Not so unfortunately @paulenergo ... at least, not with the present set of regulatory constraints.
Most of the renewable generation sites are faraway from where the demand is to be found.
There are two areas of Britain which have an annual average surplus of electricity from those renewable sources. Scotland has plentiful hydro-electric generation South West England is three-times over subscribed for wind and solar generation (since spring'23)
National Grid Group has announced £60bn of infrastructure upgrades for the Transmission Grid. That's the power cables operating at 275kV - 400kV in England & Wales and 132kV - 275kV in Scotland.
That investment will be repaid by increases in the Transmission Use of Service (TUoS) charges paid by electricity suppliers. The Suppliers add in their profit margin, and pass on the TUoS charges to their customers.
However, the great majority of the 5416 commercial solar farms in Britain are connected to the regional Distribution Grids.
The same is true for 90% of the 2575 wind-farms (onshore and offshore). They usually connect to the 33kV and 132kV Distribution Grid networks.
There are fourteen regional distribution grids, managed by Distribution Network Operators (DNOs). The grid upgrades they are undertaking are funded by raising charges for consumers in the region where the generation occurs.
Thus the residents of SW England pay for upgrades on their regional Distribution Grid despite the fact that the area has an energy surplus. The upgrades are required to send that electricity to London... whose bill-payers are not required to contribute.
Every additional renewable generation site which receives an Offer to Connect to the grid requires yet more grid upgrades.
By the end of 2023 (the last set of statistics available) Britain had 420gigawatts of Offers to Connect in progress.
I, and others here, would be interested to hear from where you are obtaining the message that domestic bills will be reduced.
Is this possibly the oft-quoted claim by the UK Government that domestic bills will be reduced by £300 /year once we de-carbonise the electricity supply (2030)?
This post was modified 2 months ago 6 times by Transparent
Switching to renewable energy sources like solar and wind; domestic electricity bills can be reduced considerably.
Not entirely sure whether you're referring to renewable energy sources at home or feeding into the grid.
The current price link between electricity and gas means that a household being provided with 100% green electricity will still be charged just as much as if the electricity had all been generated by a gas power plant. All that would change is how much profit the energy company would make, and that is why there is currently quite an important debate going on about scrapping that price link. If that can be achieved, you're quite right that domestic electricity bills could reduce markedly and, more importantly, reduce for every consumer.
On the other hand, you are quite right that a domestic electricity bill can be markedly reduced by that household installing some form of home energy generation - solar panels, wind turbine or similar - particularly when combined with a battery. However, the households least likely to be able to do this are those on tighter incomes.
Taking this to its logical conclusion, if we assumed that every household that could afford the investment necessary to reduce their bills did exactly that, the subsidies given to the energy intensive industries would end up being paid for by the only households still relying completely on the grid i.e. the poorest ones. Not a stellar bit of policy-making IMHO.
105 m2 bungalow in South East England
Mitsubishi Ecodan 8.5 kW air source heat pump
18 x 360W solar panels
1 x 6 kW GroWatt battery and SPH5000 inverter
1 x Myenergi Zappi
1 x VW ID3
Raised beds for home-grown veg and chickens for eggs
Taking this to its logical conclusion, if we assumed that every household that could afford the investment necessary to reduce their bills did exactly that, the subsidies given to the energy intensive industries would end up being paid for by the only households still relying completely on the grid i.e. the poorest ones. Not a stellar bit of policy-making IMHO.
That is unfortunately what is happening in California since it has lots of sun. But DESNZ can’t learn from others’ mistakes it has to makes its own!
2kW + Growatt & 4kW +Sunnyboy PV on south-facing roof Solar thermal. 9.5kWh Givenergy battery with AC3. MVHR. Vaillant 7kW ASHP (very pleased with it) open system operating on WC
Not so unfortunately @paulenergo ... at least, not with the present set of regulatory constraints.
Most of the renewable generation sites are faraway from where the demand is to be found.
There are two areas of Britain which have an annual average surplus of electricity from those renewable sources. Scotland has plentiful hydro-electric generation South West England is three-times over subscribed for wind and solar generation (since spring'23)
National Grid Group has announced £60bn of infrastructure upgrades for the Transmission Grid. That's the power cables operating at 275kV - 400kV in England & Wales and 132kV - 275kV in Scotland.
That investment will be repaid by increases in the Transmission Use of Service (TUoS) charges paid by electricity suppliers. The Suppliers add in their profit margin, and pass on the TUoS charges to their customers.
However, the great majority of the 5416 commercial solar farms in Britain are connected to the regional Distribution Grids.
The same is true for 90% of the 2575 wind-farms (onshore and offshore). They usually connect to the 33kV and 132kV Distribution Grid networks.
There are fourteen regional distribution grids, managed by Distribution Network Operators (DNOs). The grid upgrades they are undertaking are funded by raising charges for consumers in the region where the generation occurs.
Thus the residents of SW England pay for upgrades on their regional Distribution Grid despite the fact that the area has an energy surplus. The upgrades are required to send that electricity to London... whose bill-payers are not required to contribute.
Every additional renewable generation site which receives an Offer to Connect to the grid requires yet more grid upgrades.
By the end of 2023 (the last set of statistics available) Britain had 420gigawatts of Offers to Connect in progress.
I, and others here, would be interested to hear from where you are obtaining the message that domestic bills will be reduced.
Is this possibly the oft-quoted claim by the UK Government that domestic bills will be reduced by £300 /year once we de-carbonise the electricity supply (2030)?
Are you able to quantify in £ the cost on a typical domestic energy bill in the South West for the regional distribution grid upgrades? Roughly how much a year?
Nesta quotes £135 as a national figure for the regional distribution cost which includes building and maintaining. I haven't looked recently at the breakdown to see these extra costs you highlighted or the regional differences of this figure.
They quote £38 for National distribution building and maintenance.
This post was modified 2 months ago 2 times by Jeff
I don't see how the total costs which will be applied to bills can be calculated without us knowing how the National Grid Group intend to recoup the £60bn of infrastructure investment which they announced in Spring'24.
They could easily get all that back by adding nothing at all to UK consumer bills, and instead reaping in the profits from exporting 'our' electricity to Europe via their Interconnectors. Should we expect a commercial company to be that generous? Should we expect Ofgem to understand this, and step in to protect consumers?
As for the Distribution Grid upgrades, the big unknown is whether there is to be a sensible strategy to prevent any requirement to upgrade/re-inforce the 11kV network.
There is an Innovation Project looking at this subject, which is about to provide its first (annual) update. I'm not part of the project, but have been invited to take part in the (video) meeting.
I'd like to ask your question in advance, because it's the nub of what they need to be investigating. And I'd be happy to copy you into the email if you PM me an email address. But please don't advertise the name or contact details of the NGED staff here on an open forum of course!
There is already a push from Data Centre suppliers for the right incentives to site Data Centres in areas with excess electricity and for them to benefit from zonal pricing.
There are also Data Centres being built near large battery storage sites, for example near one of Europe's largest battery sites near Cardiff.
It is a balancing act as the areas have to have a sufficient pool of qualified staff, especially with the move to larger Data centers to support AI etc. It is not impossible but we have to be realistic about exactly where to site industry.
Data Centres are a success story for UK employment. We are third in the world for the number of Data Centres behind the US and Germany. We do need to be careful generally about the cost model so we don't price them out of the UK else we will have no jobs for people. In a global market this often means subsidising in some way else sectors disappear like steel making, ship building and much of our industrial base. It isn't possible to load more costs onto data centres and other businesses but it should be possible to put the right incentives in place.
I think we have to spend money wisely, the £22billion investment announced in carbon capture for example could be far better spent in the UK right now... we are making an expensive mess of net zero transition in a rush for an arbitrary set of dates set by the UK Government. We are in danger of pricing ourselves out of the developed world which would be a disaster.
I'm pleased to see that the Guardian is getting involved with this.
The Chancellor announced yet another Data Centre in Oxfordshire last week... ... in line with the idea of creating a 'Silicon Valley' between Oxford and Cambridge.
The solar isn't substantial enough to supply the existing population, and will mainly generate during the summer.
The wind farms would seem to be more useful at first glance, but the ones I've arrowed are applications which were refused, withdrawn or abandoned, which is the majority of them.
And here's the projected energy flow diagram for the 400kV transmission grid for the next two years (2025-26)
I've added the approximate locations of Oxford and Cambridge.
The numbers next to each flow-arrow is in MW.
The purple-highlighted sections of the grid are the priorities for capacity upgrades.
Nothing in those maps suggests that NESO is preparing for an uptake in energy-hungry data-centres. The emphasis is on supplying London, which has an insatiable thirst for electrons.
The other issue with data centres is their requirement for clean/treated water... lots of it!
Placing them in the catchment area for Thames Water doesn't seem to be a great idea!
This can only be fixed with zonal pricing. We can stick the AI up the glen...send us your data centres, we have an abundance of renewables and can stop spending money on restraint payments. As an added benefit I can also run my heat pump on sensibly priced leccy!
This can only be fixed with zonal pricing. We can stick the AI up the glen...send us your data centres, we have an abundance of renewables and can stop spending money on restraint payments. As an added benefit I can also run my heat pump on sensibly priced leccy!
Already in train for Scotland and the North and investment has already been confirmed for Liverpool.
The cap and floor mechanism coming in for battery storage this year will also help as there has recently been some nervousness to invest in large scale long duration battery storage in the UK due to the risk the batteries will be used for potentially a very small proportion of the time. The is a large amount of battery storage up for sale at the moment and it is unclear what price it will fetch.
This post was modified 4 weeks ago 2 times by Jeff
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