General > General Technical Chat
UK power grid situation!!
AVGresponding:
--- Quote from: Kasper on December 09, 2022, 06:49:39 pm ---
--- Quote from: Monkeh on December 09, 2022, 06:41:37 pm ---
--- Quote from: james_s on December 09, 2022, 06:27:58 pm ---
--- Quote from: NiHaoMike on December 09, 2022, 01:07:47 pm ---How about give discounts to customers who get devices installed to limit heating to 60-65F during peak times?
--- End quote ---
How do you enforce that? It's trivial to bypass a thermostat to turn on the heating, and if you don't want to mess with that, just plug in a space heater.
--- End quote ---
Smart meters.
Also, most people are not smart enough for 'trivial'.
--- End quote ---
What if someone likes leaving the windows open but keeps the thermostat at 18°C? Should they get a discount? What if most the house is 16°C but your office is 20°C, does that qualify? What about people that upgrade their insulation?
Pay per use billing seems a lot easier and more fair. Use less energy, get a lower energy bill.
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Unit cost should go up, the more you use, and not down, as it currently does.
--- Quote from: tggzzz on December 09, 2022, 10:14:21 pm ---
--- Quote from: themadhippy on December 09, 2022, 07:53:00 pm ---The uk has a new method of cutting down on grid demand,pricing the poor out of the market.
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If they fall behind on their payments too far, then the energy companies don't cut them off (because they said they wouldn't when installing the smart meters).
They do, however, transfer them onto a prepayment tariff, which is typically more expensive. That has more or less the same effect as cutting them off, but avoids the PR & political fallout.
Whether that is fair or just is, of course, a separate argument.
Personally I'm waiting until there is a large database cockup or malefactors enter the system - and transition everyone onto a prepayment tariff or directly turnoff the supply at using smart meters.
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What happens in this situation is that the customer is described as having "self-disconnected" when they can't afford to feed the meter. I expect there will be quite a few people in this position during this current cold snap, and if we don't have a mild winter, it could become a serious problem (beyond the fact of it already being a serious problem for the people directly affected).
tggzzz:
--- Quote from: tom66 on December 10, 2022, 08:43:58 am ---Was more replying to @hippy, re prices going up pricing the poor out of the market. Not saying it is not unfair, but your two options are high prices, or rationing. And yes, shareholder dividends for the energy extractors are higher than they ever have been, so I fully support taxing them hell out of these companies. But, it still doesn't resolve the issue with a shortfall of gas, because you need to manage that somehow.
--- End quote ---
It would be helpful if you learned two basic things:
* indicating who and what you are replying to by using the "quote" button rather than the "reply" button
* understanding the concept of "price elasticity of demand". That will clue you in to why high prices are a form of rationing. High prices and rationing are not mutually orthogonal
tggzzz:
--- Quote from: tom66 on December 10, 2022, 08:43:58 am ---So, that's why we might see rolling blackouts this winter if we're unlucky, because we're literally consuming too much gas and the price signals to stop that have gone. (This is an unlikely worst-case scenario. So far the data shows we'll not see this, because we've consumed less gas this year than a typical winter, and the winter has been warmer than historical averages.)
--- End quote ---
As with any use of the concept of averaging, the averging period is absolutely key. For example, by choosing different averaging periods, an individual's average (mean) heartrate can be stated to be anywhere between 220bpm to <1µbpm. Yes "µ".
In this case the averaging period of "winter" or "season" is invalid and misleading. The only correct period is relative to the total capacity of stored gas and the usage rate. One report indicates for the UK's largest (hastily partially recommissioned) gas storage facility, Rough: "If the facility were able to maintain its previous outflow rates, calculations by Watt-Logic suggest it would be able to provide up to 12 per cent of UK gas needs for about 19 days during this winter." https://inews.co.uk/news/gas-rough-uk-storage-facility-winter-energy-crisis-russia-1900316
G7PSK:
The main reason electricity price is high in the UK at present is that it is tied to the price of gas, even renewables are tied so that wind and solar are getting both subsidies and increased price. And the reason that electricity price is still high, forward buying on gas by the generating companies who bought forward as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine at panic inflated prices and now that the wholesale price has dropped due to greatly increased LNG imports they are still contracted at the higher price, what happens as the contracts expire is anyone's guess. One thing that all this has shown is that power should never have been privatised, all privatisation has done is put too many snouts in the trough forcing up prices and ensured that not enough is spent on the infrastructure so that the whole system is creaking at he seams. What is going to happen to the grid when haulage companies are forced to use electric trucks, ware houses lined with row upon row of one megawatt chargers, the grid at present will not take that.
tom66:
--- Quote from: tggzzz on December 10, 2022, 10:24:04 am ---
--- Quote from: tom66 on December 10, 2022, 08:43:58 am ---Was more replying to @hippy, re prices going up pricing the poor out of the market. Not saying it is not unfair, but your two options are high prices, or rationing. And yes, shareholder dividends for the energy extractors are higher than they ever have been, so I fully support taxing them hell out of these companies. But, it still doesn't resolve the issue with a shortfall of gas, because you need to manage that somehow.
--- End quote ---
It would be helpful if you learned two basic things:
* indicating who and what you are replying to by using the "quote" button rather than the "reply" button
* understanding the concept of "price elasticity of demand". That will clue you in to why high prices are a form of rationing. High prices and rationing are not mutually orthogonal
--- End quote ---
Use of @username (or an abbreviation where it is not ambiguous) is an accepted internet practice to refer to multiple posts when there is no particular comment in mind. It predates Twitter, but it was probably mass popularised by that platform.
Of course I understand demand elasticity. That's like econ 101. But that's not really the same as rationing, because it's not enforced on you if you can afford to pay, it just encourages demand destruction by consumers. Rationing would be telling people you have 10kWh of gas to use today, once you go over that, you're going to shiver. That is the alternative if we want to keep prices low. That's also what I wanted the UK EPG to be, some average amount of kWh per year/quarter/month to be covered at the guaranteed price and anything above that at market rates, but it isn't how it worked out.
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