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Q&A: New UK onshore wind and solar is '50% cheaper' than new gas
- guidedlight 8mo agoDoesn’t gas generators set the market price 98% of the time in the UK? They need to fix their market pricing mechanism before the public benefit from cheaper renewable energy sources.
- jl6 8mo agoIt is important to realise that the current pricing mechanism is not an accident, and has some non-obvious benefits that need to be weighed against the obvious drawbacks. Clearly other mechanisms exist, which might solve the obvious drawbacks, but it is a choice of tradeoffs rather than a simple fix.
- mjw1007 8mo agoNot any more, according to this article you're commenting on, no.
- nialv7 8mo agothe comment you are replying to is talking about marginal cost pricing, which wasn't addressed by this article.
- DamonHD 8mo ago> This price-setting dominance is being eroded by renewables, with recent analysis from the UK Energy Research Centre showing that gas set power prices 90% of the time in 2025.
- Crosseye_Jack 8mo agoOne could argue that it’s the “big boys” favour to build out “just enough” renewables in places that are further away from demand, so that gas still sets the price even if it’s just a fraction of what’s actually being used. Min/max profits, but that would be crazy talk right! I’m sure the large energy producers have my best interests at heart really.
- adrianN 8mo agoThe more often you have renewable surplus the rarer you need to fire up the gas turbines.
- NVHacker 8mo agoIf you are wondering why the air quotes around "50% cheaper", it's because the price of electricity is set based on the price of gas. Crazy, right ? https://www.greeniow.org.uk/why-uk-electricity-prices-are-tied-to-gas/ https://www.greeniow.org.uk/why-uk-electricity-prices-are-ti...
- triceratops 8mo agoIt sounds like a crazy system. But wouldn't it also make deploying renewables there wildly profitable? Sunlight is free but you get paid like you burned natural gas.
- blibble 8mo agothat is the idea but under the cfd mechanism the treasury takes the excess over the strike price
- PunchyHamster 8mo agoIt does. It's basically scamming taxpayer into funding private companies renewable investments.
- triceratops 8mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982694 It's not a scam. Interesting your mind went there though. We know what you're about.
- 7952 8mo agoRenewables are heavily effected by capital costs. So a renewable energy scheme selling at wholesale prices may sometimes be ridiculously profitable. But it will also have higher interest rates that could wipe out that benefit for the developer. The more successful renewable energy is the lower the average wholesale price is likely to be. And the temporary peaks are likely to correlate with times where the weather conditions will reduce renewable output. All these reasons make CfD's positive for both consumers and developers. The fact that schemes can be developed outside of this just shows how good the technology is.
- monsecchris 8mo agoGas can produce enormous amounts of power at short notice 100% of the time and is cheaper per watt, nobody builds a 5MW twin cycle gas turbine power plant. There is a reason it sets the price at market. The CFDs are locked in at persistently high prices for decades. All these actions will increase costs to customers. There is a reason our energy costs are the highest in the world, it is because our politicians persistently make choices like the ones described in this article.
- yladiz 8mo agoIs it cheaper factoring in externalities?
- stinkbeetle 8mo agoExternalities such as destroying your manufacturing base and eroding living standards and middle-class wealth by having 4x higher electricity costs than a country like China which emits 2x more CO2 per capita?
- 7952 8mo agoRest assured that the UK would have damaged manufacturing and living standards regardless of renewables. It is just too complicated and expensive to build things. That not only damages the things you mentioned but renewables, gas and nuclear deployment. But yeah bet against the Chinese solar and battery industries. And bet in favour of cheap plentiful gas in northern Europe.
- stinkbeetle 8mo ago> Rest assured that the UK would have damaged manufacturing and living standards regardless of renewables. It is just too complicated and expensive to build things. That not only damages the things you mentioned but renewables, gas and nuclear deployment. High energy prices unquestionably make most primary and manufacturing production less competitive, and they reduce living standards. What are you even trying to say? > But yeah bet against the Chinese solar and battery industries. And bet in favour of cheap plentiful gas in northern Europe. This does not address what I wrote.
- PunchyHamster 8mo agoNow add storage costs
- qualitylearing 8mo ago[flagged]
- abainbridge 8mo agoIn the UK the wholesale price was about £80/MWh in 2025. The retail price was about £270/MWh + a standing charge. If you factor in the standing charge, an average user paid about £344/MWh. So the cost of generation was only about 23% of the retail price. I believe the green levies + CfDs accounted for about another 15% of the retail price. Does this mean that if generation was free, and there were no green policy costs, our electric would still be expensive? edit: "Network and Distribution" appears to contribute about 23% of the retail price. I guess green energy increased that cost because wind/solar are more spread out and sometimes off-shore.
- qualitylearing 8mo ago[flagged]
- mono442 8mo ago[flagged]
- DamonHD 8mo agoAll untrue long-since-debunked FUD talking points. Please understand the South Australia market for example.
- mono442 8mo agoLook at the price of electricity in European Union countries. It's true. I know what I pay for electricity and you aren't going to gaslight me into thinking otherwise.
- Kbelicius 8mo agoNobody is saying that you aren't paying more for electricity. What they are saying is that you reasoning about why that is is wrong.
- austinjp 8mo ago> The more renewables we have, the more expensive the electricity is. Correlation is not causation. Renewables bring costs down, but other factors affecting Europe and the UK are causing costs to rise, outpacing reductions.
- mono442 8mo agoIt's because of the taxes (the emissions trading system). I've mentioned it in my earlier post.
- happymellon 8mo ago> I don't know about the UK Then this is probably not the article to be speculating on. We have a most favoured nation charging, so whatever costs the most sets the price. > The more renewables we have, the more expensive the electricity is. Because pricing is disconnected from cost. This is to encourage more cheap green because the margins are higher. > The renewable electricity producers are providing a service which no one want nor would normally buy but everyone is forced to buy it and subside it. We are currently sitting through some of the heaviest rainfalls in Britain. My area normally gets about 50mm of rain in January, and instead we have had 130mm. So I think you can take your climate change denial and shove it. https://www.reading.ac.uk/news/2026/Expert-Comment/Rain-for-31-days-straight-shatters-records-as-flood-risks-grow https://www.reading.ac.uk/news/2026/Expert-Comment/Rain-for-...
- metalman 8mo agoin absolutly any other business having a 50% cost advantage would be catestrpohic for competition and front page news signaling a new era, but for this it's shrug and unprecidentidly lame mumbling about "uncertainties" and guff guff harumphf! somehow tommorow there will be worldwide headlines decribing the wonders of science inventing a new better kind of intermitent wipers
- ZeroGravitas 8mo agoIt is a new era, and has been for a while. 50% of new capacity globally has been renewable since 2012 and keeps growing. It was 92.5% last year and almost certainly higher for 2025. In the US it was 99% wind, solar, batteries. The people talking this down are in an info-bubble of their own creation.
- metalman 8mo agofirst time I got current from a photo voltaic cell taken out of an unsuspecting light meter as a child I knew that this was better than magic. off grid experiences in the early 1990's, full time off grid in 09 or so and a guy on a harley pulls in, friendly at first, then gets to raving about solar panels and how they should be banned, no why in that, just a reptilian existential crisis in the door yard, which seems to have become contagious, the unfortunate part is that they seem to have a lot of guns, and tanks, and ships in there info bubble, the only positive part is that they have no magic, or aything as good, or better and I hope they hurry up and loose now.
- KevinMS 8mo agoDoes this include the cost of gas backup?
- benj111 8mo agoYou mean the gas power stations that are already built?
- KevinMS 8mo agoevery wind/solar farm on the grid needs backup gas turbines, whether its already built or not, which costs money either way, but those are never included in the cost.
- benj111 8mo agoIn the UK, demand has been steadily going down. We don't need new gas power stations to cover increased usage.
- KevinMS 8mo agoyou aren't getting it. You need to match, on demand, any solar or wind generation. On demand means gas turbines, because nothing else can power up quickly enough. X amount of power generation from a wind farm needs X amount of capacity sitting around waiting to come online.
- benj111 8mo agoI am getting it. I'm saying 10 years ago demand was X and we had the gas capacity we needed. Now demand is X-10. We have 10 too much capacity without building any more gas generation. I haven't even gone into the presumption that it needs to be gas. What about batteries, hydro? And that's going on the assumption that all wind and solar is going to suddenly drop to zero. And yes it might go low but not all at once without warning. So yes. I get it. It's you that doesn't seem to.