electrical reserve drops to 4%

[Jdsparky]

Showing ur age now, sort of anyway....it's playstation 3 now soon to be 4

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All those young playstation 2 owners will not be happy when they are in the middle of a call of duty online combat and the power flicks off !!!!

Comment above

 

[finchy]

It's all about storing the excess power produced from solar or wind. Basically we need a localised battery storage stations (mw capacity) connected to the grid. Localise the generation,storage and supply with the grid picking up the slack.

The government should forget EPC requirements, and encourage as much generation as possible especially from business.

 

[Eco Deal]

Itv news have just reported on the topic of blackouts

 

[FB.]

Itv news have just reported on the topic of blackouts

Big price rises seem more likely than blackouts, as electricity companies will bid against each other to sign contracts with power stations to "lock-in" power purchases in advance, to ensure their customers have power.
Rapidly rising electricity prices would then cause many households to rethink their energy usage, resulting in lower demand (if only because people simply can't afford it) and therefore a greater reserve capacity as high prices stifle demand. After all: high petrol prices in recent years has seen motorists cut back on their consumption.

Once power prices start to rise rapidly (not everyone can or will cut back), utility companies will have more of an incentive and margin of safety to justify investing despite risks of government policy change affecting the ability of a new power station to be profitable. Let's face it: government policy screwed solar, has now swung away from coal and towards gas - but for how long before we see another U-turn which risks decimating yet another method of generating electricity.

At present, many utility companies are eager to invest and have cash ready to go, but need some reassurance from the government that the goalposts won't be moved a couple of years down the line.

For what it's worth, though, can you see the French or other Europeans letting us tell them to decomission their power stations with blackouts and soaring electricity prices as a possible consequence?

 

[sedgy34]

What's next ???? It's the green deal lol

 

[moggy1968]

don't agree with you on the margins thing FB. people, notably the banks, are obsessed with margins and it's really not that relevant. there's no point making 100% margin if you don't actually make enough money to feed the kids, but if I was making 1% and earning a hundred grand a year I'd be a very happy man. profit is everything, and the energy suppliers have loads of that. The only thing margin gives you is fthe flexibility to absorb cost.

The energy companies make plenty, but shove it in their own fat faces instead of investing it into R&D

 

[Gavin A]

Big price rises seem more likely than blackouts, as electricity companies will bid against each other to sign contracts with power stations to "lock-in" power purchases in advance, to ensure their customers have power.

that's not quite how power supply works. The reality is that all the customers get their power from the same grid, and unless / until they fit smart meters in all our homes, there's no mechanism by which they can differentiate between who gets the power and who doesn't on a customer by customer basis (other than price of course, to price the poorest out of the market). There are of course big companies on interruptable supply contracts, but that's a bit different... though I expect that if / when they get smart meters in people homes that'll be the route they take, getting people to sign up for cheaper interruptable supply projects, that they'll then use for rolling 2 hour blackouts or similar to cope with winter peaks. Or if we're lucky and they're cleverer with it, they'll just switch off circuits for fridges, freezers etc for a couple of hours.

Personally I think the best options is plug in dynamic demand controllers for fridges, freezers etc that automatically cut out for an hour at a time based on the grid frequency. It's got to be simpler than having to rewire a good percentage of the houses in the country to achieve the same affect.

fwiw, if the new gas, biomass and hydro power stations, and HVDC links aren't quite finished in time for the 2016 loss of the old coal plants then I'd bet large amounts of money that the old coal plants will simply be granted permission for extended use as peaking stations for a few days / weeks a year in the peak of winter / seriously reduced operating hours vs their current limitations.

No doubt about it though, prices are going to keep rising rapidly for at least the next 5 years even just as a result of switching further from cheaper coal to more expensive gas.

alternatively the politicians could continue to screw up the energy sector so badly that the lights actually do go out, at which point the government should definitely fall.

There is also the small matter of energy efficiency that has the potential to significantly reduce our peak demand, if we actually stopped installing halogens all over the shop, and replaced the ones that have been fitted with LEDs.

 

[HandySparks]

I've not looked into this in any depth recently, but I'm surprised that there aren't plans to add/extend gas firing to existing coal fired stations. I know that gas has been used for lighting up and for stabilising burn at low power outputs on coal fired boilers, so it seems an obvious step if there's going to be a shortage of available plant.

 

[Gavin A]

extremely inefficient method of generating from gas though.

tbh, I don't think our problem's going to be lack of plant capacity, it's going to be running out of gas reserves in long cold spells with minimal wind, because we're hugely over reliant on gas now for both heating and electricity generation, but have relatively little storage capacity as we never needed to have it before as we could just turn the north sea taps up as required.

It's a bit nuts that we're continuing to increase our gas usage for power generation after the point where North Sea outputs have begun declining rapidly.

 

[grantr37]

gas prices will go up and up for us, but quite possibly not for other countries that maintain a better relationship with each other, people will eventually begin to refuse to sell us gas, and the foreign owned power supply companies will be busy setting about diverting power from massive wind power schemes over here(which belong to them so why not) via the new high voltage DC links outwards to europe...
anybody thinking about having a household generator......where will the diesel or petrol come from? and how much will it be priced at? using batteries for ups type inverters for solar will be a massive polluter as well as hugely expensive and will also not work to power heavy goods....they will need replaced a lot as well and will be made abroad like 99% of everything else ...
people in other countries will be watching the TV news while using a secure energy supply and hearing about poor old britain with factory downtime and no electricity.....it will possibly end up with people dying of heat in the summer and cold in the winter, as well as having no food storage or cooking facilities....
people will be getting locked up for stealing wood to burn.....


the next time you are in a city centre.....just take a look around at all the lights, air conditioning, heating, street lighting, shops full of gadgets, and all the gadgets that people have become attached to holding on like their life depends on a touchscreen social interactive mobile plaything....every music player, tablet, phone has either been plugged in to the mains electricity to charge or uses disposable batteries that have used large amounts of resources to make...

humans shuffle about paper money and coins, and digital funds through banking IT systems, all just tokens moving around and around.....and the fossil fuels keep getting used regardless......nothing puts them back .....and all humans think about is greed and personal pleasure through physical possessions and conspicuous consumption, or "impressing others" through shows of wealth....all things which serve no real purpose other than bringing personal satisfaction to those that have the tokens to entitle them to burn off more energy that they don't really need to but they want to so very very much.....for a quick fix....
greed is going to get worse and worse, and greed for control of energy, and therefore other people will get worse and worse.....more wars will follow, a few countries will come out "winners on top of all" and eventually the continuous availability of energy will dry up and come to an abrupt stop.... everything could be emptied out in 60 years or less, and that could be it for people within 100 years or so....all done.....not the fuel to support populations....those left standing bumping each other off for the last of whats left....

 

[kingeri]

I think power cuts are exciting, we do more together as a family during them than at any other time. However, if they became regular occurances, this view is subject to change I suppose!

 

[FB.]

don't agree with you on the margins thing FB. people, notably the banks, are obsessed with margins and it's really not that relevant. there's no point making 100% margin if you don't actually make enough money to feed the kids, but if I was making 1% and earning a hundred grand a year I'd be a very happy man. profit is everything, and the energy suppliers have loads of that. The only thing margin gives you is fthe flexibility to absorb cost.

The energy companies make plenty, but shove it in their own fat faces instead of investing it into R&D

If margins aren't everything, I'd like to see solar installers margins "capped" at about 6%, same as the utility companies - just to ensure that electricity consumers get the best deal.

Would a cap of 6% margin have been acceptable to solar installers in 2010-2012? I bet the margin was many multiples of that a year ago. I'd guess 15% minimum and probably some companies with 50% margins.

I'm pretty sure the gross margin on the panels fitted to my roof was approaching 40%, and net margin well over 20% (3.75kWp, £9k, almost a year ago).

 

[sedgy34]

If margins aren't everything, I'd like to see solar installers margins "capped" at about 6%, same as the utility companies - just to ensure that electricity consumers get the best deal.

Would a cap of 6% margin have been acceptable to solar installers in 2010-2012? I bet the margin was many multiples of that a year ago. I'd guess 15% minimum and probably some companies with 50% margins.

I'm pretty sure the gross margin on the panels fitted to my roof was approaching 40%, and net margin well over 20% (3.75kWp, £9k, almost a year ago).

FB
The installer margins have to support paying towards accreditationS/insurances,tools,test equipment,time spent on paperwork back at the office submitting your installation there's hell of alot to pay out to different bodies before we put a panel on a roof. We don't want to be paying out either if we didn't have to then installer margins could drop too

 

[solarsavings]

And I bet we (our companies) pay more tax as a percentage of our incomes than the energy suppliers do.

 

[moggy1968]

If margins aren't everything, I'd like to see solar installers margins "capped" at about 6%, same as the utility companies - just to ensure that electricity consumers get the best deal.

Would a cap of 6% margin have been acceptable to solar installers in 2010-2012? I bet the margin was many multiples of that a year ago. I'd guess 15% minimum and probably some companies with 50% margins.

I'm pretty sure the gross margin on the panels fitted to my roof was approaching 40%, and net margin well over 20% (3.75kWp, £9k, almost a year ago).

No, 6% wouldn't be reasonable, because we don't turn over enough to justify that on domestic installations so the PROFIT would be too small.

From your previous posts it's evident you wouldn't consider a return of 6% on your investments to be reasonable either.

I have just quoted on a £280000 install and my margin will be considerably less than 6% if I get the job, but the actual PROFIT is enough for me to be comfortable with. I'd love 6% on a turnover like that, 16k for 3 weeks wirk, terific, but it aint gonna happen!!
At 6% margin on domestic the PROFIT would be unsustainable for us.
Margin doesn't feed the kids, profit does.

Also, people do have a choice about which installer they use. If you think an installer is charging too much, use a different one. A year ago companies were quoting 50% more than us and people were still handing them their money. Thats called a free market. If people are daft enough to pay that kind of money out for an inferioir product, thats up to them.

If you want to cap private business, stifle enterprise and small business development like you suggest then thats communism, and that doesn't work, as has been amply demonstrated many times before. If we do go into that kind of environment then forget about living off your investments, you'll be back on the floor of the state owned factory working for a fixed wage and on a 10 year waiting list for your new car.


The reality, despite the Government statements to the opposite, is there is no real choice about energy suppliers. It all ultimately comes from the same place so there is no real competition in marketplace. The profits are massive, R&D minimal. Energy supply in this country is a scandal.