[bryanlarsen]

Wind power is not to blame for the high price of electricity in Britain. Some of the wind power is being purchased at 4p/kWh.

Commodities are priced at the margin, and the marginal price in the UK is imported liquified gas.

[ZeroGravitas]

If (possibly when, as they are looking into it now) the UK moves to zonal pricing, Scotland will have the cheapest electricity in Europe, due to all the wind.

All the other zones would reduce in price too. Currently you get some oddities like France buying cheap wind from Scotland and since it can't get delivered through bottlenecks, gas plants in England supplying the power.

The cost of this gas is then the source of headlines about how expensive wind backup is, rather than headlines about why Scotland has mysteriously more cheap electricity than England, where onshore wind was effectively banned, and the problems caused by different areas having different amounts of cheap electricity and a single market price.

[phil21]

You can’t ignore the high prices when the wind doesn’t blow while saying the low prices when there is an excess of production is the true cost. This is called cherry picking.

The cost of intermittent power sources includes the dirty fossil fuel peaker plants built and ran to back them. Think of them as batteries.

Intermittent power sources more or less are financial engineering parasites to the grid at this point. It could be fixed but no one has the political will to do so. Eventually you run out of other people’s power and the chickens come home to roost.

The most obvious investment I’ve made in the past 15 years was natural gas. Until chemical battery storage catches up (doubtful) or there is a return to rationality in this space I expect the party to continue.

I hate it. I think solar and wind are great technologies that are currently horrifically misused by folks getting rich off the backs of regular people.

[bryanlarsen]

The highest cost electricity when the wind is blowing is imported natural gas. The highest cost electricity when the wind isn't blowing is imported natural gas.

> while saying the low prices when there is an excess of production is the true cost.

I didn't say that. There are no low prices in Britain because natural gas is expensive. There are low costs to some producers, but low costs and low prices aren't the same thing. There are multiple costs but only a single price, the highest one. You've got to completely eliminate the need for your highest cost producer before prices go down.

[chris222]

Why doesn’t the UK just deploy large battery banks like Tesla Megapack?

[Kognito]

It's a work in progress for sure, but it's certainly not cheap. Getting enough battery storage will be a mammoth task.

From the aricle, Europe's (then) biggest battery could supply just 2 hours of power to 300k homes - compared with ~ 35 million homes in the UK.

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/uk-builds-europes...

[datavirtue]

Batteries cost a fortune, have all kinds of supporting hardware that has to be maintained, fire prone, and they depreciate. Who wants that on their books?

[bryanlarsen]

> Batteries cost a fortune, have all kinds of supporting hardware that has to be maintained, fire prone, and they depreciate. Who wants that on their books?

Natgas cost a fortune, have all kinds of supporting hardware that has to be maintained, fire prone, and they depreciate. Who wants that on their books?

All of that is more true for natgas than for batteries.

[datavirtue]

You seriously do not believe your argument. All those costs are aggregated. As opposed to a battery endpoint, which is not. Someone is going to have to bear the cost. Right now a proprietor has to foot the bill for tanks, pumps and fuel on a shakey financing model. Just hoping they can sell enough mountain dew, CBD, and cigarettes to keep their head above water.

[phil21]

In a word: Math.

[weebull]

We have some...

https://www.nationalgrid.com/richborough-energy-park-battery...

...and others are being planned....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr4j1nrd0ro

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/200-megawatt-battery-s...

[beAbU]

"just"

[roenxi]

I wouldn't blame wind, but from the sidelines one would expect shutting down all the coal plants is linked to the high cost situation.

[Kognito]

Wasn't suggesting it was the cause, just pointing out we seem to have done little to invest in other forms of power.

Wind has its place, but it will struggle to provide consistent base load or grid inertia that we'll lose from shuttering coal, gas and nuclear.

[bryanlarsen]

Besides wind, the UK has continued to invest significant sums into both natgas and nuclear.

[Neonlicht]

Gas took out both nuclear and pretty much all research on wind in the 1970s.

Remember nobody gives a flying fuck about the future only the present and gas was so ridiculously cheap and simple. Still would be if Putin had been a man of reason.