
Once it was funded successive mayors of different parties (and I hate to give Johnson credit for anything) basically stuck with the plan without try
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Sizewell C is being built by EDF and China General Nuclear Power Group.
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Haven't the government kept fucking with it though? Plus there were a whole bunch of shenanigans around whether China was OK, or not back a number of years ago.
And they went for some sort of existing design then fucked with it extensively via regulations and then the weird environmental stuff kept piling on requiring change after change after change.
The stupid thing is that Starmer wants to "rip up" environmental regs and let companies trash the environment, because he's a fucking moron frankly. The environ
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I think the government did everything they could to make it happen and support EDF/Chinese Nuclear. It's just insanely expensive. Sizewell C is the largest building site in Europe. It's not just reactors, it's fuel storage, waste storage, processing, maintenance, monitoring, emergency systems, all on site.
They even had a head start, since the site already had the grid connection and other infrastructure like roads and security that were needed for the two old nuclear plants.
I'm not exaggerating when I say n
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Yeah but somehow it's still way more expensive than other places.
Plus it's also the way we love doing things: once we get around to it, make sure it's a 1 off so all the costs that get amortized (like getting an experienced workforce, supply chains etc etc) don't get amortized!
It's the same problem with HSR here too.
Endless fuckage and then doing it piecemeal.
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To an extent, but nobody in Europe is building nuclear at a reasonable cost. It's worse here, but once France is forced to replace its reactors, if it goes for more nuclear I expect we will soon find out how little doing lots of them really helps.
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Wasn't Crossrail something like 30% over budget and several years late? Maybe that's not bad for the construction industry ;)
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I know software estimation for even small to medium projects can be bad, but what is it about government projects that makes it so hard? Low balled estimates to win contracts? Lack of appropriate project management experience and oversight?
If you think that is bad, see the estimates to restore the Palace of Westminster (UK's Victorian parliamentary building): £15-40 billion and up to 60 years. I saw somewhere that they expected the costs to balloon by 40-60% before VAT and inflation. It's currentl
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Wasn't Crossrail something like 30% over budget and several years late? Maybe that's not bad for the construction industry ;)
Yep, that's generally pretty good for the construction industry especially a project of that complexity. And don't forget that it also crossed COVID which messed a whole bunch of everything up.
It was a few years late and a bit over budget and now it's a roaring success.
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the central government is incapable of building anything big
. Central government isn't building it, it's EDF.
Re: A good problem (Score:2)
EDF is owned by the French government. So I suppose it qualifies as 'government'.
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I think for these purposes, commissioning is just a subset of his use of the term "building".
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There was a study from a university, I've lost the link now, but they estimated that to be 95% renewables and 5% other, we would need about 100GWh of storage of all kinds.
The reason you "lost the link" is because what you are saying is patently absurd. 100GWh is three hours of demand in the UK.
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It only seems absurd because your premise is absurd - a whole country UPS.
In reality there is always a minimal amount of renewables, we have gas backup plants (that's what the 5% is), and we have interconnects to other countries.
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It only seems absurd because your premise is absurd - a whole country UPS.
Absolutely not. I merely expressed storage capacity as a function of overall demand to put your absurd claims into context. I didn't say or imply anything about a UPS.
In reality there is always a minimal amount of renewables
There is no reality in which an average of 95% of renewables would be available with only a 100GWh buffer. Maybe that would work in Norway...sure as heck not the UK.
, we have gas backup plants (that's what the 5% is)
I know what you are saying and it is patently absurd.
, and we have interconnects to other countries.
Does this mean you are now abandoning the claim "they estimated that to be 95% renewables and 5% other, we would need about 1
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Maybe you don't understand what 95% renewables means. It means that over the course of a year, 95% of electrical energy is generated by renewables.
Interconnects allow us to buy renewable energy from other countries.
The UK's current goal is 95% renewables and nuclear over a year, by 2030. What will probably scupper us is Hinkley Point C, the new nuclear plant, being delayed.
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If you're using gas (I assume NatGas), then it's not green energy (green energy doesn't pollute, burning NatGas pollutes).
Don't we need NatGas for heating and cooking (considering it's more efficient for those purposes)? Why use it all up to generate power _as a way_ to get away from coal?
Coal is very plentiful (might as well use it for something), and there's ways to keep down the particulate crap in the byproducts... the "smoke" is no worse than the air we breathe that has vehicle exhaust in it (hint: th
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Then again I'm American so I shouldn't be throwing stones in my glass hous
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Use the power to heat up molten salt and store it underground, using the heat to run turbines for baseload in winter.
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You don't necessarily need batteries (Score:3)
Honestly if we here in America were still a functioning society the only thing we would be doing is just building out massive amounts of wind and solar and energy storage.
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But he's obviously correct on this. No-one's building pumped hydro or compressed air storage at home, are they? These are industrial scale giant projects.
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The problem is the UK energy market has a few oddities.
Like if they request you curtail your output, the government will pay you for the curtailed amount. And the UK grid has strain points where not enough power can make it, so a lot of renewable energy is often curtailed (at gas rates) because it can't be transmitted from the north where it's generated to the south, where it's used.
The goal is to reduce curtailment so instead of spending taxpayer money to tell people to cut back on generation, they could h
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While having power usage patterns follow generation is a good thing, it's a lot more effectively accomplished with a smart grid/smart appliances. What I don't get is, the UK still uses natural gas. The number one cost factor in the production of synthetic natural gas is the hydrogen and the number one cost factor in the production of green hydrogen is the electricity. Why aren't they using the surplus to make hydrogen which they can then use to make methane and reduce their requirement for things like LNG i
Re: A good problem (Score:2)
You missed the lower price/free electricity off-peak part didn't you...
Octopus (Score:5, Informative)
I've said it elsewhere but...
At least one electricity company in the UK (Octopus) is already doing this.
Last year I had about a dozen "fill your boots" sessions from them, where they tell you a timeframe and in that timeframe not only is all electricity "free" (they only charge you for what you would have normally used in that period, any extra is free) but they enter you into prize draws, etc. for participating.
I used them to not only do all my chores, heating, cooling, cook dinner, etc. but also to fill my solar battery bank from the grid (which I then used to reduce my grid usage over the next few days). In fact, that's how I discovered what the maximum draw I can pull through my main consumer unit is before the main RCD trips.
I even did things like charged up all my cordless tool batteries and the like too.
This isn't new, but making it "official" and widening it to all electricity suppliers is just obvious.
I don't know what the electricity companies will think about it, because they seem to be largely profit-making worthless privatised entities, and asking them to help people reduce usage of their own product is nonsensical (I remember schemes were the water companies were supposed to encourage less water use, this involved sending you useless tat to drip-feed your plants and suchlike, and similarly for electricity companies, which involved sending you a free lightbulb).
But I suppose with the right incentive (e.g. penalising low usage or offsetting the extra usage against their later energy purchases, etc.) it might prompt them to take up the scheme too.
It's largely irrelevant, long-term, though, because as far as I'm concerned energy production is not democratised. I myself intend to be utility-independent by retirement, and electricity was the first and easiest to achieve, and I'm way ahead of schedule there.
Re:Octopus (Score:5, Informative)
It's really not nonsensical, actually. Base load can be incredibly expensive. If they can avoid firing up the most expensive plant, they make more money. It's really that simple. Even though it seems "free" to you, what's really going on is that you have become part of the supply side of the equation by using power when it's there, and then _not_ using it when an expensive plant would have to be turned on. This is really a case where everybody wins.
Re:Octopus (Score:4, Interesting)
Not exactly. Electricity must be consumed at the same time it's generated, and the stability of the grid hinges on supply and demand being balanced. Load shifting requires storage, which there isn't enough of, so using electricity now usually does not help much to avoid using electricity later unless you have some form of storage (e.g batteries, thermal storage tanks)
That's happening is you have inflexible electricity sources - your so-called "base load generators" - that cannot be throttled down, and renewable power that is very "use it or lose it" since they cannot be dispatched on demand, resulting in a surplus of generation. Wholesale electricity prices go down because supply exceeds demand, and continues into negative wholesale prices because you cannot tolerate a surplus of generation without destabilizing the grid.
So yes it's about "using power when it's there" but it has nothing to do with "not using it when an expensive plant would have to be turned on." It has to do with the fact that you can't turn some plants off and they need to encourage extra usage during times of glut to avoid crashing the whole system. Operators have no problem with people using "expensive" electricity 'cause they're gonna pass those costs on to you anyway.
=Smidge=
How? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Same way as I did last summer - plug in the car, do the washing, turn on a/c, charge a standalone battery... it was great!
Re:How? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How? (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to imagine U.K. climate, think of the Pacific coast between Vancouver Island and Anchorage, just with warmer winters thanks to the Gulf stream.
Re:How? (Score:5, Interesting)
Decades ago, it was the cheapest to run these at night, when there was little power consumption. These days you run them around noon, when production is at maximum. With the right energy contract, you actually can get payed to consume electricity during these times, although it does not happen that often.
Met a guy who made this his hobby. He installed solar panels, added some beefed up batteries to his home grid. He actually charged his batteries during this period and sold the electricity back when demand was higher in the evening. He even helped balancing the grid to 50Hz and got payed for that. He made profit with his installation. He did not get rich, but it did pay back all his investments. If enough people do this, GWh capacity is easily achievable... Interesting times we live in.
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Drivel. The UK now routinely sees 40C summer peaks and long stretches above 30C right across the south east, where millions of people live. That's plenty hot, especially in building stock not constructed for it.
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While the four hottest days on record have occurred in the last seven years, with one of them just reaching 40 degrees, it's a bit of a stretch to say that the "UK now routinely sees 40C summer peaks".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's also a bit of a stretch to claim that there are "long stretches above 30C". Last year was considerably above average with 14 days, which came in two or three periods at least (I don't remember, but it wasn't one go). It certainly feels hotter than that, especially with b
Re:How? (Score:4, Interesting)
How, exactly, is a private household supposed to increase their energy usage in the summer? Mine Bitcoin? And how will using more energy reduce their bills? This just shows the unintended problem with solar: It needs to be coupled with lots of storage - not hours, but weeks.
You could mine Bitcoin, I suppose, but the obvious thing to do would be charge up your EV. Energy storage on wheels!
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I haven't followed the developments for a while now: does V2H finally work, is it available in most EVs?
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Well that only works if you have an EV.
I don't plan on buying one.
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Or are you an ascetic individual, which refrains from using machinery to make life easier and prefer to wash dishes/clothing by hand and then let them dry naturally? :)
I don't wash by hand, but in summer I often dry on the line outside. I don't really consider it asceticism, especially as it doesn't add extra heat to the house.
My dishwasher averages probably 200W. But also, I generally run when it's full.
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why would you think that?
What use would I have for an EV?
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Wouldn't that be the same amount of power though? They were going to do those things anyway.
"More" implies "additional" to me.
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It does, but the detail of the story makes clear this is really about timeshifting demand
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You could mine Bitcoin, I suppose, but the obvious thing to do would be charge up your EV. Energy storage on wheels!
This is a good argument to move from a level 1 or slow level 2 charger to a high power level 2 charger. You can reasonably get a 11.5kW charger in the US, our slow chargers are usually around 1.8kW. While Europe has 2.3-3kw and go to 11 or even 22kW if your home has 3 phase power. If your vehicle can support it you will be able to get over 7x the free electricity and perhaps full charges for free.
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Turn on your immersion heater. Wash/dry your clothes and dishes. Stick that roast in your electric oven. Charge your EV. Turn your fridge down a degree, or put some bottles of water in to cool for later. Run the AC.
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Probably the most energy intensive thing is the tumble drier, but I tend to line dry outside in summer.
Actually my microwave gives it a run for it's money, it draws almost as much as my kettle. I'll microwave some shit and drink a fuck load of tea (perfect for hot weather!).
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The problem with microwaves is you usually only use them for a few minutes. Ovens go for longer, but I'm not sure how much more power they actually use after the initial heating up stage.
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Well, yeah. Though the longest I've run my microwave for nearly continuously is something like 45 minutes (it's rated at 100% duty cycle), when I was catering for 16. It basically served the same purpose as a second oven except it's much smaller and way more useful the rest of the time.
It won't allow more than 15 minutes at full power to be entered.
But also...
If it's the middle of a spell of good weather, I don't want to be dumping a bunch of extra heat into my house!
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Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
The headline appears to be nonsense. It's not really about encouraging people to use more electricity but to time-shift their usage of appliances which draw a lot of power.
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The same way we already do things. Off peak and On peak have been a thing for decades and plenty of houses already do things to compensate. E.g. we used to run the washing machine, drier, dishwasher etc at night. Now (not in the UK, but same problem) our energy company has switched the off-peak / on-peak times to during the day due to solar flipping the economics. So now we run the dishwasher, drier, and washing machine during the day instead.
All these devices have built in timers, even the cheap ones. Thro
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There is always buying 3D printers. They require more energy, but always good to have a couple around, and always making stuff.
IMHO, if there energy is left to burn, why not use it for things like thermal depolymerization, turning CO2 into fuels, or normally expensive processes? Thermal depolymerization removes waste and gives a useful hydrocarbon product that can be used. Synthetic gasoline or diesel are always useful.
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Fire up your heat pumps now in anticipation of winter. You'll not regret it.
Re: How? (Score:2)
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We need more smart appliances that can be set to run on a signal from the grid. E.g. if I could plug my car in, but only have the EVSE deliver power when the grid tells it to. Or press a "delayed start" button on my dishwasher that tells it to run in 4 hours or when the grid tells it to, whichever comes first. Same for clothes washer/dryers.
If more houses had whole-home batteries, they could charge during the day and discharge at night to do load shifting.
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Running WCG/F@H tasks on computers and phones would be a good use.
Terrible headline (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a terrible headline. Really one of the worst in a while, but it's actually The Guardian's fault as that is their headline as well. This is not encouraging people to use more power, but telling them WHEN they should use power. "It's windy and sunny right now, quick, wash your clothes and charge your car!"
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Everything's an ads on the internet.
Not going to happen (Score:2)
which may choose to offer heavily discounted or free electricity to their customers during specific periods when the energy system operator predicts there will be a surplus of electricity.
Yeah this isn't going to happen.
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It quite literally already does, here in the UK
Batteries? (Score:2)
I'm assuming that having large batteries around the UK to store grid electricity when supply exceeds demand isn't affordable? It seems too obvious a solution rather than trying to persuade UK people to use more electricity, especially when UK citizens pay one of the highest rates in the world for their electricity, so are more likely to want to use less electricity!
A surplus! Great! (Score:2)
This is actually a great problem and very bad news (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is going to be the following. Sometime roughly 2030 there will be 90GW of wind and 45GW of solar. Demand will be roughly 60GW peak winter and 50GW summer. The lows will be about 25GW summer and about 40GW winter.
Are you starting to see a problem? No, not yet? Lets continue.
Its January 2030. Its a cold, calm, clear early evening. There is no solar because its dark, and wind is delivering 5GW owing to the usual winter blocking high pressure zone. It has been below 10GW for a week, and will be below 20GW for another week. Nuclear is supplying around 10GW - if they haven't closed down the legacy nuclear by then, Gas has fallen to less than 10GW because the plant has hit end of life.
Where are you going to get 30-40GW from to meet peak demand?
But if you think this is a problem, now lets turn to early July. Solar is now putting out its max, around 30GW at midday. Nuclear is still delivering 10GW. Wind, well that is going a bomb because this is a time of pleasant summer breezes. Its midday. Demand is dropping to 25GW at midday.
Now the problem with solar is that most of it is not under the control of the grid operator, so they cannot turn it off. They turn off all the wind and pay constraint payments to the operators. They can't turn of the nuclear. They are looking at supply of roughly 40GW and demand of 25GW.
At this point, summer or winter, for different reasons, the flight data recorder has a pause in the dialogue between the crew, broken by someone saying 'Oh dear'. Or something a bit stronger. And then all the lights go out.
Two weeks later they are still trying to find enough spinning capacity to get the thing restarted. If its winter, people are quietly dying of cold. Their heating needs power to operate the gas boilers and cookers. If its summer they are taking cold showers, eating cold baked beans.
Meanwhile the government of the day considers the situation and comes to the conclusion that the problem is that they do not have enough solar power installed, so they adopt a plan to install a further 45GW of it. That should fix the problem. Now, how to communicate this plan to the country? That is a slight problem, Prime Minister. A lot of our communications facilities seem to be, well, out of action... because of the, well, the...the temporary interruption to grid services...
Do the math how you want. If you move a country to a generating system where peak demand is bound to coincide with low supply, and peak generation with low demand, the result will be blackouts.
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A nonsense scenario.
You use transitional backup like gas during that period. If you were sensible you'd also have a decent amount of gas storage.
Two weeks later they are still trying to find enough spinning capacity to get the thing restarted.
Gas turbine reserves. Up in hours.
Their heating needs power to operate the gas boilers and cookers
Or heat pumps and electric cookers.
Now the problem with solar is that most of it is not under the control of the grid operator, so they cannot turn it off.
No, it's under control of the grid operators. That's how they ensure they can work on parts of the grid - they command the domestic solar to shut down and other contributors are utilty-scale.
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But if you think this is a problem, now lets turn to early July. Solar is now putting out its max, around 30GW at midday... Now the problem with solar is that most of it is not under the control of the grid operator, so they cannot turn it off.
Sure they can, just stop buying it. The utility just disconnects their inverters and the panels become shiny glass. A solar cell without a load doesn't explode or anything.
A hand out of sight is a hand out of mind. (Score:3)
Jevons? (Score:2)
Not use more? (Score:2)
Frederick Pohl short story (Score:2)
The name escapes me, sorry, but it was about a man who grew up in "poverty", one which required his family to spend all their woke hours consuming. His evolution into adulthood, where he could be on his own, made him into a twisted but fascinating individual, one whose lifestyle was a commentary of mid 20th century American consumerism.
Sounds like you need to set proper pricing (Score:2)
So why not just provide negative prices?
Why are they still paying for the electricity they "would have"?
This whole scheme is dumb. They should make gambling on your electricity bill illegal.
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So why not just provide negative prices?
Why are they still paying for the electricity they "would have"?
This whole scheme is dumb. They should make gambling on your electricity bill illegal.
Meanwhile, in deep-Baptist no-gambliing except on football Texas: $4677 for 1 week of electricity [npr.org]
Reads Like Insanity to Justify Datacenters (Score:2)
So, it's solar, not nuclear (Score:2)
that's "too cheap to meter"?
Of course, in the UK, given climate change, they're going to need a ton of window a/c units.
Not a great idea (Score:2)
Their grid is shittier now than it was before and now there's AI and electric car charging. So who thought this was a good idea?
Utter bullshit (Score:2)
Many suppliers already offer more than 2 million households the opportunity to pay lower rates for electricity used during off-peak hours but this will be the first time that the system operator will use this tool to help balance the grid.
Back in the 80s my house in New Jersey had a box on the air conditioner that would allow the electric company to turn it off for up to an hour at their discretion to lower the power demand in our area. They paid my parents a small stipend' each month they let the utility control their A/C, it took more than an hour for a cooled house to warm up, we never noticed if/when it went off.
This is not the first time electric companies tried to manage peak loads ("balance the grid").