Posted by: @batpred

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Shifting taxes to gas is the obvious answer...

No it isnt, because that's a political nightmare. 

The politically convenient decision which has (at least in part) caused the electricity/gas ratio to ramp steadily from 2.5:1 in 2011 to 4:1 is unfortunately a barb.  Reversing it now will result in an absolute howl from the 'stupid net zero' lobby and pensioners paraded by the media that supports that particular  lobby telling us they are freezing as a consequence.  The only politically possible option so far as I can see is now to load it onto general taxation.

@jamespa And as a ‘special tax’ (sometimes referred to as a windfall tax) on the Fossil Fuel Industry. 😉 Toodles.

Posted by: @transparent

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All we need to do now is to get Ofgem to listen to you!

😊

Until any gov acts on that type of view, why would the rate of heat pump retrofit install increase? 

Simple article with a DENZ graph showing how gas which sets the market price normally is currently cheaper than wind farms for electricity

https://news.sky.com/story/households-and-business-must-wait-for-energy-bills-to-fall-as-minister-says-there-is-no-shortcut-to-bring-down-prices-13473274

As the minister says, no easy answers to fix this situation during the transition as the CfD costs etc are now locked in and gas prices have fallen. 

Nesta have updated their figures breaking down the latest price cap for anyone interested 

https://www.nesta.org.uk/report/whats-in-an-energy-bill/full/

UK the most expensive place for new nuclear. 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/taskforce-calls-for-radical-reset-of-nuclear-regulation-in-uk

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/692080f75c394e481336ab89/nuclear-regulatory-review-2025.pdf

The government target is to triple capacity by 2050 providing a quarter of our electricity in the UK. 

Let's hope the costs don't escalate. 

@jeff 

Posted by: @jeff

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Let's hope the costs don't escalate. 

😀 😀 that is almost guaranteed in the UK. This is one of the reasons why the UK is getting a reputation of being uninvestable. 

Posted by: @technogeek

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@jeff 

Posted by: @jeff

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Let's hope the costs don't escalate. 

😀 😀 that is almost guaranteed in the UK. This is one of the reasons why the UK is getting a reputation of being uninvestable. 

Yep, no quick fixes now. I am not optimistic about the migration to net zero in terms of costs but we have to do it for climate change. 

Meanwhile wholesale gas today at least is the lowest in over a year, and  low vs the last 5 years. This will help keep electricity increases lower as we add subsidies for nuclear, wind, storage, carbon capture, network updates etc, all index linked and guaranteed to increase. 

Wholesale gas would be even lower in the UK if we could actually store it at these low costs. We are currently exporting gas to Europe as we can't store all the LNG being offloaded to the UK. 

I think what's interesting is that the expected cost of wholesale electric will drop, but due to infrastructure costs, prices will rise, this is an interesting simulation https://www.electricitybills.uk/2030

One thing I'm not seeing much about, is the overall usage of electricity from the grid.  According to https://grid.iamkate.com/ grid capacity gas fallen from ~36GW in 2012 to ~30GW in 2024, that's a huge decrease.  Even maintaining a status quo cost of infrastructure in that scenario would lead to higher prices, because fixed costs are shared over less units, pushing unit rates higher.  I assume the drop is partly from efficiency measures and partly from behind the meter generation (solar PV ect.).

IF that's correct, then electrification of demand can reverse that cost trend, and if there is enough increase of demand unit rates can drop.  Consider the typical house using 3100kWhs PA adding a heat pump and an EV, now it uses 6200kWhs PA (pulled a number out of my arse).  Double the utilisation rate of all homes halves the unit cost (in a simplified model, yes, it's more complex than that).

This reduction comes from winding down parallel networks like gas, petrol, diesel etc., which have their own parallel (and therefore wasteful infrastructure) costs.

It's therefore critical to increase demand for electricity, to make it cheaper?

Posted by: @scalextrix

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It's therefore critical to increase demand for electricity, to make it cheaper?

Not necessarily...

... because the additional infrastructure required to carry that electricity is enormous.

Let me restate your assertion with a proviso:

We need to increase electricity demand when there's spare capacity on the existing grid.

To achieve that we need storage within the home...
rather than commercial BESS, which passes electricity across the grid twice.

That home-battery strategy also helps the gas storage problem of course.

And please note: NGET's grid modelling shows that changing every car to an EV overnight would result in (only) 10% additional electricity demand.

With simple smart controls and a large dollop of common sense, Net Zero is achievable. 

Posted by: @transparent

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because the additional infrastructure required to carry that electricity is enormous.

I agree and that makes sense, but if our grid usage has reduced from ~36 GW to ~30GW, dont we have ~6GW of existing infrastructure going spare already?  Or at least some proportion of that?

The 2030 predicted case I linked to also has a 75% increase in infrastructure costs built in, and thats my point, if we are building it already, then we just need to utilize it.

Posted by: @transparent

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To achieve that we need storage within the home...
rather than commercial BESS, which passes electricity across the grid twice.

Indeed that does make sense, V2G / V2H or whatever acronyms we like can significantly achive that, asuming the infrastructure is in place.

@scalextrix What we need is much cheaper battery systems so that we may store sufficient energy during the times of lowest grid strain (which we buy at the cheapest rate of course), and this supplies our power needs for the rest of the day/night when the grid is under strain from other users. We keep hearing that with new battery chemistries, battery prices will drop and they will last much longer - or is this like nuclear fusion, it is twenty years off?! Sceptically, Toodles.