4 ms·

I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Expensive legacy gas and nuclear plants provide base load power at scale. Something renewables don’t really do. These have

I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Expensive legacy gas and nuclear plants provide base load power at scale. Something renewables don’t really do. These have to be built and the cost distributed across everyone who takes power from the grid. The shared model is what makes it more resilient and reliable.

jillesvangurp 2y ago
It is actually that simple. The current pricing system was created for a grid that no longer exists. There is now lots of wind generation, solar, battery power, etc. And growing rapidly. Both on the grid and domestic. And soon large amounts of batteries with wheels capable of powering houses and delivering power to the grid. All this means lots of fluctuations in power availability and cost. Pretending that it costs the same all the time everywhere is irrational. If you give people incentives to adapt to these fluctuations, they will. Energy providers like Octopus prove that at scale. They by the way are a big proponent of more localized power. Because it's just more optimal. Price incentives cause people and companies to adapt their behavior. Including when to to use power and where to use power. Likewise, it incentivizes power companies to invest in power generation where the demand is instead of where the NIMBY's are not (like Scottland). Speaking of NIMBY's, if they could benefit from lower pricing, they'd probably love wind power a lot more. Buy more electric cars, do the laundry when it's windy, etc. As for base load. Nobody ever specifies a number in GW or GWH. It's a very fuzzy notion that people just assert is needed in huge (unspecified) amounts. If you put actual numbers on it, you would be able to have a sane discussion on (much) cheaper alternatives. But that never happens. Most discussions around base load center on the notion that we allegedly need a lot of it. What's the budget we need to reserve for that? How much? When? Where? Why? Are there any alternatives? The debate is mostly completely irrational and hand wavy on this. There is a basic notion that power companies don't mind charging the same rate nationally because that means they make lots of money charging for mostly cheap power available everywhere except in a handful of places. The way the system works is that everybody pays the highest price on the system. Localized prices would introduce lots of variation and cause lots of reasons for power companies to optimize their power delivery and pricing. High prices mean unhappy customers voting with their feet. They are being shielded from that currently. It's a big reason they are resisting changes on this front. In some cases they actually get paid to not generate power or discard it. That's wasteful. Scottland has plenty of base load. They are exporting their power surplus most of the time.
- tialaramex 2y ago
  For base load one obvious reason to be sceptical is that in country A you may find that a generation technology is "base load" and so we can't possibly throttle it up or down, that's just how it works, and then in country B the very same technology is indeed throttled up and down as needed. The UK has a lot of combined cycle gas burners. You will sometimes see US claims that these generators are only baseload and it wouldn't make sense to throttle them up and down. Over the course of an ordinary day in Britain you might see power output from these "baseload" generators vary between 2GW and 20GW and it's no big deal.
  - UltraSane 2y ago
    gas turbines last much longer when run at constant optimal RPM than when constantly varying.
    - Panzer04 2y ago
      My naive presumption is that the gas turbines do run at constant RPM, but vary the fuel use to deliver more torque and hence energy? Maybe just wrong though :P
      - UltraSane 2y ago
        I'm not sure. I do not that gas peaker plants that have to be started and stopped a lot wear out very fast.
- switch007 2y ago
  What £/kWh rate could we achieve at 2am, if we had the perfect localised modern pricing model?
  - adrianN 2y ago
    Depends on the weather.
mschuster91 2y ago
> Expensive legacy gas and nuclear plants provide base load power at scale. Something renewables don’t really do. Running hydro, biogas (e.g. in Denmark) and offshore wind (UK, Spain, France, Italy) can definitely fulfill base load demand on the basis of renewable energy generation. With solar, enough overcapacity can guarantee base load during the day even when it's cloudy, and in the summer the solar overcapacity can be used to run synth-fuel plants for those things that we absolutely cannot run with electricity (ships and large airplanes). Additionally, we can reduce base load demand during night time... a lot of places are still running incandescent lighting, for example. Replace that with LEDs, better reflectors (for less waste) and movement detectors, and you tackle light pollution at night at the same time. Or heat, add storage to a heat pump system to avoid having to run the heat pump at night. And for fucks sake France please get rid of resistive heating.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > Running hydro, biogas (e.g. in Denmark) and offshore wind (UK, Spain, France, Italy) can definitely fulfill renewable base load demand. What is renewable base load demand?
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    Sorry, brain fart, shifted the words around and didn't fix the sentence up. Corrected, thanks.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      No worries! However I don't understand it :) Base load is the load that can't vary based on weather conditions; i.e. it needs to be supplyable from coal/diesel/gas/nuclear-type generation, or from batteries that have a certain number of hours or days of supply in them at all times. I don't think we have that, although I'm happy to be corrected.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        The best way to supply "synthetic baseload" with renewables is typically not to use just batteries for storage, but rather a combination of batteries and another storage mode more suited for longer term storage. The latter is optimized to have lower cost per unit of energy storage capacity than batteries, at the expense of lower (perhaps much lower) round trip efficiency. This latter storage mode isn't needed until fossil fuels are almost entirely eliminated from the grid, since otherwise just use those instead for that long term firming. The idea that the electricity supply system has to itself shoulder the burden of dealing with intermittency is also mistaken. If it's worthwhile users will be willing to dispatch at least some of their demand. I'm reminded of the argument against deregulation of telecom or airlines: that the new system wouldn't be as reliable or nice. But users were willing to make the tradeoff if the services were cheaper.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

It is actually that simple. The current pricing system was created for a grid that no longer exists. There is now lots of wind generation, solar, battery power, etc. And growing rapidly. Both on the grid and domestic. And soon large amounts of batteries with wheels capable of powering houses and delivering power to the grid. All this means lots of fluctuations in power availability and cost. Pretending that it costs the same all the time everywhere is irrational. If you give people incentives to adapt to these fluctuations, they will. Energy providers like Octopus prove that at scale. They by the way are a big proponent of more localized power. Because it's just more optimal. Price incentives cause people and companies to adapt their behavior. Including when to to use power and where to use power. Likewise, it incentivizes power companies to invest in power generation where the demand is instead of where the NIMBY's are not (like Scottland). Speaking of NIMBY's, if they could benefit from lower pricing, they'd probably love wind power a lot more. Buy more electric cars, do the laundry when it's windy, etc. As for base load. Nobody ever specifies a number in GW or GWH. It's a very fuzzy notion that people just assert is needed in huge (unspecified) amounts. If you put actual numbers on it, you would be able to have a sane discussion on (much) cheaper alternatives. But that never happens. Most discussions around base load center on the notion that we allegedly need a lot of it. What's the budget we need to reserve for that? How much? When? Where? Why? Are there any alternatives? The debate is mostly completely irrational and hand wavy on this. There is a basic notion that power companies don't mind charging the same rate nationally because that means they make lots of money charging for mostly cheap power available everywhere except in a handful of places. The way the system works is that everybody pays the highest price on the system. Localized prices would introduce lots of variation and cause lots of reasons for power companies to optimize their power delivery and pricing. High prices mean unhappy customers voting with their feet. They are being shielded from that currently. It's a big reason they are resisting changes on this front. In some cases they actually get paid to not generate power or discard it. That's wasteful. Scottland has plenty of base load. They are exporting their power surplus most of the time.

tialaramex 2y ago
For base load one obvious reason to be sceptical is that in country A you may find that a generation technology is "base load" and so we can't possibly throttle it up or down, that's just how it works, and then in country B the very same technology is indeed throttled up and down as needed. The UK has a lot of combined cycle gas burners. You will sometimes see US claims that these generators are only baseload and it wouldn't make sense to throttle them up and down. Over the course of an ordinary day in Britain you might see power output from these "baseload" generators vary between 2GW and 20GW and it's no big deal.
- UltraSane 2y ago
  gas turbines last much longer when run at constant optimal RPM than when constantly varying.
  - Panzer04 2y ago
    My naive presumption is that the gas turbines do run at constant RPM, but vary the fuel use to deliver more torque and hence energy? Maybe just wrong though :P
    - UltraSane 2y ago
      I'm not sure. I do not that gas peaker plants that have to be started and stopped a lot wear out very fast.
switch007 2y ago
What £/kWh rate could we achieve at 2am, if we had the perfect localised modern pricing model?
- adrianN 2y ago
  Depends on the weather.

mschuster91 2y ago

> Expensive legacy gas and nuclear plants provide base load power at scale. Something renewables don’t really do. Running hydro, biogas (e.g. in Denmark) and offshore wind (UK, Spain, France, Italy) can definitely fulfill base load demand on the basis of renewable energy generation. With solar, enough overcapacity can guarantee base load during the day even when it's cloudy, and in the summer the solar overcapacity can be used to run synth-fuel plants for those things that we absolutely cannot run with electricity (ships and large airplanes). Additionally, we can reduce base load demand during night time... a lot of places are still running incandescent lighting, for example. Replace that with LEDs, better reflectors (for less waste) and movement detectors, and you tackle light pollution at night at the same time. Or heat, add storage to a heat pump system to avoid having to run the heat pump at night. And for fucks sake France please get rid of resistive heating.

robertlagrant 2y ago
> Running hydro, biogas (e.g. in Denmark) and offshore wind (UK, Spain, France, Italy) can definitely fulfill renewable base load demand. What is renewable base load demand?
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Sorry, brain fart, shifted the words around and didn't fix the sentence up. Corrected, thanks.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    No worries! However I don't understand it :) Base load is the load that can't vary based on weather conditions; i.e. it needs to be supplyable from coal/diesel/gas/nuclear-type generation, or from batteries that have a certain number of hours or days of supply in them at all times. I don't think we have that, although I'm happy to be corrected.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      The best way to supply "synthetic baseload" with renewables is typically not to use just batteries for storage, but rather a combination of batteries and another storage mode more suited for longer term storage. The latter is optimized to have lower cost per unit of energy storage capacity than batteries, at the expense of lower (perhaps much lower) round trip efficiency. This latter storage mode isn't needed until fossil fuels are almost entirely eliminated from the grid, since otherwise just use those instead for that long term firming. The idea that the electricity supply system has to itself shoulder the burden of dealing with intermittency is also mistaken. If it's worthwhile users will be willing to dispatch at least some of their demand. I'm reminded of the argument against deregulation of telecom or airlines: that the new system wouldn't be as reliable or nice. But users were willing to make the tradeoff if the services were cheaper.