[mattcoles]

I understand that curtailment is needed to incentivise private businesses to invest in wind when the output and demand can’t be correlated, but if the government owned the wind farms then it wouldn’t matter if we wasted right? We could just always be overproducing and wouldn’t have to pay for it.

[adolph]

> We could just always be overproducing

Depends on what you mean by overproducing. The energy put into an electrical grid must be balanced by demand or bad things will happen. I think the second answer in the below StackExchange is a good description.

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/117437/what-...

[morepork]

Assuming a competitive market, the outcome is essentially the same right? If the government builds more than would be economic for a private company they're paying the extra through construction costs/maintenance/financing that they would have been paying to incentivise the extra turbines.

[nicoburns]

> the outcome is essentially the same right?

Nope, the difference can be found in the profits made by the company that does in fact own and run the wind farms. The government could capture that should it wish to build them itself. This has been a hot topic recently with regard to fossil fuel energy generators who have been making large profits (in the billions) at the expense of people's energy bills.

[rtpg]

Except if the government owned it then there is no profit motive to begin with. At one point the number of intermediaries does start mattering (though I imagine that power suppliers are lower margin than other businesses)

There are a lot of details about... I suppose organizational theory? Which makes the decentralization nicer. But profits come from somewhere

[jthirkle]

The UK government? Owning things? Surely you can't be serious...

[alkjsdlkjasd]

They seem to be re-nationalising the railways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_British_Railways

Maybe not: "The Transport Secretary announced on 19 October 2022 that the Transport Bill which would have set up GBR would not go ahead in the current parliamentary session."

[HPsquared]

The actual railways (that is, the tracks and the stations) are already government owned anyway (Network Rail).

Network Rail sells access to the network to train operating companies, which are private (though often state-owned by other countries).

The network was originally built by private companies until nationalisation in 1947 (railway companies were bankrupt after WW2). It was private for a while in the 90s, then went bankrupt and renationalised in 2002. Seems to be quite the money pit!

[blibble]

since covid it has been essentially nationalised: the government took on the risk and any pnl

the franchising sysem won't be coming back

[smcl]

I'm sure TransPennine Express and Avanti West Coast passengers would love that but it's not quite true (yet?)

[blibble]

it is true

TPE is still under covid arrangements and Avanti West Coast is under a new style management contract as I described above

switching out top level boss doesn't suddenly improve underlying problems with the service

in the UK this is almost always the infrastructure, which has been nationalised since 2002

the government (DfT) had more control over the railways under the franchising system than they had when BR existed

almost all of what the hated "train companies" consists of is putting a driver in the cab, the rest is down to the DfT

[midasuni]

Despite what corbynites tell you the problem has never been privatisation or the franchise system - certainly not the TOCs. Indeed the system has managed to take Marylebone and the Chiltern main line from near closure under government control to providing massive investment and high quality thanks to long term franchises. The competition has lowered prices dramatically for those that care (in 1990 a 3 hour return Manchester to london cost about 3 times the £45 price it does today, but today you also have the option of a 2 hour return on a faster service, the revenue of which subsidies the rest of the network), and has driven usage to record levels arresting massive declines under BR

[smcl]

I don't have a strong opinion personally about the franchise system as I don't use any UK rail. My gut tells me they're not adding any value and they might as well be nationalised but someone whose opinion I trust (rail engineer and YouTuber Gareth Dennis[0]) has said that ditching them and nationalising it entirely wouldn't really fix what people think it would. However it has to be said that TPE and AWC have stood out as particularly dismal services - AWC were found to be fucking around with their already disappointing stats around cancelled services, for example. Hence my comment about users of those services - I would completely understand if they would want an overhaul if not outright nationalisation.

[0] - interestingly his "RailNatter" this Wednesday was titled "How to fix Britain's broken railways". I haven't watched it yet, but it will certainly feature some good insight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmKhVjw1xDA

[Jochim]

Why build and maintain the entirety of the infrastructure for a national transport system: payment, timetables, rails, signalling etc. and then hand the very last bit - the only bit that actually generates revenue - to a private company?

It's just another example of the hubris of the Conservative party. We've seen it play out repeatedly over the last decade and even earlier in Thatcher's neoliberalism. Labour's lurch to the right resulted in displays of similar small minded arrogance. Their undermining of the NHS through piecemeal privatisation is nothing short of a crime.

[Beltalowda]

It just got delayed AFAIK.

[anotheraccount9]

"wind power"...