The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[hidetheelephants]

Potentially, but take a look at Invergordon before leaping into it.

[tamore]

glazbagun said:

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/spains...

A few weeks old, but this does make me wonder: I'd always assumed that if we, say, solved the silver bullet of fusion that we'd finally have the "too cheap to meter" Jetsons future. But would capital costs make even that a financial impossibility without a state-level investment/subsidy plan?

Spain's solar industry is apparently running into the same (albeit shorter) problem that hampers nuclear or any big capital project- making it pay quickly enough for the capital costs and interest not to wipe you out.

Could they, hypothetically start aluminium smelting, or some other energy intensive businesses as a hedge against low prices and higher interest rates? Well, against energy prices at least.

It reads as a bad news article, but at the same time they're producing more energy than they can sell which sounds like a success as a national strategy even if a poor annual business plan.

the glut of power has caught everyone on the hop. lots of ways of soaking it up. incentivising EV take-up would be a good way of doing it. in time a proper european grid (not EU) is the answer.

[NRS]

Of course the timing of the power matters, but is part of this ‘glut of power’ and the impact on prices not just because of the high recent prices? If you look a few years before that it was a lot more similar to now according to the graph?

[tamore]

NRS said:

Of course the timing of the power matters, but is part of this ‘glut of power’ and the impact on prices not just because of the high recent prices? If you look a few years before that it was a lot more similar to now according to the graph?

not that i can see. it's due to the fact solar panel costs have crashed and it's a no brainer in the UK, let alone spain. looking at tomorrow, in the middle of the day i'm being incentivised to use power with negative pricing. high wind generation on a sunny day currently means a glut of power available. curtailment is a rubbish solution.

[hidetheelephants]

It's a quite sensible solution, the incentivisation has encouraged perverse outcomes, I direct my ire in that direction.

[tamore]

hidetheelephants said:

It's a quite sensible solution, the incentivisation has encouraged perverse outcomes, I direct my ire in that direction.

the speed of uptake has caught everyone on the hop. curtailment is a rubbish solution, but a necessity at the moment. it doesn't present options and opportunities if we had competent leadership.

[alangla]

Horror story about an “affordable” district heating system in Edinburgh. Prices appear to have gone from attractive to astronomical overnight. It’s stuff like this that will undermine confidence in these sorts of setups https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmm2n3527m4o

[tamore]

alangla said:

Horror story about an “affordable” district heating system in Edinburgh. Prices appear to have gone from attractive to astronomical overnight. It’s stuff like this that will undermine confidence in these sorts of setups https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmm2n3527m4o

wouldn't have gas fired district heating pegged as any kind of future solution,

[Randy Winkman]

tamore said:

alangla said:

Horror story about an “affordable” district heating system in Edinburgh. Prices appear to have gone from attractive to astronomical overnight. It’s stuff like this that will undermine confidence in these sorts of setups https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmm2n3527m4o

wouldn't have gas fired district heating pegged as any kind of future solution,

It sounds like Places for People Scotland screwed up negotiating a new contact with an energy supplier who is now exploiting the situation and possibly making a lot of money from it. But as you say, there's nothing green about gas.

[Evanivitch]

alangla said:

Horror story about an “affordable” district heating system in Edinburgh. Prices appear to have gone from attractive to astronomical overnight. It’s stuff like this that will undermine confidence in these sorts of setups https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmm2n3527m4o

I remember horror stories about this during the energy crisis because a business (the district heating comoa y) wasn't protected by the domestic price cap, but that's absurd in 2024.

[AmyRichardson]

tamore said:

wouldn't have gas fired district heating pegged as any kind of future solution,

It's 10 years old, or more if you go back to the design stage. Today it would be a GSHP, which is well suited to such an arrangement (one deep set of bore holes, a bigger but consolidated set of plant, etc.)

But as noted, these people aren't stuffed by the hardware but by someone fixing a future price at the very top of the market.

[Hill92]

GB Nuclear announced six companies were through to the next stage of the SMR competition in October, with the goal announcing the winners in Spring 2024 and signing contracts in Summer 2024.

The deadline for submitting project documentation was extended from 24 June to 8 July due to the election.

Yesterday EDF announced they are abandoning their internal Nuward SMR design which they had spent 4 years developing and will instead switch to using existing technologies for the design of its SMRs. EDF have said what the budget impact will be not whether it will delay the rollout of the SMRs.

Reportedly, some of its potential customers, the European energy companies Vattenfall, CEZ and Fortum, wanted guarantees that the SMRs would not have a levelised cost of energy of more than €100 a megawatt hour and EdF decided that that was not possible.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/french-nuclear-giant-s...