13 ms·

Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

193 points by chmaynard 2y ago

ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Some of these are "costs" which reduce costs elsewhere. Smart meters for example, though rollout has hit snags and they've become targets for weird conspiracy theories, they are basically designed to give better real time info on electricity demand which helps with managing the grid. This in theory should save money elsewhere. Similarly for CfD. Yes the government may on net be paying a subsidy to get wind power built but what was the next best option? If that costs more than the CfD then that's a win.
- jstanley 2y ago
  But why do you need smart meters at the level of individual houses? Wouldn't putting them on substations get the same benefit with much less cost?
  - coretx 2y ago
    Yes, but those don't help manipulate consumer behavior and awareness.
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
      Apparently the UK government estimated that in 2016 and 2019 the average household saved £11 on their bill due to this feedback from smart meters. This page estimates the cost at £15 so 2/3rds is recovered just from that effect.
      - ajb 2y ago
        There's no way it only cost £15 in total to install a smart meter. The cost of the meter has to be at least that much and then you have paying a guy to actually install it (which in my case took 3 attempts and caused a gas leak, which took 4 or 5 guys several hours to fix - although hopefully that's unusual).
        6510 2y ago
        Hard to tell, they are all new now, eventually they will all be old. Then we will know what it really costs.
        hirako2000 2y ago
        It also took 3 attempts for me but they never showed up.
        Brybry 2y ago
        From a cursory search: £88 to £143 installation cost in the 2019 analysis. [3:p.21] Smart meter hardware cost £36 to £120 [3:p.22] £67 to £107 installation cost in the 2016 analysis. [2:p.12] £15 (in home display) + £44 electric + £57 gas + £29 comms equipment costs [2:p.10] [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f59f9ed915d74e6229eef/OFFSEN_2016_smart_meters_cost-benefit-update_Part_I_FINAL_VERSION.PDF https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f59f9ed915... [2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f2f8b40f0b62305b859b7/OFFSEN_2016_smart_meters_cost-benefit-update_Part_II_FINAL_VERSION.PDF https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f2f8b40f0b... [3] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d7f54c4e5274a27c2c6d53a/smart-meter-roll-out-cost-benefit-analysis-2019.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d7f54c4e5274...
        ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        15 pounds cost per year, 11 pounds saving per year, for an average user. Not sure how many years the cost is assumed to be spread over and what the ongoing running costs are but that's the per average customer cost apparently.
        ajb 2y ago
        Ah, my bad. 15 per year is more plausible
  - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
    It eliminates the need for staff to manually read them and guarantees they are read correctly every month.
    - 6510 2y ago
      That is the sales pitch, the error rate on the overcharging side is infinitely larger than that of mechanical meters. Not a fun lottery to win.
      - Symbiote 2y ago
        The alternative isn't a mechanical meter anyway. It's an electronic meter that must be read manually.
      - sgerenser 2y ago
        What makes smart meters more likely to read high?
        toast0 2y ago
        20-30 year old mechanical meters tend to be pretty accurate, but when they aren't, they tend to read low. Especially if your usage is fairly low, the minimum usage to push the wheels forward may be higher than your standby loads. If you've been on a meter that reads low for a long time, a new meter (mechanical or electronic) will be a big jump.
        6510 2y ago
        Mechanical meters either accurately measure use, run to slow or don't work at all. The worse thing that can happen is that other people indirectly have to pay for the missing killowatts. In contrast there are plenty of stories where people get bills 10-20 times what they are used to. Any half decent programmer on HN knows what to do when something has almost no chance of happening. Some of these things display only billable KWH while it isn't so expensive to display current consumption too. You can also measure it twice so that one can (remotely) see two entirely different readings and replace the meter with one that works properly. It could also display the amount of money owed. (estimate) It would make it slightly more expensive for everyone rather than accidentally billing some people truly crazy amounts. Just like a bank account can have a configurable limit for withdrawals the smart thing to do is to set a limit per day, week, month and have an alarm go off and/or shut everything down. Say my monthly bill is 200, I don't want the previous 7 days to exceed 500. Just a flashing led and a 5000 euro bill isn't smart. Imagine diagnosing a server by how fast the led flashes. Imagine replacing the speedometer in your car with a flashing light. You will know how fast you drove when the fines come in.
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    They also identify outages and let you do automatic efficiency stuff — you can enroll in a plan where your car charges during off-peak periods, for example.
  - conradludgate 2y ago
    My energy supplier (Octopus) gives me a tarrif with half-hourly pricing (smart meters in the UK only report with 30 minutes resolution). This let's me know when electricity is in less demand or high supply and schedule my day around it. Making my electricity bill cheaper and likewise putting less strain on the supplier which reduces their costs too
    - conradludgate 2y ago
      The other week, it was not very windy but it was cold, so the energy price spiked pretty high (£1/kwh). Other times the energy price falls pretty low, and I regularly see it be negative for some hours of the night or rarely up until the afternoon. Paired with a home battery it can be pretty effective, but I don't have one and instead I just work around it and use my electrical heating more when it's cheaper and rely on my insulation to last throughout when it gets more expensive during the day. I've also started cooking dinner later to get past the evening hump.
      - conradludgate 2y ago
        Here's my prices for tomorrow for those who are interested. They publish an API for this too which I have loaded into a spreadsheet for my own entertainment https://imgur.com/a/Z3yCNow https://imgur.com/a/Z3yCNow
      - Hamuko 2y ago
        Just shifting some electricity usage around is a pretty solid tactic with dynamic pricing. I'm currently paying wholesale + 0.49 c/kWh margin for my electricity and I'm averaging out to 6.67 c/kWh (incl. margin) in December. Wholesale average has been about 6.61 c/kWh. Add transfer and tax on top of that and it's around 0.13 €/kWh total. I live in an apartment so the two big electricity-wasters are the dishwasher and the washing machine. Delaying doing the laundry by a couple of days or running the dishwasher half a day later keeps the average much lower. And if you have an EV, just charge it during the night when wholesale prices get closer to 0€.
  - Nextgrid 2y ago
    In a competent implementation, real-time metering can enable near-real-time pricing where consumers are incentivized to vary their consumption to help grid stability. Your EV can modulate its charging very quickly, and "background" loads like electric heating, water heater or even A/C can also be modulated somewhat quickly (though not as quick as an EV's inverter). The meter needs however to make sure you indeed complied with the demand in order to pay you fairly (otherwise if people can defect on their obligation and still get paid, it defeats the purpose of the scheme of ensuring grid stability). Doing this at the substation is not granular enough because then you can no longer determine who contributed what and whom to pay, which then removes any incentive for people actually participate. In theory, this should lead to significant savings and efficiency benefits, as everyone opted into the scheme can now be used as an on-demand load to dump excess power (during which power is not only free, but the consumer may even be paid to consume that power) to smooth out supply/demand fluctuations. Of course, the UK's smart meter scheme is administered by Capita, so don't expect any of this to actually happen, work reliably or actually lead to any kind of significant benefits, but in theory, it would be a great thing as long as it's done by competent people without corruption/mismatched incentives.
    - desas 2y ago
      Octopus are already doing this in the UK,so it does actually happen.
      - Nextgrid 2y ago
        Octopus is doing hourly blocks, and is limited to a single provider. It's an interesting idea and broadly heads in the right direction, but is far away from what I'm describing. What I describe would be real-time with seconds-level granularity and operated by the grid operator as part of the distribution network and thus provider-agnostic. The idea is to (financially) incentivize people to shift their demand and production around grid fluctuations in real-time - this should allow everyone to get "more" out of the grid by better coordinating supply and production and respond to unexpected events.
    - akira2501 2y ago
- RobotToaster 2y ago
  Maybe, but the long term planning has been atrocious, millions of smart meters already need replacing because of the 3g switch off. It's massively wasteful if they are all going to need replacing again in 10 years when 4g is switched off. Not to mention the concerns about electricity companies remotely forcing meters into prepayment mode or switching off people's electricity supply.
  - Symbiote 2y ago
    Something (2G?) is generally staying available so "smart" devices can work for decades.
  - celsoazevedo 2y ago
    Planing has been bad, but those smart meters can use 2G/EDGE. The meters using mobile networks use O2, which should keep 2G online until the 2030s. 3G is being discontinued first because it uses more power and is inefficient for data. 2G on the other hand uses less power, allows phones without VoLTE support to make calls, and IoT devices to use (slow) data. Over the next year or so we should see networks restricting data over 2G/EDGE for regular devices (calls only), keeping the data side just for IoT.
- blitzar 2y ago
  > the government may on net be paying a subsidy to get wind power built but what was the next best option? If that costs more than the CfD then that's a win. Direct investment with ownership - that would make money for the tax payer but would be "socialism".
baggy_trough 2y ago
29p / kWh doesn't hold a candle to PG&E costs in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's ironic that it's quite a bit cheaper to use natural gas here, since we're supposed to convert to electricity to save the planet.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  I would say it's tragic, not ironic.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  The cost of bailing out owners of burnt down homes in Paradise, CA worth $0 for $700k is rolled into every San Francisco PG&E bill.
  - tristor 2y ago
    I think that's a bit of color on that, since those homes weren't worth $0 until PG&E caused a fire that burnt them down by neglecting required maintenance.
    - tehlike 2y ago
      In a way it's subsidizing people in the country side.
      - tristor 2y ago
        No, it's making people whole for real monetary and property damages caused by PG&E's negligence. It's the settlement of a lawsuit, because PG&E was negligent and caused damage. Whether those people rebuild in Paradise, CA or move somewhere else with the money they received from the settlement is an entirely different proposition. This is not "subsidizing people in the country side". PG&E fucked up and now they have to pay. PG&E is choosing to pass the cost to its customers rather than eating into its profits, which is a decision that California allowed them to make. EDIT: You and the GP I originally replied to seem to be making the argument that after PG&E burned all these people's homes down they should have been allowed to just tell them to get bent so your utility bill wouldn't go up in the city? What happens when it's /your/ home that gets burnt down? "Sorry bucko, but your house is worth $0 as it's just now a smoldering ruin. No soup for you. - Thanks PG&E"
samatman 2y ago
Third option not discussed: have the military leverage its existing nuclear reactor competency to build a fleet of nationalized nuclear power generation stations. I'm not saying that they should tile the island with submarine-scale reactors, I'm saying that their supply chain for building those knows how to build nuclear power stations. The only thing which makes this prospect expensive, is the lack of political will to make it not expensive. So find the political will.
- this_user 2y ago
  And how exactly would adding more of the most expensive way to generate power help reduce costs? See: https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2024/may/24/nuclear-power-australia-liberal-coalition-peter-dutton-cost https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2024/may/24/...
  - swayvil 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - logicchains 2y ago
    Empirically it doesn't seem that way given countries with nuclear power have cheaper electricity than those without. It's especially illustrative to compare power costs in France and Germany before and after Germany closed all its nuclear plants.
  - RobotToaster 2y ago
    It's only expensive because we build so few, so have to start the design from scratch each time. If you look at China they design one nuke station and just copy and paste it to reduce costs, since parts can be mass produced.
  - skippyboxedhero 2y ago
    It isn't more expensive than what the UK has. The reason we are in this position is because we looked at building nuclear in the mid-2010s, the cost would have been about half current prices, we didn't build because they were too expensive. Nothing has been more costly than not investing in capacity.
IshKebab 2y ago
Yeah the "network costs" bit should probably have a caveat about how they are a natural monopoly and are absolutely rinsing the UK for profits. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/20/unite-union-rampant-profiteering-ofgem-cap-power-distributors-profits-sharon-graham https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/20/unite-union... "Supplier costs and margins" probably should take a fair bit of the blame too. When Thatcher privatised the UK energy industry to make it "competitive", they basically created an entire complex web of middlemen. The systems they use to communicate is enormously complicated, still kind of stuck in the 90s (think CSV over FTP), and would be basically unnecessary if it were just one company. Ok in fairness electricity makes more sense to privatise than water or railways - at least you can choose where to buy your electricity from, within reason.
- amiga386 2y ago
  It's an interesting rathole to go down. On the one hand, there are private equity firms buying power stations and deliberately turning them off to reduce supply, knowing that National Grid will call them in a few hours paying them an even higher rate to turn them back on... but also those operators get detected and, months later, fined out the wazoo by the regulator for pulling a stunt like that. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/29/gas-fired-plants-uk-lights-on-cost-profits-energy-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/29/gas-fired-p... https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/31/uk-electricity-firms-face-penalties-for-manipulating-grid https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/31/uk-electric... https://www.current-news.co.uk/ofgem-fines-intergen-37m-for-market-manipulation-in-strong-message/ https://www.current-news.co.uk/ofgem-fines-intergen-37m-for-... Also, electricity isn't any less of a monopoly. You can choose your supplier, but they do no more than administer your metering and billing (including the government insisting they install smart meters). Your house is still connected to the same domestic grid as everybody else, and it's National Grid plc that is selecting who's generating and when, and getting paid for it.
  - RobotToaster 2y ago
    > but also those operators get detected and, months later, fined out the wazoo by the regulator for pulling a stunt like that. The ones that were detected were fined, we don't know how much of that goes on but more subtly.
goodpoint 2y ago
...because houses are made of cardboard and use electricity for heating.
- xd 2y ago
  I'm not sure where you've got this idea from. Even "new builds" in the UK, with there questionable building methods (which you may be referring to?) are mostly insulation and incredibly efficient to heat.
  - desas 2y ago
    The new builds are made of brick and block, and are indeed insulated really well. It's the millions of older houses, particularly Victorian ones, that are made of brick, are not usually insulated well, and are often intentionally draughty.
    - Eavolution 2y ago
      What would the reason for being intentionally draughty be? The only thing I can think of is if they were burning candles/gas lamps to improve air quality?
      - neilalexander 2y ago
        To reduce condensation and mould.
      - albertgoeswoof 2y ago
        Damp is worse than cold
- Nextgrid 2y ago
  Resistive heating is still a big thing, including new products being developed. Here's the latest: electric instant water heaters designed as drop-in replacements for gas boilers in hydronic heating systems: https://stromltd.com https://stromltd.com All the inconveniences of a hydronic system and resistive electric in a single solution, what's not to like? This is the perfect "slumlord special", installed in place of more economical (and ecological) solutions such as A/C knowing full well the tenant is going to pay the resulting astronomical bills.
louthy 2y ago
> The UK has achieved the fastest rate of grid decarbonisation among advanced economies. A lot of this progress occurred when renewables were still expensive, so we are stuck with a cost hangover. Luckily, renewables are getting much cheaper, so the tradeoffs in future policy are very different. A silver lining at least. I’m old, so won’t see the benefits of this I’m sure, but it’s still nice to know we’ve made some tangible progress toward a cleaner future
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- monsecchris 2y ago
  It’s so insignificant that at best we might delay the climate catastrophe by a few seconds
  - Xelbair 2y ago
    People might not like this, but that's true. as long as non-western countries keep polluting - even if we achieve net-zero nothing will change other than us feeling better and patting ourselves in the back.
    - exe34 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - threeseed 2y ago
        Mainly because it's asinine to think that the entire green economy only exists for virtue signalling and not because there are significant amounts of money to be made.
    - threeseed 2y ago
      This is a very misguided view of the situation. a) The transition to clean energy, transportation etc by Western countries funds the development and investment in new technologies. These then filter down to developing countries when the economies of scale kick in e.g. solar panels, electric cars. b) There are also other benefits to cleaner solutions than just trying to achieve net-zero. Reductions in pollution reduce morbidity, improve productivity, improve happiness, secure food supply etc.
jatin101 2y ago
Commercial energy broker here - the only 2 'real' costs in your price are the wholesale and supplier costs. Choose suppliers that offer a fully-fixed electricity contract, so that made up variable costs such as distribution, network, etc are all factored into the unit rate that the supplier charges you for your contract. Avoid smart meters at all costs. Renewable / green contracts are always a lot more expensive than standard contracts. I help businesses across the UK get the lowest rates in the market, if it's something you need help with reach out to me - yousaveutilities.co.uk
- gnrl 2y ago
  What's the reason to avoid smart meters?
  - oceanplexian 2y ago
    The security is broken and it broadcasts your information in the clear. I set up a RTLSDR plugged into my laptop in my kitchen and was able to read the energy utilization of my entire neighborhood after about 10min of work.
    - benj111 2y ago
      what information is it actually leaking though? If someone wanted, they could drive up to my house and see the colour of my door. The fact that someone has always been able to create a database of front door colours isn't inherently a data leak. A UUID and electricity usage for the past half hour for a house in the general vicinity isn't useful. Even if you could put a name to that UUID, I struggle to think of how that would be a major issue. Especially considering with a thermal camera, and assuming construction details from the age and type of the house, you could already estimate your neighbours energy usage anyway. Remote shutoff on the other hand....
      - krisoft 2y ago
        Could you perhaps use it to monitor which houses are unoccupied?
nradov 2y ago
I find it so weird that UK citizens have often just sort of passively chosen to be poor. Like they still had food rationing for years after WW2. Is there some sort of cultural blind spot which prevents them from understanding that there are better ways to do things?
- jorblumesea 2y ago
  This is rich, given you seem to be American.
  - smeeger 2y ago
    you have to admit english people have a weird tick when it comes to poverty. you worship poor people. and yes, you guys willingly live like you are poor when you guys are definitely not poor
    - bfmalky 2y ago
      This is such a weird take. I have no idea where you are getting your ideas from, but I don't know if you've heard of this thing we have in the UK called 'the class system'. Poor people are definitely not worshipped in the UK. And the wealthy do generally like to demonstrate their wealth in the usual ways (cars, homes, holidays, schooling, etc), so I'm wondering where you've got this idea that people in the UK somehow romanticise poverty.
      - smeeger 2y ago
        they are though, similar to the way black people are “worshipped” in america. to be seen as callous to poverty is a weird black hole in england.
    - toolslive 2y ago
      It's a cultural difference I observed between Europeans and Americans: Americans hate it being called unsuccessful/poor, but don't mind being called dumb. Europeans hate being called stupid, but don't mind being called unsuccessful/poor. Obviously, it's not a binary thing, but there's some fundamental difference in attitude.
hughes 2y ago
Is 906 GBP (~1100 USD) typical for a household? That seems outrageously high.
- bowsamic 2y ago
  Yes Type | yearly usage | average annual cost Low (flat or 1-bedroom house / 1-2 people) | 1,800 kWh | £669.95 Medium (3-bedroom house / 2-3 people) | 2,900 kWh | £943.36 High (5-bedroom house / 4-5 people) | 4,300 kWh | £1,291.34 source: https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/guides/average-bill.html https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/guides/average-bill.html
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    I was surprised to see how low electricity usage is. The fairer measurement is probably gas and electric, and your source says ‘ According to Ofgem, the average British household has 2.4 people living in it and uses 2,700 kWh of electricity and 11,500 kWh of gas. This works out at 242 kWh of electricity and 1,000 kWh of gas per month.’ We don’t have gas at home and use about 10,000kW/h here in New Zealand.
    - bowsamic 2y ago
      Yeah that's what's wild about it. Those prices are so high despite the fact that Brits use so much gas
- dukeyukey 2y ago
  Annually, that sounds about right.
  - hughes 2y ago
    Oh, I thought this was monthly. The article doesn't specify, and all other bills I've seen are monthly. Do Brits pay annually?
    - 2y ago
trebligdivad 2y ago
How much does digging a hole or laying a cable cost here in the UK compared to elsewhere? I'm just trying to get a feel for whether things like the transmission/distribution network costs are higher than elsewhere.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  The HS2 project is mostly that - and very, very expensive it seems.
- fy20 2y ago
  I'm in another Northern European country, and 7c/kWh goes towards network and transmission costs.
drcongo 2y ago
The same author wrote the blog post that was on the front page here recently about the plummeting cost of solar [0]. I really like his posts, readable by someone like me who is way below layman on the subject, but I think also pretty interesting to someone with experience in the field. [0] https://climate.benjames.io/solar-off-grid/ https://climate.benjames.io/solar-off-grid/
- dfawcus 2y ago
  Yeah, but that is pretty much an irrelevance here in the UK. We don't even get that much sun in summer, today sunrise was at 0842, sunset at 1540 - so not even 7 hrs of daylight. Even then it was a very dull day. So in the period (winter) when we most need power, local solar is essentially useless. Local wind may be better, but the economics for it don't really work - requiring 100% gas turbine backup, and high costs due to intermittent use of said turbines .
  - drcongo 2y ago
    The author is in the UK and covers most of that in the article.
  - edent 2y ago
    Sorry, that's not true. I have (non-optimal) solar panels in the UK. I generate 100% of my annual electricity usage from them across the year. In summer, I can easily get over 20kWh per day - against a daily usage of 10kWh. I release all of my data at https://gitlab.com/edent/solar-data/ https://gitlab.com/edent/solar-data/ Today, in the dead of winter, I got 2.8kWh - https://bsky.app/profile/solar.bots.edent.tel/post/3ldqqrvkwbgk2 https://bsky.app/profile/solar.bots.edent.tel/post/3ldqqrvkw... - a not insignificant amount. My battery charged overnight, so I only drew about 4kWh from the grid during the day. You can read all about how well solar works in the UK on my blog https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar/
    - olejorgenb 2y ago
      > My battery charged overnight, so I only drew about 4kWh from the grid during the day. You are in large part confirming what GP is saying, no? The 100% annually is of limited use when it's so skewed. Sure having local batteries are a good thing but also costly.
graybeardhacker 2y ago
The graph shows the price for 3100 kWh. I'm not sure if that is a very low annual amount or a very very high monthly amount. The average US household uses 10,000 kWh annually ~833 kWh per month. So I'm guessing most Americans reading the article and looking at the interactive graph are thinking either: this is very cheap or very expensive, depending on whether they are assuming it's monthly or annual. In the US the average price for 3100 kWh in California would be $1062 which is among the highest in the continental US. So right in line with GB. In New York it would be $710. Florida it would be $454. So it's high, but not as eye-watering as it seemed to me initially.
- piva00 2y ago
  Median income and take home pay should be brought into account though. California has one of the highest even by US standards so a $1000 bill for the median Californian family feels much less expensive than for the median Manchester family.
  - akira2501 2y ago
    There are no median families. There are a lot of very high wage earners in CA. You should really be looking for the mode here.
    - piva00 2y ago
      I agree, the mode is probably better. Anyway from the median you can also get a good guess of how much income the band sitting between 25%-75% has since it's a normal distribution. Either comparison should be ok for a guesstimate of the impact of electricity bills for a family in California vs different parts of the UK.
- bfmalky 2y ago
  That's the annual figure. But just for electricity. Most UK homes are heated with gas, and many have gas stoves, so the average kWh annual gas figure is much higher (~12,000kWh).
- 2y ago
jillesvangurp 2y ago
An important reason that power is expensive in the UK is that it doesn't use zonal pricing and is effectively not giving the right price signals to consumers of power to move closer to where the cheap power is (e.g. data centers) or to conserve power when power is expensive; or producers of power to invest in power generation closer to where the power is scarce and expensive. Another point to make is that the national wholesale price of power in the UK is based on the price of the most expensive thing in the market at any point. Which now that they shut down coal is usually gas which at this point the UK mostly imports because gas production in the North Sea fields has been petering out. It no longer is the cheap resource it once was. Even Scotland which either exports or curtails dirt cheap wind power most of the time gets to pay expensive gas rates for their power. Why is power curtailment a thing there? Because there is no price incentive to use the power. Otherwise people might be doing sane things like charging their EVs, powering their heat pumps, etc. Instead Scotland imports gas for heating and petrol for driving their cars. At the same time they curtail wind power by the GW. Greg Jackson from Octopus (who are the largest energy operator in the UK) has been calling for this for some time. I don't live there but his name comes up a lot in several of the clean energy podcasts I follow. Smart person that has a lot of sensible things to say on this topic.
- chickenbig 2y ago
  > and is effectively not giving the right price signals to consumers of power to move closer While I sympathise with the notion of zonal pricing, there are side-effects to making the change, especially when power is intermittent e.g. https://www.uksteel.org/steel-news-2024/businesses-write-to-ed-miliband-and-jonathan-reynolds-over-concerns-about-proposed-zonal-pricing-model https://www.uksteel.org/steel-news-2024/businesses-write-to-... . I'm not sure what the correct metric is. > the national wholesale price of power in the UK is based on the price of the most expensive thing in the market at any point How much of the electricity demand goes through a bilateral agreement (or one where generation and retail are the same organisation, like EDF)? Also I seem to recall that the "pay the highest accepted bidder model" used to be argued as lowering the bids, resulting in a lower cost to the consumer!
- 7thaccount 2y ago
  Zonal also has issues with congestion, lack of locational price signals, and something called inc/dec gaming. A Nodal design (like in many US wholesale markets) fixes this, but some of the key policy makers are reluctant to go in that direction as it would be a ~7 year project and would introduce revenue uncertainty in the meantime when they are trying to decarbonize and need to make it easy for developers to get financing. Both pro/against arguments for nodal pricing have merit. There have been many discussions on this in government. Marginal cost based pricing is extremely unintuitive to those outside of the field, but nearly all economists support it. The reason is that this eliminates a lot of the gaming in pay-as-bid designs and helps incentivize investment in more efficient/cheaper generation, while driving out less efficient clunkers that may not be profitable anymore. The reality is of course far more complicated. These markets have saved untold amounts of money by optimizing over large regions, but you can also point out "missing money" problems where there simply isn't enough investment in generators with access to firm fuel (as opposed to when we just had monopoly utilities). As a result, much of the US has an "at risk" or "very high risk" of not having enough generation during summer/winter peak.
jnsaff2 2y ago
Here's a controversial take: electricity is incredibly cheap for the utility it provides. It is also a fairly well working market in the current system context. I witnessed this by working for an electricity related startup and by doing all the math involved it was really hard to make the math work out right. The possibility to optimize is there but the margins are really slim, even with the large price swings in the time of use markets in EU. Can the infrastructure be better? Absolutely, it needs ton of work, but again margins are slim and incentives for large improvements are small. Do we have a dire need for renewable and moreover dispatchable renewable energy? Absolutely. This means more clean generation and more storage (quite hard). Does energy feel expensive for households? Yes. Is it actually expensive? Could you imagine life without it? What would it be like? If you were in this situation, how much would you be willing to pay then?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Nextgrid 2y ago
  > Is it actually expensive? Could you imagine life without it? I don't think this kind of rhetoric helps in any way those who are in "fuel poverty" (which seems to be a UK specific term, as I've never heard that in any other context) and have to choose between food or heating. Energy is not some magic supernatural thing we're running out of. Given the right equipment it can be created out of thin air (wind and/or solar). The reason UK's energy prices are so high is decades of corruption disguised as mismanagement/incompetence, not that the absolute price of electricity is somehow high.
dtgriscom 2y ago
Nitpick: such recurring costs are not "expensive"; they are "high". It's like saying a plane is flying at a "large" altitude, or a car on the highway is traveling at a "big" speed. Native english speaker, but definitely not a grammarian, so I can't explain why...
yumraj 2y ago
The rate shown is 29p which comes to 36 cents. It is substantially less than PG&E California prices, which average around 50-55 cents.
- Havoc 2y ago
  Nobody is getting california salaries in rural UK though...
  - yumraj 2y ago
    Fair point - I did not consider purchasing price parity.
  - dmwilcox 2y ago
    California is not the Bay Area and LA metro. There are lots of places in California you won't get "California salaries" either. Having grown up in rural California I have will return the favor I get for confusing the UK with London ;)
- philjohn 2y ago
  I'm in the UK and with solar and battery, and having an EV there are tariffs out there where the levellised cost you'll pay is approaching 7p per kWh. Intelligent Octopus Go is one example - between 23:30 and 05:30 all of your electricity usage is 7p per kWh, for the entire house. For this, you give up controlling when your EV is charged as Octopus either control it through the car, or through a compatible charger. When your car is plugged in, they build a charging schedule when the grid is cheapest and greenest. You give them an "I need to add this % of charge and it to be done by this time tomorrow morning" and it just works it out. On days with a glut of renewable generation (i.e., it's very windy, or very sunny) you will get half hour slots at 7p during the day as well. Now comes the solar and PV element - their "outgoing octopus" export scheme pays 15p per kWh, so in the summer you can build a nice credit buffer from exported excess energy, and then in the winter, charge the battery whenever the cheap rate is active and given a big "enough" battery, most of your usage will cost you 7p + 5-10% (efficiency losses from AC/DC/AC conversion). The payback period for Solar + Battery, especially in the UK where we aren't saddled with high tariffs for panels, is coming down markedly. It used to be well in excess of a decade, but is between 5-10 years now.
kranke155 2y ago
The Uk should just burn coal for a while. I’m sorry but it’s the only sane solution. The current energy prices are wiping out the economy.
asdefghyk 2y ago
To pay for renewable energy ? Thats what's happening in my country , although renewable energy supporters claim renewables are cheaper. .....
blindriver 2y ago
California regulators just approved its 6th rate hike of 2024. https://abc30.com/post/california-regulators-approve-pges-5th-rate-hike-2024/15679054/ https://abc30.com/post/california-regulators-approve-pges-5t...
tmnvix 2y ago
Important to remember the process of privitisation that occurred and the opportunities for profiteering that the new complexity allowed. Yanis Varoufakis discusses it at length here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3bo-s_OY4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3bo-s_OY4Q He characterises the energy market as a scam. I tend to agree.
gweinberg 2y ago
They are getting reamed. Oops, we pay about the same in California.
nemo44x 2y ago
The UK should fire their government and hire one that can deliver cheap energy via policy that creates the potential for a cheap energy market. This isn’t hard.
- Symbiote 2y ago
  They fired the government earlier this year. The new one removed the ban on building wind turbines on land within 48 hours of taking power, and are pushing through new transmission lines where they were previously blocked.
archsurface 2y ago
A couple of years ago I found Assassin's Creed 2 for £2.50 - bargain! I'd never played it. At the end of the quarter my electricity bill was £600 higher than usual. Not a bargain!
- nahnotreal4 2y ago
  It seems exaggerated for comedic effect, but it is technically possible under certain extreme conditions. For a £600 increase in an electricity bill, the player would have to use a device with high power consumption for an extended period. Here's a breakdown: Gaming PC Power Consumption: High-end gaming PCs can consume around 300–600 watts while gaming. Let's assume a power usage of 500 watts for simplicity. Usage Time: Playing continuously for long hours over a quarter (about 90 days) could significantly increase electricity consumption. 500 watts = 0.5 kilowatts Playing 8 hours daily for 90 days = 720 hours 0.5 kW × 720 hours = 360 kWh Electricity Costs: Assuming a cost of £0.30 per kWh: 360 kWh × £0.30 = £108 additional cost. For a £600 increase, you'd need much higher power usage (e.g., using multiple devices like a high-end PC, large TV, and cooling systems) or running the game nearly 24/7. It’s unlikely but feasible if they had an exceptionally inefficient setup or other contributing factors.
  - archsurface 2y ago
    Thank you for the payment... January 2023 ... of £115 Thank you for the payment... April 2023 ... of £631 I don't watch TV, no cooling systems. It was the second half of winter but I considered the heating usage at the time. No exaggeration intended. £516.
    - archsurface 2y ago
      Rate info: | Current prices | New prices (1 January 2023) Standing charge (pence per day) | 48.61 | 48.61 Unit rate DY (pence per kWh) | 53.38 | 60.24 Unit rate NT (pence per kWh) | 9.21 | 8.10 edit: attempted formatting.
caseysoftware 2y ago
What happened in 2022!? In 2021, it was 22p/kWh and in 2022, it went to 44p/kWh. It's come down 6-7p each year since but doubling in one year is crazy.
- fy20 2y ago
  Russia happened.
  - caseysoftware 2y ago
    Ah, thanks. I wasn't aware how damaging that was to UK energy prices.
n0mad01 2y ago
I'll mention it briefly here in case anyone missed the answer: short-term tax revenues.
LosEstupidos 2y ago
[flagged]
dzonga 2y ago
what's not mentioned is the consequence of having expensive power. the average UK consumer consumes 1/3 of the power consumed by a US consumer. which makes the average UK energy consumption is equivalent to one of a low-middle income country. energy consumption is heavily tied to prosperity.
- psd1 2y ago
  No, it's more like: whether you live in a rain-lashed tepid shithole, a sun-beaten desert shithole, or an ice-smothered frigid shithole. AC is barely even desirable here. It occasionally reaches a whopping 30. We don't have AC at home because it's a silly frippery in a brick house at 54°N in Europe. We certainly need heating, but not like in saskatchewan.
guerby 2y ago
Nodal vs Zonal pricing definition : https://diversegy.com/nodal-pricing-vs-zonal-pricing/ https://diversegy.com/nodal-pricing-vs-zonal-pricing/
nickdothutton 2y ago
Im old enough to remember when Prof. Ian Fells [1] discussed most of these problems in the early 1980s in the UK. Our “time from problem identification to solution deployed” is absolutely abysmal in the UK. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fells
stonesthrowaway 2y ago
The answer is because the UK moved away from their most abundant and cheapest energy source. It's not rocket science.
FL33TW00D 2y ago
So many uninformed people in the comments here. "The Carbon Price Support (CPS), introduced by the UK Government in April 2013, has led to a substantial reduction in electricity generated from coal, which fell by 93% from a monthly average of 13.1 TWh in 2013 to only 0.97 TWh in 2019 (Ofgem, 2019a)." They actually correctly priced the externalities and managed to decimate coal usage in the UK in a single decade. This increased prices accordingly. This should be applauded, they correctly designed a scheme so that the economics aligned and coal was quickly removed. We can now focus on increasing energy production from other means and decreasing prices. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/sustainable/sites/bartlett/files/annex_-_cps_-_final_-_20102019.pdf https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/sustainable/sites/bartlett/fi...
macspoofing 2y ago
>Use local solar generation, and a lot of batteries. This works well in most of the world, but less so in northern Europe (it's not very sunny). WHERE???? Nobody gets their electricity this way at any reasonable scale.

193 points by chmaynard 2y ago

Some of these are "costs" which reduce costs elsewhere. Smart meters for example, though rollout has hit snags and they've become targets for weird conspiracy theories, they are basically designed to give better real time info on electricity demand which helps with managing the grid. This in theory should save money elsewhere. Similarly for CfD. Yes the government may on net be paying a subsidy to get wind power built but what was the next best option? If that costs more than the CfD then that's a win.

jstanley 2y ago
But why do you need smart meters at the level of individual houses? Wouldn't putting them on substations get the same benefit with much less cost?
- coretx 2y ago
  Yes, but those don't help manipulate consumer behavior and awareness.
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Apparently the UK government estimated that in 2016 and 2019 the average household saved £11 on their bill due to this feedback from smart meters. This page estimates the cost at £15 so 2/3rds is recovered just from that effect.
    - ajb 2y ago
      There's no way it only cost £15 in total to install a smart meter. The cost of the meter has to be at least that much and then you have paying a guy to actually install it (which in my case took 3 attempts and caused a gas leak, which took 4 or 5 guys several hours to fix - although hopefully that's unusual).
      - 6510 2y ago
        Hard to tell, they are all new now, eventually they will all be old. Then we will know what it really costs.
      - hirako2000 2y ago
        It also took 3 attempts for me but they never showed up.
      - Brybry 2y ago
        From a cursory search: £88 to £143 installation cost in the 2019 analysis. [3:p.21] Smart meter hardware cost £36 to £120 [3:p.22] £67 to £107 installation cost in the 2016 analysis. [2:p.12] £15 (in home display) + £44 electric + £57 gas + £29 comms equipment costs [2:p.10] [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f59f9ed915d74e6229eef/OFFSEN_2016_smart_meters_cost-benefit-update_Part_I_FINAL_VERSION.PDF https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f59f9ed915... [2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f2f8b40f0b62305b859b7/OFFSEN_2016_smart_meters_cost-benefit-update_Part_II_FINAL_VERSION.PDF https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f2f8b40f0b... [3] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d7f54c4e5274a27c2c6d53a/smart-meter-roll-out-cost-benefit-analysis-2019.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d7f54c4e5274...
      - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        15 pounds cost per year, 11 pounds saving per year, for an average user. Not sure how many years the cost is assumed to be spread over and what the ongoing running costs are but that's the per average customer cost apparently.
        ajb 2y ago
        Ah, my bad. 15 per year is more plausible
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  It eliminates the need for staff to manually read them and guarantees they are read correctly every month.
  - 6510 2y ago
    That is the sales pitch, the error rate on the overcharging side is infinitely larger than that of mechanical meters. Not a fun lottery to win.
    - Symbiote 2y ago
      The alternative isn't a mechanical meter anyway. It's an electronic meter that must be read manually.
    - sgerenser 2y ago
      What makes smart meters more likely to read high?
      - toast0 2y ago
        20-30 year old mechanical meters tend to be pretty accurate, but when they aren't, they tend to read low. Especially if your usage is fairly low, the minimum usage to push the wheels forward may be higher than your standby loads. If you've been on a meter that reads low for a long time, a new meter (mechanical or electronic) will be a big jump.
        6510 2y ago
        Mechanical meters either accurately measure use, run to slow or don't work at all. The worse thing that can happen is that other people indirectly have to pay for the missing killowatts. In contrast there are plenty of stories where people get bills 10-20 times what they are used to. Any half decent programmer on HN knows what to do when something has almost no chance of happening. Some of these things display only billable KWH while it isn't so expensive to display current consumption too. You can also measure it twice so that one can (remotely) see two entirely different readings and replace the meter with one that works properly. It could also display the amount of money owed. (estimate) It would make it slightly more expensive for everyone rather than accidentally billing some people truly crazy amounts. Just like a bank account can have a configurable limit for withdrawals the smart thing to do is to set a limit per day, week, month and have an alarm go off and/or shut everything down. Say my monthly bill is 200, I don't want the previous 7 days to exceed 500. Just a flashing led and a 5000 euro bill isn't smart. Imagine diagnosing a server by how fast the led flashes. Imagine replacing the speedometer in your car with a flashing light. You will know how fast you drove when the fines come in.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  They also identify outages and let you do automatic efficiency stuff — you can enroll in a plan where your car charges during off-peak periods, for example.
- conradludgate 2y ago
  My energy supplier (Octopus) gives me a tarrif with half-hourly pricing (smart meters in the UK only report with 30 minutes resolution). This let's me know when electricity is in less demand or high supply and schedule my day around it. Making my electricity bill cheaper and likewise putting less strain on the supplier which reduces their costs too
  - conradludgate 2y ago
    The other week, it was not very windy but it was cold, so the energy price spiked pretty high (£1/kwh). Other times the energy price falls pretty low, and I regularly see it be negative for some hours of the night or rarely up until the afternoon. Paired with a home battery it can be pretty effective, but I don't have one and instead I just work around it and use my electrical heating more when it's cheaper and rely on my insulation to last throughout when it gets more expensive during the day. I've also started cooking dinner later to get past the evening hump.
    - conradludgate 2y ago
      Here's my prices for tomorrow for those who are interested. They publish an API for this too which I have loaded into a spreadsheet for my own entertainment https://imgur.com/a/Z3yCNow https://imgur.com/a/Z3yCNow
    - Hamuko 2y ago
      Just shifting some electricity usage around is a pretty solid tactic with dynamic pricing. I'm currently paying wholesale + 0.49 c/kWh margin for my electricity and I'm averaging out to 6.67 c/kWh (incl. margin) in December. Wholesale average has been about 6.61 c/kWh. Add transfer and tax on top of that and it's around 0.13 €/kWh total. I live in an apartment so the two big electricity-wasters are the dishwasher and the washing machine. Delaying doing the laundry by a couple of days or running the dishwasher half a day later keeps the average much lower. And if you have an EV, just charge it during the night when wholesale prices get closer to 0€.
- Nextgrid 2y ago
  In a competent implementation, real-time metering can enable near-real-time pricing where consumers are incentivized to vary their consumption to help grid stability. Your EV can modulate its charging very quickly, and "background" loads like electric heating, water heater or even A/C can also be modulated somewhat quickly (though not as quick as an EV's inverter). The meter needs however to make sure you indeed complied with the demand in order to pay you fairly (otherwise if people can defect on their obligation and still get paid, it defeats the purpose of the scheme of ensuring grid stability). Doing this at the substation is not granular enough because then you can no longer determine who contributed what and whom to pay, which then removes any incentive for people actually participate. In theory, this should lead to significant savings and efficiency benefits, as everyone opted into the scheme can now be used as an on-demand load to dump excess power (during which power is not only free, but the consumer may even be paid to consume that power) to smooth out supply/demand fluctuations. Of course, the UK's smart meter scheme is administered by Capita, so don't expect any of this to actually happen, work reliably or actually lead to any kind of significant benefits, but in theory, it would be a great thing as long as it's done by competent people without corruption/mismatched incentives.
  - desas 2y ago
    Octopus are already doing this in the UK,so it does actually happen.
    - Nextgrid 2y ago
      Octopus is doing hourly blocks, and is limited to a single provider. It's an interesting idea and broadly heads in the right direction, but is far away from what I'm describing. What I describe would be real-time with seconds-level granularity and operated by the grid operator as part of the distribution network and thus provider-agnostic. The idea is to (financially) incentivize people to shift their demand and production around grid fluctuations in real-time - this should allow everyone to get "more" out of the grid by better coordinating supply and production and respond to unexpected events.
  - akira2501 2y ago
RobotToaster 2y ago
Maybe, but the long term planning has been atrocious, millions of smart meters already need replacing because of the 3g switch off. It's massively wasteful if they are all going to need replacing again in 10 years when 4g is switched off. Not to mention the concerns about electricity companies remotely forcing meters into prepayment mode or switching off people's electricity supply.
- Symbiote 2y ago
  Something (2G?) is generally staying available so "smart" devices can work for decades.
- celsoazevedo 2y ago
  Planing has been bad, but those smart meters can use 2G/EDGE. The meters using mobile networks use O2, which should keep 2G online until the 2030s. 3G is being discontinued first because it uses more power and is inefficient for data. 2G on the other hand uses less power, allows phones without VoLTE support to make calls, and IoT devices to use (slow) data. Over the next year or so we should see networks restricting data over 2G/EDGE for regular devices (calls only), keeping the data side just for IoT.
blitzar 2y ago
> the government may on net be paying a subsidy to get wind power built but what was the next best option? If that costs more than the CfD then that's a win. Direct investment with ownership - that would make money for the tax payer but would be "socialism".

baggy_trough 2y ago

29p / kWh doesn't hold a candle to PG&E costs in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's ironic that it's quite a bit cheaper to use natural gas here, since we're supposed to convert to electricity to save the planet.

barbazoo 2y ago
I would say it's tragic, not ironic.
doctorpangloss 2y ago
The cost of bailing out owners of burnt down homes in Paradise, CA worth $0 for $700k is rolled into every San Francisco PG&E bill.
- tristor 2y ago
  I think that's a bit of color on that, since those homes weren't worth $0 until PG&E caused a fire that burnt them down by neglecting required maintenance.
  - tehlike 2y ago
    In a way it's subsidizing people in the country side.
    - tristor 2y ago
      No, it's making people whole for real monetary and property damages caused by PG&E's negligence. It's the settlement of a lawsuit, because PG&E was negligent and caused damage. Whether those people rebuild in Paradise, CA or move somewhere else with the money they received from the settlement is an entirely different proposition. This is not "subsidizing people in the country side". PG&E fucked up and now they have to pay. PG&E is choosing to pass the cost to its customers rather than eating into its profits, which is a decision that California allowed them to make. EDIT: You and the GP I originally replied to seem to be making the argument that after PG&E burned all these people's homes down they should have been allowed to just tell them to get bent so your utility bill wouldn't go up in the city? What happens when it's /your/ home that gets burnt down? "Sorry bucko, but your house is worth $0 as it's just now a smoldering ruin. No soup for you. - Thanks PG&E"

samatman 2y ago

Third option not discussed: have the military leverage its existing nuclear reactor competency to build a fleet of nationalized nuclear power generation stations. I'm not saying that they should tile the island with submarine-scale reactors, I'm saying that their supply chain for building those knows how to build nuclear power stations. The only thing which makes this prospect expensive, is the lack of political will to make it not expensive. So find the political will.

this_user 2y ago
And how exactly would adding more of the most expensive way to generate power help reduce costs? See: https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2024/may/24/nuclear-power-australia-liberal-coalition-peter-dutton-cost https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2024/may/24/...
- swayvil 2y ago
  [flagged]
- logicchains 2y ago
  Empirically it doesn't seem that way given countries with nuclear power have cheaper electricity than those without. It's especially illustrative to compare power costs in France and Germany before and after Germany closed all its nuclear plants.
- RobotToaster 2y ago
  It's only expensive because we build so few, so have to start the design from scratch each time. If you look at China they design one nuke station and just copy and paste it to reduce costs, since parts can be mass produced.
- skippyboxedhero 2y ago
  It isn't more expensive than what the UK has. The reason we are in this position is because we looked at building nuclear in the mid-2010s, the cost would have been about half current prices, we didn't build because they were too expensive. Nothing has been more costly than not investing in capacity.

IshKebab 2y ago

Yeah the "network costs" bit should probably have a caveat about how they are a natural monopoly and are absolutely rinsing the UK for profits. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/20/unite-union-rampant-profiteering-ofgem-cap-power-distributors-profits-sharon-graham https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/20/unite-union... "Supplier costs and margins" probably should take a fair bit of the blame too. When Thatcher privatised the UK energy industry to make it "competitive", they basically created an entire complex web of middlemen. The systems they use to communicate is enormously complicated, still kind of stuck in the 90s (think CSV over FTP), and would be basically unnecessary if it were just one company. Ok in fairness electricity makes more sense to privatise than water or railways - at least you can choose where to buy your electricity from, within reason.

amiga386 2y ago
It's an interesting rathole to go down. On the one hand, there are private equity firms buying power stations and deliberately turning them off to reduce supply, knowing that National Grid will call them in a few hours paying them an even higher rate to turn them back on... but also those operators get detected and, months later, fined out the wazoo by the regulator for pulling a stunt like that. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/29/gas-fired-plants-uk-lights-on-cost-profits-energy-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/29/gas-fired-p... https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/31/uk-electricity-firms-face-penalties-for-manipulating-grid https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/31/uk-electric... https://www.current-news.co.uk/ofgem-fines-intergen-37m-for-market-manipulation-in-strong-message/ https://www.current-news.co.uk/ofgem-fines-intergen-37m-for-... Also, electricity isn't any less of a monopoly. You can choose your supplier, but they do no more than administer your metering and billing (including the government insisting they install smart meters). Your house is still connected to the same domestic grid as everybody else, and it's National Grid plc that is selecting who's generating and when, and getting paid for it.
- RobotToaster 2y ago
  > but also those operators get detected and, months later, fined out the wazoo by the regulator for pulling a stunt like that. The ones that were detected were fined, we don't know how much of that goes on but more subtly.

goodpoint 2y ago

...because houses are made of cardboard and use electricity for heating.

xd 2y ago
I'm not sure where you've got this idea from. Even "new builds" in the UK, with there questionable building methods (which you may be referring to?) are mostly insulation and incredibly efficient to heat.
- desas 2y ago
  The new builds are made of brick and block, and are indeed insulated really well. It's the millions of older houses, particularly Victorian ones, that are made of brick, are not usually insulated well, and are often intentionally draughty.
  - Eavolution 2y ago
    What would the reason for being intentionally draughty be? The only thing I can think of is if they were burning candles/gas lamps to improve air quality?
    - neilalexander 2y ago
      To reduce condensation and mould.
    - albertgoeswoof 2y ago
      Damp is worse than cold
Nextgrid 2y ago
Resistive heating is still a big thing, including new products being developed. Here's the latest: electric instant water heaters designed as drop-in replacements for gas boilers in hydronic heating systems: https://stromltd.com https://stromltd.com All the inconveniences of a hydronic system and resistive electric in a single solution, what's not to like? This is the perfect "slumlord special", installed in place of more economical (and ecological) solutions such as A/C knowing full well the tenant is going to pay the resulting astronomical bills.

louthy 2y ago

> The UK has achieved the fastest rate of grid decarbonisation among advanced economies. A lot of this progress occurred when renewables were still expensive, so we are stuck with a cost hangover. Luckily, renewables are getting much cheaper, so the tradeoffs in future policy are very different. A silver lining at least. I’m old, so won’t see the benefits of this I’m sure, but it’s still nice to know we’ve made some tangible progress toward a cleaner future

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
monsecchris 2y ago
It’s so insignificant that at best we might delay the climate catastrophe by a few seconds
- Xelbair 2y ago
  People might not like this, but that's true. as long as non-western countries keep polluting - even if we achieve net-zero nothing will change other than us feeling better and patting ourselves in the back.
  - exe34 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - threeseed 2y ago
      Mainly because it's asinine to think that the entire green economy only exists for virtue signalling and not because there are significant amounts of money to be made.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    This is a very misguided view of the situation. a) The transition to clean energy, transportation etc by Western countries funds the development and investment in new technologies. These then filter down to developing countries when the economies of scale kick in e.g. solar panels, electric cars. b) There are also other benefits to cleaner solutions than just trying to achieve net-zero. Reductions in pollution reduce morbidity, improve productivity, improve happiness, secure food supply etc.

jatin101 2y ago

Commercial energy broker here - the only 2 'real' costs in your price are the wholesale and supplier costs. Choose suppliers that offer a fully-fixed electricity contract, so that made up variable costs such as distribution, network, etc are all factored into the unit rate that the supplier charges you for your contract. Avoid smart meters at all costs. Renewable / green contracts are always a lot more expensive than standard contracts. I help businesses across the UK get the lowest rates in the market, if it's something you need help with reach out to me - yousaveutilities.co.uk

gnrl 2y ago
What's the reason to avoid smart meters?
- oceanplexian 2y ago
  The security is broken and it broadcasts your information in the clear. I set up a RTLSDR plugged into my laptop in my kitchen and was able to read the energy utilization of my entire neighborhood after about 10min of work.
  - benj111 2y ago
    what information is it actually leaking though? If someone wanted, they could drive up to my house and see the colour of my door. The fact that someone has always been able to create a database of front door colours isn't inherently a data leak. A UUID and electricity usage for the past half hour for a house in the general vicinity isn't useful. Even if you could put a name to that UUID, I struggle to think of how that would be a major issue. Especially considering with a thermal camera, and assuming construction details from the age and type of the house, you could already estimate your neighbours energy usage anyway. Remote shutoff on the other hand....
    - krisoft 2y ago
      Could you perhaps use it to monitor which houses are unoccupied?

nradov 2y ago

I find it so weird that UK citizens have often just sort of passively chosen to be poor. Like they still had food rationing for years after WW2. Is there some sort of cultural blind spot which prevents them from understanding that there are better ways to do things?

jorblumesea 2y ago
This is rich, given you seem to be American.
- smeeger 2y ago
  you have to admit english people have a weird tick when it comes to poverty. you worship poor people. and yes, you guys willingly live like you are poor when you guys are definitely not poor
  - bfmalky 2y ago
    This is such a weird take. I have no idea where you are getting your ideas from, but I don't know if you've heard of this thing we have in the UK called 'the class system'. Poor people are definitely not worshipped in the UK. And the wealthy do generally like to demonstrate their wealth in the usual ways (cars, homes, holidays, schooling, etc), so I'm wondering where you've got this idea that people in the UK somehow romanticise poverty.
    - smeeger 2y ago
      they are though, similar to the way black people are “worshipped” in america. to be seen as callous to poverty is a weird black hole in england.
  - toolslive 2y ago
    It's a cultural difference I observed between Europeans and Americans: Americans hate it being called unsuccessful/poor, but don't mind being called dumb. Europeans hate being called stupid, but don't mind being called unsuccessful/poor. Obviously, it's not a binary thing, but there's some fundamental difference in attitude.

hughes 2y ago

Is 906 GBP (~1100 USD) typical for a household? That seems outrageously high.

bowsamic 2y ago
Yes Type | yearly usage | average annual cost Low (flat or 1-bedroom house / 1-2 people) | 1,800 kWh | £669.95 Medium (3-bedroom house / 2-3 people) | 2,900 kWh | £943.36 High (5-bedroom house / 4-5 people) | 4,300 kWh | £1,291.34 source: https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/guides/average-bill.html https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/guides/average-bill.html
- lostlogin 2y ago
  I was surprised to see how low electricity usage is. The fairer measurement is probably gas and electric, and your source says ‘ According to Ofgem, the average British household has 2.4 people living in it and uses 2,700 kWh of electricity and 11,500 kWh of gas. This works out at 242 kWh of electricity and 1,000 kWh of gas per month.’ We don’t have gas at home and use about 10,000kW/h here in New Zealand.
  - bowsamic 2y ago
    Yeah that's what's wild about it. Those prices are so high despite the fact that Brits use so much gas
dukeyukey 2y ago
Annually, that sounds about right.
- hughes 2y ago
  Oh, I thought this was monthly. The article doesn't specify, and all other bills I've seen are monthly. Do Brits pay annually?
  - 2y ago

trebligdivad 2y ago

How much does digging a hole or laying a cable cost here in the UK compared to elsewhere? I'm just trying to get a feel for whether things like the transmission/distribution network costs are higher than elsewhere.

HPsquared 2y ago
The HS2 project is mostly that - and very, very expensive it seems.
fy20 2y ago
I'm in another Northern European country, and 7c/kWh goes towards network and transmission costs.

drcongo 2y ago

The same author wrote the blog post that was on the front page here recently about the plummeting cost of solar [0]. I really like his posts, readable by someone like me who is way below layman on the subject, but I think also pretty interesting to someone with experience in the field. [0] https://climate.benjames.io/solar-off-grid/ https://climate.benjames.io/solar-off-grid/

dfawcus 2y ago
Yeah, but that is pretty much an irrelevance here in the UK. We don't even get that much sun in summer, today sunrise was at 0842, sunset at 1540 - so not even 7 hrs of daylight. Even then it was a very dull day. So in the period (winter) when we most need power, local solar is essentially useless. Local wind may be better, but the economics for it don't really work - requiring 100% gas turbine backup, and high costs due to intermittent use of said turbines .
- drcongo 2y ago
  The author is in the UK and covers most of that in the article.
- edent 2y ago
  Sorry, that's not true. I have (non-optimal) solar panels in the UK. I generate 100% of my annual electricity usage from them across the year. In summer, I can easily get over 20kWh per day - against a daily usage of 10kWh. I release all of my data at https://gitlab.com/edent/solar-data/ https://gitlab.com/edent/solar-data/ Today, in the dead of winter, I got 2.8kWh - https://bsky.app/profile/solar.bots.edent.tel/post/3ldqqrvkwbgk2 https://bsky.app/profile/solar.bots.edent.tel/post/3ldqqrvkw... - a not insignificant amount. My battery charged overnight, so I only drew about 4kWh from the grid during the day. You can read all about how well solar works in the UK on my blog https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar/
  - olejorgenb 2y ago
    > My battery charged overnight, so I only drew about 4kWh from the grid during the day. You are in large part confirming what GP is saying, no? The 100% annually is of limited use when it's so skewed. Sure having local batteries are a good thing but also costly.

graybeardhacker 2y ago

The graph shows the price for 3100 kWh. I'm not sure if that is a very low annual amount or a very very high monthly amount. The average US household uses 10,000 kWh annually ~833 kWh per month. So I'm guessing most Americans reading the article and looking at the interactive graph are thinking either: this is very cheap or very expensive, depending on whether they are assuming it's monthly or annual. In the US the average price for 3100 kWh in California would be $1062 which is among the highest in the continental US. So right in line with GB. In New York it would be $710. Florida it would be $454. So it's high, but not as eye-watering as it seemed to me initially.

piva00 2y ago
Median income and take home pay should be brought into account though. California has one of the highest even by US standards so a $1000 bill for the median Californian family feels much less expensive than for the median Manchester family.
- akira2501 2y ago
  There are no median families. There are a lot of very high wage earners in CA. You should really be looking for the mode here.
  - piva00 2y ago
    I agree, the mode is probably better. Anyway from the median you can also get a good guess of how much income the band sitting between 25%-75% has since it's a normal distribution. Either comparison should be ok for a guesstimate of the impact of electricity bills for a family in California vs different parts of the UK.
bfmalky 2y ago
That's the annual figure. But just for electricity. Most UK homes are heated with gas, and many have gas stoves, so the average kWh annual gas figure is much higher (~12,000kWh).
2y ago

jillesvangurp 2y ago

An important reason that power is expensive in the UK is that it doesn't use zonal pricing and is effectively not giving the right price signals to consumers of power to move closer to where the cheap power is (e.g. data centers) or to conserve power when power is expensive; or producers of power to invest in power generation closer to where the power is scarce and expensive. Another point to make is that the national wholesale price of power in the UK is based on the price of the most expensive thing in the market at any point. Which now that they shut down coal is usually gas which at this point the UK mostly imports because gas production in the North Sea fields has been petering out. It no longer is the cheap resource it once was. Even Scotland which either exports or curtails dirt cheap wind power most of the time gets to pay expensive gas rates for their power. Why is power curtailment a thing there? Because there is no price incentive to use the power. Otherwise people might be doing sane things like charging their EVs, powering their heat pumps, etc. Instead Scotland imports gas for heating and petrol for driving their cars. At the same time they curtail wind power by the GW. Greg Jackson from Octopus (who are the largest energy operator in the UK) has been calling for this for some time. I don't live there but his name comes up a lot in several of the clean energy podcasts I follow. Smart person that has a lot of sensible things to say on this topic.

chickenbig 2y ago
> and is effectively not giving the right price signals to consumers of power to move closer While I sympathise with the notion of zonal pricing, there are side-effects to making the change, especially when power is intermittent e.g. https://www.uksteel.org/steel-news-2024/businesses-write-to-ed-miliband-and-jonathan-reynolds-over-concerns-about-proposed-zonal-pricing-model https://www.uksteel.org/steel-news-2024/businesses-write-to-... . I'm not sure what the correct metric is. > the national wholesale price of power in the UK is based on the price of the most expensive thing in the market at any point How much of the electricity demand goes through a bilateral agreement (or one where generation and retail are the same organisation, like EDF)? Also I seem to recall that the "pay the highest accepted bidder model" used to be argued as lowering the bids, resulting in a lower cost to the consumer!
7thaccount 2y ago
Zonal also has issues with congestion, lack of locational price signals, and something called inc/dec gaming. A Nodal design (like in many US wholesale markets) fixes this, but some of the key policy makers are reluctant to go in that direction as it would be a ~7 year project and would introduce revenue uncertainty in the meantime when they are trying to decarbonize and need to make it easy for developers to get financing. Both pro/against arguments for nodal pricing have merit. There have been many discussions on this in government. Marginal cost based pricing is extremely unintuitive to those outside of the field, but nearly all economists support it. The reason is that this eliminates a lot of the gaming in pay-as-bid designs and helps incentivize investment in more efficient/cheaper generation, while driving out less efficient clunkers that may not be profitable anymore. The reality is of course far more complicated. These markets have saved untold amounts of money by optimizing over large regions, but you can also point out "missing money" problems where there simply isn't enough investment in generators with access to firm fuel (as opposed to when we just had monopoly utilities). As a result, much of the US has an "at risk" or "very high risk" of not having enough generation during summer/winter peak.

jnsaff2 2y ago

Here's a controversial take: electricity is incredibly cheap for the utility it provides. It is also a fairly well working market in the current system context. I witnessed this by working for an electricity related startup and by doing all the math involved it was really hard to make the math work out right. The possibility to optimize is there but the margins are really slim, even with the large price swings in the time of use markets in EU. Can the infrastructure be better? Absolutely, it needs ton of work, but again margins are slim and incentives for large improvements are small. Do we have a dire need for renewable and moreover dispatchable renewable energy? Absolutely. This means more clean generation and more storage (quite hard). Does energy feel expensive for households? Yes. Is it actually expensive? Could you imagine life without it? What would it be like? If you were in this situation, how much would you be willing to pay then?

deleted 2y ago
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Nextgrid 2y ago
> Is it actually expensive? Could you imagine life without it? I don't think this kind of rhetoric helps in any way those who are in "fuel poverty" (which seems to be a UK specific term, as I've never heard that in any other context) and have to choose between food or heating. Energy is not some magic supernatural thing we're running out of. Given the right equipment it can be created out of thin air (wind and/or solar). The reason UK's energy prices are so high is decades of corruption disguised as mismanagement/incompetence, not that the absolute price of electricity is somehow high.

dtgriscom 2y ago

Nitpick: such recurring costs are not "expensive"; they are "high". It's like saying a plane is flying at a "large" altitude, or a car on the highway is traveling at a "big" speed. Native english speaker, but definitely not a grammarian, so I can't explain why...

yumraj 2y ago

The rate shown is 29p which comes to 36 cents. It is substantially less than PG&E California prices, which average around 50-55 cents.

Havoc 2y ago
Nobody is getting california salaries in rural UK though...
- yumraj 2y ago
  Fair point - I did not consider purchasing price parity.
- dmwilcox 2y ago
  California is not the Bay Area and LA metro. There are lots of places in California you won't get "California salaries" either. Having grown up in rural California I have will return the favor I get for confusing the UK with London ;)
philjohn 2y ago
I'm in the UK and with solar and battery, and having an EV there are tariffs out there where the levellised cost you'll pay is approaching 7p per kWh. Intelligent Octopus Go is one example - between 23:30 and 05:30 all of your electricity usage is 7p per kWh, for the entire house. For this, you give up controlling when your EV is charged as Octopus either control it through the car, or through a compatible charger. When your car is plugged in, they build a charging schedule when the grid is cheapest and greenest. You give them an "I need to add this % of charge and it to be done by this time tomorrow morning" and it just works it out. On days with a glut of renewable generation (i.e., it's very windy, or very sunny) you will get half hour slots at 7p during the day as well. Now comes the solar and PV element - their "outgoing octopus" export scheme pays 15p per kWh, so in the summer you can build a nice credit buffer from exported excess energy, and then in the winter, charge the battery whenever the cheap rate is active and given a big "enough" battery, most of your usage will cost you 7p + 5-10% (efficiency losses from AC/DC/AC conversion). The payback period for Solar + Battery, especially in the UK where we aren't saddled with high tariffs for panels, is coming down markedly. It used to be well in excess of a decade, but is between 5-10 years now.

kranke155 2y ago

The Uk should just burn coal for a while. I’m sorry but it’s the only sane solution. The current energy prices are wiping out the economy.

asdefghyk 2y ago

To pay for renewable energy ? Thats what's happening in my country , although renewable energy supporters claim renewables are cheaper. .....

blindriver 2y ago

California regulators just approved its 6th rate hike of 2024. https://abc30.com/post/california-regulators-approve-pges-5th-rate-hike-2024/15679054/ https://abc30.com/post/california-regulators-approve-pges-5t...

tmnvix 2y ago

Important to remember the process of privitisation that occurred and the opportunities for profiteering that the new complexity allowed. Yanis Varoufakis discusses it at length here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3bo-s_OY4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3bo-s_OY4Q He characterises the energy market as a scam. I tend to agree.

gweinberg 2y ago

They are getting reamed. Oops, we pay about the same in California.

nemo44x 2y ago

The UK should fire their government and hire one that can deliver cheap energy via policy that creates the potential for a cheap energy market. This isn’t hard.

Symbiote 2y ago
They fired the government earlier this year. The new one removed the ban on building wind turbines on land within 48 hours of taking power, and are pushing through new transmission lines where they were previously blocked.

archsurface 2y ago

A couple of years ago I found Assassin's Creed 2 for £2.50 - bargain! I'd never played it. At the end of the quarter my electricity bill was £600 higher than usual. Not a bargain!

nahnotreal4 2y ago
It seems exaggerated for comedic effect, but it is technically possible under certain extreme conditions. For a £600 increase in an electricity bill, the player would have to use a device with high power consumption for an extended period. Here's a breakdown: Gaming PC Power Consumption: High-end gaming PCs can consume around 300–600 watts while gaming. Let's assume a power usage of 500 watts for simplicity. Usage Time: Playing continuously for long hours over a quarter (about 90 days) could significantly increase electricity consumption. 500 watts = 0.5 kilowatts Playing 8 hours daily for 90 days = 720 hours 0.5 kW × 720 hours = 360 kWh Electricity Costs: Assuming a cost of £0.30 per kWh: 360 kWh × £0.30 = £108 additional cost. For a £600 increase, you'd need much higher power usage (e.g., using multiple devices like a high-end PC, large TV, and cooling systems) or running the game nearly 24/7. It’s unlikely but feasible if they had an exceptionally inefficient setup or other contributing factors.
- archsurface 2y ago
  Thank you for the payment... January 2023 ... of £115 Thank you for the payment... April 2023 ... of £631 I don't watch TV, no cooling systems. It was the second half of winter but I considered the heating usage at the time. No exaggeration intended. £516.
  - archsurface 2y ago
    Rate info: | Current prices | New prices (1 January 2023) Standing charge (pence per day) | 48.61 | 48.61 Unit rate DY (pence per kWh) | 53.38 | 60.24 Unit rate NT (pence per kWh) | 9.21 | 8.10 edit: attempted formatting.

caseysoftware 2y ago

What happened in 2022!? In 2021, it was 22p/kWh and in 2022, it went to 44p/kWh. It's come down 6-7p each year since but doubling in one year is crazy.

fy20 2y ago
Russia happened.
- caseysoftware 2y ago
  Ah, thanks. I wasn't aware how damaging that was to UK energy prices.

n0mad01 2y ago

I'll mention it briefly here in case anyone missed the answer: short-term tax revenues.

LosEstupidos 2y ago

[flagged]

dzonga 2y ago

what's not mentioned is the consequence of having expensive power. the average UK consumer consumes 1/3 of the power consumed by a US consumer. which makes the average UK energy consumption is equivalent to one of a low-middle income country. energy consumption is heavily tied to prosperity.

psd1 2y ago
No, it's more like: whether you live in a rain-lashed tepid shithole, a sun-beaten desert shithole, or an ice-smothered frigid shithole. AC is barely even desirable here. It occasionally reaches a whopping 30. We don't have AC at home because it's a silly frippery in a brick house at 54°N in Europe. We certainly need heating, but not like in saskatchewan.

guerby 2y ago

Nodal vs Zonal pricing definition : https://diversegy.com/nodal-pricing-vs-zonal-pricing/ https://diversegy.com/nodal-pricing-vs-zonal-pricing/

nickdothutton 2y ago

Im old enough to remember when Prof. Ian Fells [1] discussed most of these problems in the early 1980s in the UK. Our “time from problem identification to solution deployed” is absolutely abysmal in the UK. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fells

stonesthrowaway 2y ago

The answer is because the UK moved away from their most abundant and cheapest energy source. It's not rocket science.

FL33TW00D 2y ago

So many uninformed people in the comments here. "The Carbon Price Support (CPS), introduced by the UK Government in April 2013, has led to a substantial reduction in electricity generated from coal, which fell by 93% from a monthly average of 13.1 TWh in 2013 to only 0.97 TWh in 2019 (Ofgem, 2019a)." They actually correctly priced the externalities and managed to decimate coal usage in the UK in a single decade. This increased prices accordingly. This should be applauded, they correctly designed a scheme so that the economics aligned and coal was quickly removed. We can now focus on increasing energy production from other means and decreasing prices. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/sustainable/sites/bartlett/files/annex_-_cps_-_final_-_20102019.pdf https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/sustainable/sites/bartlett/fi...

macspoofing 2y ago

>Use local solar generation, and a lot of batteries. This works well in most of the world, but less so in northern Europe (it's not very sunny). WHERE???? Nobody gets their electricity this way at any reasonable scale.