Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Johnson’s government ending with just 13% saying it’s competent – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited August 2022 in General
Johnson’s government ending with just 13% saying it’s competent – politicalbetting.com

Government's competency rating drops to record low with R&W pic.twitter.com/SINZ23TxSI

Read the full story here

«134

Comments

  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268
    First
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    So appalling a legacy that his cult fans are already talking of his comeback.

  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,781
    I would've though his being on holiday the last month or so would have boosted the rating. So much for our love of small government.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    Who are these idiotic 13%?
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042
    edited August 2022
    Fpt
    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268
    edited August 2022
    Strangely enough, the majority still thought the government incompetent during the much-lauded vaccine roll-out.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268
    edited August 2022

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,821

    Strangely enough, the majority still though the government incompetent during the much-lauded vaccine roll-out.

    They usually are in these measures. Everyone likes to tend towards 'they're crap' (esp as 75% of the electorate wont have actively voted for them) . Not ususlly to this extent though!
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    edited August 2022
    FPT.
    The crisis in schools is another thing not yet visible in the urgent in tray.
    I have remarked on PB before that I've been thinking about going back into teaching for September.
    We are now six weeks since my application for a DBS (I've had one before, and have moved once since, in the same Police authority).
    Still nowt. Target is 14 days.
    Thinking of giving up and doing summat else. Have had positive responses for potential employment from several schools, but they can't just wait for my DBS to come, with no position filled. Or not come.
    Another shambles.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,821
    Quick analogy inspired by a comment i saw on twitter that 'at least SKS is doing something'
    Thats like praising someone throwing balled up socks at the guy stabbing you repeatedly for at least having a go.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    IanB2 said:

    Who are these idiotic 13%?

    Nadine kept refreshing the online survey page and reentering her views.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Which water pumping schemes are stalled?
  • The Liz Truss bounce seems to be predicted on a tiny, tiny (depending on who you ask) lead over Starmer on best PM.

    Not exactly the same as the polls we saw for weeks when Johnson took over, with him being the only candidate who can win a majority. The fact we haven't seen a VI poll with Liz as leader suggests she wouldn't be winning.

    Any boost is going to be shortcoming unless she gets a grip on CoL.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    dixiedean said:

    FPT.
    The crisis in schools is another thing not yet visible in the urgent in tray.
    I have remarked on PB before that I've been thinking about going back into teaching for September.
    We are now six weeks since my application for a DBS (I've had one before, and have moved once since, in the same Police authority).
    Still nowt. Target is 14 days.
    Thinking of giving up and doing summat else. Have had positive responses for potential employment from several schools, but they can't just wait for my DBS to come, with no position filled. Or not come.
    Another shambles.

    We have had similar problems. We appoint new people, but In the interminable wait for a DBS they get another job.

    I would quite happily scrap DBS entirely. I don't think it ever gives an answer that affects employment.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,821
    dixiedean said:

    FPT.
    The crisis in schools is another thing not yet visible in the urgent in tray.
    I have remarked on PB before that I've been thinking about going back into teaching for September.
    We are now six weeks since my application for a DBS (I've had one before, and have moved once since, in the same Police authority).
    Still nowt. Target is 14 days.
    Thinking of giving up and doing summat else. Have had positive responses for potential employment from several schools, but they can't just wait for my DBS to come, with no position filled. Or not come.
    Another shambles.

    The scale of it will overwhelm them all. Whatever 'solution' is applied i suspect its a finger in the dyke
    Everything is creaking
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Yet 46% still do not think the government is incompetent then
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841
    dixiedean said:

    FPT.
    The crisis in schools is another thing not yet visible in the urgent in tray.
    I have remarked on PB before that I've been thinking about going back into teaching for September.
    We are now six weeks since my application for a DBS (I've had one before, and have moved once since, in the same Police authority).
    Still nowt. Target is 14 days.
    Thinking of giving up and doing summat else. Have had positive responses for potential employment from several schools, but they can't just wait for my DBS to come, with no position filled. Or not come.
    Another shambles.

    Surely DBS should be instant in today's digital age ?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    Pulpstar said:

    dixiedean said:

    FPT.
    The crisis in schools is another thing not yet visible in the urgent in tray.
    I have remarked on PB before that I've been thinking about going back into teaching for September.
    We are now six weeks since my application for a DBS (I've had one before, and have moved once since, in the same Police authority).
    Still nowt. Target is 14 days.
    Thinking of giving up and doing summat else. Have had positive responses for potential employment from several schools, but they can't just wait for my DBS to come, with no position filled. Or not come.
    Another shambles.

    Surely DBS should be instant in today's digital age ?
    We recruited someone from London recently, and the Met took 6 months to do the DBS.
  • pm215pm215 Posts: 926


    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.

    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    Right. Also, we (the grid, the government) can set rates so as to effectively pay for the extra service of "can smooth out peaks and troughs in demand" -- you can get paid more for "will provide power at a moment's notice" than for "will provide power but it takes me 30 minutes to fire up the turbines", for example. And if you want to put a thumb on the scales to encourage the market to do things it's otherwise uninclined to do, you can subsidise or set minimum guaranteed rates.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,821

    The Liz Truss bounce seems to be predicted on a tiny, tiny (depending on who you ask) lead over Starmer on best PM.

    Not exactly the same as the polls we saw for weeks when Johnson took over, with him being the only candidate who can win a majority. The fact we haven't seen a VI poll with Liz as leader suggests she wouldn't be winning.

    Any boost is going to be shortcoming unless she gets a grip on CoL.

    There haven't been any polls with Liz as leader aside from the 'forced choice' Ashcroft, and that one by focaldata in the Times that seemed to suggest her ahead but Ive never seen published
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    Well if it helps you feel better, any excess power we generate from our PV panels goes back to the grid at 5.99p.

    I am not sure what happens for commercial generators, I assume they agree a contract price with the National Grid.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268
    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Which water pumping schemes are stalled?
    'Blocked' surely?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    "Cornwall hit by heavy rain and flooding as thunderstorms begin

    Many parts of the UK have experienced sweltering temperatures and a lack of rain over the last few weeks, making the ground very dry and more susceptible to flooding."

    https://news.sky.com/story/uk-weather-parts-of-devon-and-cornwall-hit-by-heavy-rain-and-flooding-as-thunderstorms-begin-12673967
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042
    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Which water pumping schemes are stalled?
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-57510870.amp


  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    I don't think there's ever been a time when combined solar plus wind has ever been 100% of UK electricity usage.

    When Hinckley Point C comes on board then - given that also has guaranteed purchase price agreements - that may change.

    Varying price of electricity != useless excess power.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268
    HYUFD said:

    Yet 46% still do not think the government is incompetent then

    Only if you include the 33% who do not think
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,395
    dixiedean - If you are warm and have a college degree, you may be able to get job teaching in the Seattle Eastside suburbs. (You would probably have to take education courses over the next two years, which, at best, would be annoying. But the schools are pretty good.)

    The shortage of school bus drivers here is so acute that they have twice sent out postcards to everyone in my district (one of the larger ones in the state) advertising for help. As I recall, they were offering free training, benefits, and about 32 dollars an hour.

  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    It would be quite dismaying if the aliens really have arrived.... and they've decided to hook up with Putin

    Indeed. I was playing an alien in this a couple of months ago:

    https://www.megagameassembly.com/uk-europe-megagames/first-contact-2035-0622

    My faction was into communitarian hivemind living, so we decided China were our natural allies (Putin seemed a bit too elitist for our taste). We agreed with them that they would allow us to settle our huge alien amphibious domes in the South China Sea, in return for which we would defend it against the Americans or any other low-tech (compared to our scary alien tech) opponents.

    Sadly, we didn't actually have any advanced weapons tech, but I, um, forgot to mention that to them. However, since everyone, including the American players, thought that we had, it was a perfectly good deterrent.
    There are some terrifying speculations by quite serious people positing the theory that aliens, should they be visiting us, might be actively malign - or appear so to us, in their indifference

    I guess I always presume that if aliens did ever arrive, they'd be kinda friendly if vastly superior, or neutral observers of our funny ways. ET in the movie

    What if they want to hurt us? Or toy with us for sport?

    omg I'M GOING TO THE GYM



    Of course, they'll be malign, if they're technologically our superiors, even if they don't intend to be so.

    "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
    A fine paragraph. By?
    Lovecraft, at the start of The Call of Cthulhu.

    Although, I'd say his most terrifying short story is The Color Out of Space. It's a constant theme of his stories that the aliens that humans encounter are utterly terrifying, not because they're actively malicious, but rather, they view us as we would view rats or insects.
    Ooh I will try that. I do like a bit of Lovecraft

    Have you ever read The Willows by Algernon Blackwood?

    It's a remarkable pieces of writing from the same era. Manages to conjure serious menace from a bunch of trees. Get a bit mad at the end but still: so clever

    The late 19th-early 20th century perfected the spooky-as-fuck short story
    M R James was brilliant at conjuring up horror from the mundane. The short story is best for horror. I think it's very difficult to make horror work over the course of an entire novel.
    It's highly difficult but not impossible to write an entire book that is scary. Shirley Jackson did it in The Haunting of Hill House, William Peter Blatty did it in The Exorcist, Susan Hill sort of did it in The Woman in Black (which is flawed but has that genius killer ending). After that, hmm

    Short stories are generally better at inducing dread without inducing disbelief. The Monkey's Paw is probably the scariest thing ever written. It's all of 8 pages long

    Nightmares are "better" when they are short
    The Monkey's Paw definitely packs a terrifying punch. If you're going to write a horror novel, I don't think it can be just a horror novel. I think George Martin sums it up very well with this:

    “Bad horror stories concern themselves with six ways to kill a vampire, and graphic accounts of how the rats ate Billy's genitalia. Good horror stories are about larger things. About hope and despair. About love and hatred, lust and jealousy. About friendship and adolescence and sexuality and rage, loneliness and alienation and psychosis, courage and cowardice, the human mind and body and spirit under stress and in agony, the human heart in unending conflict with itself. Good horror stories make us look at our reflections in dark distorting mirrors, where we glimpse things that disturb us, things that we did not really want to look at. Horror looks into the shadows of the human soul, at the fears and rages that live within us all.

    But darkness is meaningless without light, and horror is pointless without beauty. The best horror stories are stories first and horror second, and however much they scare us, they do more than that as well. They have room in them for laughter as well as screams, for triumph and tenderness as well as tragedy. They concern themselves not simply with fear, but with life in all its infinite variety, with love and death and birth and hope and lust and transcendence, with the whole range of experiences and emotions that make up the human condition. Their characters are people, people who linger in our imagination, people like those around us, people who do not exist solely to be the objects of violent slaughter in chapter four. The best horror stories tell us truths.”

    I think the best horror stories I've read are:

    The Monkey's Paw, by WW Jacobs.
    The Mezzotint, and The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral, by MR James
    The Cask of Amontillado and The Tell-Tale Heart, by Poe
    The Pear Shaped Man and In The Lost Lands, by George Martin
    The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Color Out of Space, by Lovecraft
    I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
    That's largely true. Sometimes people think a story is deep just because it's sad, or scary because it's relentless, and there's a place for sheer hopelessness, but you just get darkness induced apathy if there is no variation. Despair hits harder in stories with some hope, the darkness hits harder where there is some light.

    We need peaks and troughs of emotion or it's just exhausting and lacks any weight because it's not even real.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    edited August 2022

    dixiedean - If you are warm and have a college degree, you may be able to get job teaching in the Seattle Eastside suburbs. (You would probably have to take education courses over the next two years, which, at best, would be annoying. But the schools are pretty good.)

    The shortage of school bus drivers here is so acute that they have twice sent out postcards to everyone in my district (one of the larger ones in the state) advertising for help. As I recall, they were offering free training, benefits, and about 32 dollars an hour.

    Yeah. It's summat I'm looking at. (Abroad, not necessarily Seattle Eastside suburbs).
    Got a PGCE and a clean criminal record. All I'm asking is that they say I have a clean criminal record. How hard is that?
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042

    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Which water pumping schemes are stalled?
    'Blocked' surely?
    Adrift!
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268
    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    I don't think there's ever been a time when combined solar plus wind has ever been 100% of UK electricity usage.

    When Hinckley Point C comes on board then - given that also has guaranteed purchase price agreements - that may change.

    Varying price of electricity != useless excess power.
    Do commercial solar and wind farms have guaranteed prices for all they generate?

    I guess we could export any excess.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,821

    The Liz Truss bounce seems to be predicted on a tiny, tiny (depending on who you ask) lead over Starmer on best PM.

    Not exactly the same as the polls we saw for weeks when Johnson took over, with him being the only candidate who can win a majority. The fact we haven't seen a VI poll with Liz as leader suggests she wouldn't be winning.

    Any boost is going to be shortcoming unless she gets a grip on CoL.

    The first month of Johnson as PM had the tories slightly lower than they are currently polling generally (labour were screwed of course) but brexit party were getting low teens.
    It was October before he got reliable election winning polling
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268

    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Which water pumping schemes are stalled?
    'Blocked' surely?
    Adrift!
    But not sunk (unlike tidal)
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Which water pumping schemes are stalled?
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-57510870.amp


    That's a year old. The world looks very different now.

    Coire Glas, which is by far the biggest project at about 1.5GW, is moving at quite a pace now, and the Great Glen Way diversion (which is the big prerequisite and which had been the hold up) is due to open later this month.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    edited August 2022
    I don't know why even a party loyalist would dispute the competence point - were the government being competent Boris would still be happily staying on as PM.

    It certainly is not morals or new information which provokes MPs to remove their leader.

    It's also self proving - since MPs do not rebel like that under a competent leader, even if one liked him as PM he was no longer leading the party competently.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    I don't think there's ever been a time when combined solar plus wind has ever been 100% of UK electricity usage.

    When Hinckley Point C comes on board then - given that also has guaranteed purchase price agreements - that may change.

    Varying price of electricity != useless excess power.
    Do commercial solar and wind farms have guaranteed prices for all they generate?

    I guess we could export any excess.
    Some do, some don't.

    New commercial solar installations do not. Historic ones do.
  • pm215pm215 Posts: 926


    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?

    Incidentally, it's not actually possible to feed "excess power" in to the grid. The grid has to stay exactly balanced all the time with the total amount generated and fed in matching precisely the total amount consumed. This is monitored[*] and if there's more supply than demand then somebody's generation gets automatically switched out; conversely when demand increases something gets switched in to meet it.

    [*] conveniently, imbalance shows up as the frequency shifting away from 50Hz so it's very easy to track.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042

    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    I don't think there's ever been a time when combined solar plus wind has ever been 100% of UK electricity usage.

    When Hinckley Point C comes on board then - given that also has guaranteed purchase price agreements - that may change.

    Varying price of electricity != useless excess power.
    Do commercial solar and wind farms have guaranteed prices for all they generate?

    I guess we could export any excess.
    I understand that intercontinental power lines are expensive and not particularly good. I also don't see who (nearby) will particularly want our excess solar on a hot day in August, when they're probably having an even hotter day in August, and have excess solar of their own.

    It makes sense to pump the water up the hill - it's safe, reliable, and environmentally friendly. It just doesn't seem to be very rewarding financially (to me).
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268
    edited August 2022

    The Liz Truss bounce seems to be predicted on a tiny, tiny (depending on who you ask) lead over Starmer on best PM.

    Not exactly the same as the polls we saw for weeks when Johnson took over, with him being the only candidate who can win a majority. The fact we haven't seen a VI poll with Liz as leader suggests she wouldn't be winning.

    Any boost is going to be shortcoming unless she gets a grip on CoL.

    The first month of Johnson as PM had the tories slightly lower than they are currently polling generally (labour were screwed of course) but brexit party were getting low teens.
    It was October before he got reliable election winning polling
    Not according to wiki

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election#2019

    One 1% Labour lead versus 14 Tory leads of between 1 % and 14% in that first month of PM Boris.

    Hard to credit now, of course.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    pm215 said:


    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?

    Incidentally, it's not actually possible to feed "excess power" in to the grid. The grid has to stay exactly balanced all the time with the total amount generated and fed in matching precisely the total amount consumed. This is monitored[*] and if there's more supply than demand then somebody's generation gets automatically switched out; conversely when demand increases something gets switched in to meet it.

    [*] conveniently, imbalance shows up as the frequency shifting away from 50Hz so it's very easy to track.
    I like to think of excess generating capacity being thrown off as millions of little electrical transformers throwing off excess as heat.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,786
    This highlight of Boris’s career as PM escaped my attention until now: 'lo fi boriswave beats to relax/get brexit done to'

    https://youtu.be/cre0in5n-1E
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841

    dixiedean - If you are warm and have a college degree, you may be able to get job teaching in the Seattle Eastside suburbs. (You would probably have to take education courses over the next two years, which, at best, would be annoying. But the schools are pretty good.)

    The shortage of school bus drivers here is so acute that they have twice sent out postcards to everyone in my district (one of the larger ones in the state) advertising for help. As I recall, they were offering free training, benefits, and about 32 dollars an hour.

    Blimey. Has the USA got a whole lot richer than the UK or something, thats an astonishing wage for bus driving.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    I don't think there's ever been a time when combined solar plus wind has ever been 100% of UK electricity usage.

    When Hinckley Point C comes on board then - given that also has guaranteed purchase price agreements - that may change.

    Varying price of electricity != useless excess power.
    Do commercial solar and wind farms have guaranteed prices for all they generate?

    I guess we could export any excess.
    I understand that intercontinental power lines are expensive and not particularly good. I also don't see who (nearby) will particularly want our excess solar on a hot day in August, when they're probably having an even hotter day in August, and have excess solar of their own.

    It makes sense to pump the water up the hill - it's safe, reliable, and environmentally friendly. It just doesn't seem to be very rewarding financially (to me).
    It is very financially rewarding: you buy power at £10/MWh, and then you sell it at £150/MWh. It doesn't get much more rewarding than that.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042
    pm215 said:


    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?

    Incidentally, it's not actually possible to feed "excess power" in to the grid. The grid has to stay exactly balanced all the time with the total amount generated and fed in matching precisely the total amount consumed. This is monitored[*] and if there's more supply than demand then somebody's generation gets automatically switched out; conversely when demand increases something gets switched in to meet it.

    [*] conveniently, imbalance shows up as the frequency shifting away from 50Hz so it's very easy to track.
    Well, would that not be the opportunity to connect wind and solar directly to storage schemes? When the grid is full, switch over.
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,395
    Does Britain have anything like the US SNAP program, which subsidizes food purchases for poor families?
    "In the United States, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),[1] formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, is a federal program that provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people. It is a federal aid program, administered by the United States Department of Agriculture under the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), though benefits are distributed by specific departments of U.S. states (e.g. Division of Social Services, Department of Health and Human Services, etc.).

    SNAP benefits supplied roughly 40 million Americans in 2018, at an expenditure of $57.1 billion.[2][3] Approximately 9.2% of American households obtained SNAP benefits at some point during 2017, with approximately 16.7% of all children living in households with SNAP benefits.[2] Beneficiaries and costs increased sharply with the Great Recession, peaked in 2013 and have declined through 2017 as the economy recovered.[2] It is the largest nutrition program of the 15 administered by FNS and is a key component of the social safety net for low-income Americans."
    source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistance_Program

    Although it won't, unless amended, help poorer families with food inflation, it will continue to reduce the amount they spend on food.

    Perhaps something similar might help with your soaring energy costs?

    (I occasionally see scandals in the program; typically a recipient will trade benefits to a small grocery store for about 50 per cent of their cash value..
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    I don't think there's ever been a time when combined solar plus wind has ever been 100% of UK electricity usage.

    When Hinckley Point C comes on board then - given that also has guaranteed purchase price agreements - that may change.

    Varying price of electricity != useless excess power.
    Do commercial solar and wind farms have guaranteed prices for all they generate?

    I guess we could export any excess.
    Some do, some don't.

    New commercial solar installations do not. Historic ones do.
    Makes sense.

    @Luckyguy1983 Isn't the problem with pumped water storage that it's very expensive to build?
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,334

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    Well if it helps you feel better, any excess power we generate from our PV panels goes back to the grid at 5.99p.

    I am not sure what happens for commercial generators, I assume they agree a contract price with the National Grid.
    That's shockingly low. You would be better investing in a battery and storing it for use in the evening, and not paying 28p per kwh.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    I don't think there's ever been a time when combined solar plus wind has ever been 100% of UK electricity usage.

    When Hinckley Point C comes on board then - given that also has guaranteed purchase price agreements - that may change.

    Varying price of electricity != useless excess power.
    Do commercial solar and wind farms have guaranteed prices for all they generate?

    I guess we could export any excess.
    Some do, some don't.

    New commercial solar installations do not. Historic ones do.
    Makes sense.

    @Luckyguy1983 Isn't the problem with pumped water storage that it's very expensive to build?
    It's all monopoly money to me, but £500mn doesn't seem that expensive. I suppose it depends how much it generates (saves).
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,821

    The Liz Truss bounce seems to be predicted on a tiny, tiny (depending on who you ask) lead over Starmer on best PM.

    Not exactly the same as the polls we saw for weeks when Johnson took over, with him being the only candidate who can win a majority. The fact we haven't seen a VI poll with Liz as leader suggests she wouldn't be winning.

    Any boost is going to be shortcoming unless she gets a grip on CoL.

    The first month of Johnson as PM had the tories slightly lower than they are currently polling generally (labour were screwed of course) but brexit party were getting low teens.
    It was October before he got reliable election winning polling
    Not according to wiki

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election#2019

    One 1% Labour lead versus 14 Tory leads of between 1 % and 14% in that first month of PM Boris.

    Hard to credit now, of course.
    I said the Tories were getting slightly lower than they currently are ,brexit in the teens and labour were screwed. The leads were not consistently majority/election winning and devilishly hard to model on such low %s for the main 2.
    He did not get reliable solid majority winning polling till October. Much of the first months polling was in the 20s, it was a flaccid initial bounce, but it was still a bounce
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,334
    Foxy said:

    Pulpstar said:

    dixiedean said:

    FPT.
    The crisis in schools is another thing not yet visible in the urgent in tray.
    I have remarked on PB before that I've been thinking about going back into teaching for September.
    We are now six weeks since my application for a DBS (I've had one before, and have moved once since, in the same Police authority).
    Still nowt. Target is 14 days.
    Thinking of giving up and doing summat else. Have had positive responses for potential employment from several schools, but they can't just wait for my DBS to come, with no position filled. Or not come.
    Another shambles.

    Surely DBS should be instant in today's digital age ?
    We recruited someone from London recently, and the Met took 6 months to do the DBS.
    I've applied for a job in school (non teaching), since retirement, to help with new energy bills. Been waiting for a Dbs for a month now. I don’t think it will be resolved for September. Both me and the school are now stuck.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    Well if it helps you feel better, any excess power we generate from our PV panels goes back to the grid at 5.99p.

    I am not sure what happens for commercial generators, I assume they agree a contract price with the National Grid.
    That's shockingly low. You would be better investing in a battery and storing it for use in the evening, and not paying 28p per kwh.
    We've just been looking at that but I can't see the finances working.

    We only use about 4 to 6 kWh overnight in the summer.

    Assume 6kWh at a future 50p per unit, that's £3 per day for maybe 150 days of the year = £450 per year for batteries that cost £5k+ and last for 10 years. Not a good payback.

    In the winter of course we use a lot more electricity overnight (air source heat pump heating) but I doubt we generate enough spare PV electricity during the day to charge the battery.

    (If someone could invent a cheap 10,000 kWh battery I'd be interested.)
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,847

    Strangely enough, the majority still thought the government incompetent during the much-lauded vaccine roll-out.

    Yes the question skews because people instinctively like to say the government is incompetent - thus implying they themselves have high standards as to what is competent.

    Ditto questions like do you trust this or that politician or politicians in general? The psychologically steered answer is No! Because this implies you're a shrewdie not easily fooled, which most people identify as.

    This wise old owl stuff having been said, of course in the case of THIS government and Boris Johnson any member of the public who detects any competence or trustworthiness at all needs their head examined.
  • pm215pm215 Posts: 926


    Well, would that not be the opportunity to connect wind and solar directly to storage schemes? When the grid is full, switch over.

    I imagine that would be less economic than having your storage be part of the wider grid system and able to fill up at any point when electricity is cheap, not just when a single directly-attached wind or solar farm is not feeding the grid.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,392

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    The joys of the "free market". The renewable generators receive a Feed in Tariff so they are insulated from variations in the wholesale price. Indeed, if there is insufficient capacity in the power lines they still get paid for curtailing.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268

    The Liz Truss bounce seems to be predicted on a tiny, tiny (depending on who you ask) lead over Starmer on best PM.

    Not exactly the same as the polls we saw for weeks when Johnson took over, with him being the only candidate who can win a majority. The fact we haven't seen a VI poll with Liz as leader suggests she wouldn't be winning.

    Any boost is going to be shortcoming unless she gets a grip on CoL.

    The first month of Johnson as PM had the tories slightly lower than they are currently polling generally (labour were screwed of course) but brexit party were getting low teens.
    It was October before he got reliable election winning polling
    Not according to wiki

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election#2019

    One 1% Labour lead versus 14 Tory leads of between 1 % and 14% in that first month of PM Boris.

    Hard to credit now, of course.
    I said the Tories were getting slightly lower than they currently are ,brexit in the teens and labour were screwed. The leads were not consistently majority/election winning and devilishly hard to model on such low %s for the main 2.
    He did not get reliable solid majority winning polling till October. Much of the first months polling was in the 20s, it was a flaccid initial bounce, but it was still a bounce
    Yes, apologies. I misread your post. Sorry
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    Starmer's plan for a windfall tax to pay for lower energy bills sounds like a good idea. The Conservative government may be forced to adopt it.
  • The Liz Truss bounce seems to be predicted on a tiny, tiny (depending on who you ask) lead over Starmer on best PM.

    Not exactly the same as the polls we saw for weeks when Johnson took over, with him being the only candidate who can win a majority. The fact we haven't seen a VI poll with Liz as leader suggests she wouldn't be winning.

    Any boost is going to be shortcoming unless she gets a grip on CoL.

    The first month of Johnson as PM had the tories slightly lower than they are currently polling generally (labour were screwed of course) but brexit party were getting low teens.
    It was October before he got reliable election winning polling
    Not according to wiki

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election#2019

    One 1% Labour lead versus 14 Tory leads of between 1 % and 14% in that first month of PM Boris.

    Hard to credit now, of course.
    I said the Tories were getting slightly lower than they currently are ,brexit in the teens and labour were screwed. The leads were not consistently majority/election winning and devilishly hard to model on such low %s for the main 2.
    He did not get reliable solid majority winning polling till October. Much of the first months polling was in the 20s, it was a flaccid initial bounce, but it was still a bounce
    That's the other strategic problem for the Conservatives. Although their ratings in Summer 2019 were bad, there was an obvious reservoir of votes to absorb. And so they did. Heck, in a lot of places, Farage delivered those votes to Johnson gift-wrapped.

    From here, the necessary votes are going to be much harder to chisel at.
  • Betfair next prime minister
    1.1 Liz Truss 91%
    11 Rishi Sunak 9%

    Next Conservative leader
    1.09 Liz Truss 92%
    11 Rishi Sunak 9%
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,160

    Does Britain have anything like the US SNAP program, which subsidizes food purchases for poor families?
    "In the United States, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),[1] formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, is a federal program that provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people. It is a federal aid program, administered by the United States Department of Agriculture under the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), though benefits are distributed by specific departments of U.S. states (e.g. Division of Social Services, Department of Health and Human Services, etc.).

    SNAP benefits supplied roughly 40 million Americans in 2018, at an expenditure of $57.1 billion.[2][3] Approximately 9.2% of American households obtained SNAP benefits at some point during 2017, with approximately 16.7% of all children living in households with SNAP benefits.[2] Beneficiaries and costs increased sharply with the Great Recession, peaked in 2013 and have declined through 2017 as the economy recovered.[2] It is the largest nutrition program of the 15 administered by FNS and is a key component of the social safety net for low-income Americans."
    source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistance_Program

    Although it won't, unless amended, help poorer families with food inflation, it will continue to reduce the amount they spend on food.

    Perhaps something similar might help with your soaring energy costs?

    (I occasionally see scandals in the program; typically a recipient will trade benefits to a small grocery store for about 50 per cent of their cash value..

    The Right, distrustful of the poor, insisted they be given food stamps rather than money. It is a stupid system. Just give people £.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841
    pm215 said:


    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?

    Incidentally, it's not actually possible to feed "excess power" in to the grid. The grid has to stay exactly balanced all the time with the total amount generated and fed in matching precisely the total amount consumed. This is monitored[*] and if there's more supply than demand then somebody's generation gets automatically switched out; conversely when demand increases something gets switched in to meet it.

    [*] conveniently, imbalance shows up as the frequency shifting away from 50Hz so it's very easy to track.
    Couldn't something or other be set up to suck up the extra power being generated that will inevitably arrive if we harness our natural wind resource fully - a national battery bank, electrolysis! or some sort of pushing water uphill scheme to create another source of potential energy for times of generation famine ?
  • Andy_JS said:

    Starmer's plan for a windfall tax to pay for lower energy bills sounds like a good idea. The Conservative government may be forced to adopt it.

    Yes and will go down well with the public who are expecting Labour to nationalise everything. So this will show Labour is serious and sitting in the centre ground once again.

    It’s Blairism back again
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    edited August 2022
    @Luckyguy1983

    I think I have done a poor job of explaining how the purchase price agreements for renewables, the renewable levy and the electricity markets work together.

    Let us imagine that you have a 1MW solar plant that was guaranteed £100/MWh for any energy it produces.

    What happens is that the power is sold to electricity retailers at whatever the prevailing price of electricity is. So, it might be £10/MWh if there are massive amounts of renewables being generated and demand is low, or it might be £250/MWh if demand is high, and gas is the marginal generating plant.

    To ensure that the generator gets £100 irrespective of the underlying energy price, the government enters into contract-for-difference transactions. I.e., it agrees to pay the different between the market price and the contracted rate.

    This means that pumped storage firms are paying £10/MWh for power (if that is the prevailing price) irrespective of the purchase price guarantees from the government.

    The reason why electricity bills contain the renewable levy is to compensate the government for the losses on the contracts-for-difference they have taken out. However, right now, they are mostly making money because (due to the very high prices of coal and natural gas) the intraday floor has been above the guaranteed prices in most occasions. It could therefore - and probably should therefore - be suspended.
  • Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    Well if it helps you feel better, any excess power we generate from our PV panels goes back to the grid at 5.99p.

    I am not sure what happens for commercial generators, I assume they agree a contract price with the National Grid.
    That's shockingly low. You would be better investing in a battery and storing it for use in the evening, and not paying 28p per kwh.
    We've just been looking at that but I can't see the finances working.

    We only use about 4 to 6 kWh overnight in the summer.

    Assume 6kWh at a future 50p per unit, that's £3 per day for maybe 150 days of the year = £450 per year for batteries that cost £5k+ and last for 10 years. Not a good payback.

    In the winter of course we use a lot more electricity overnight (air source heat pump heating) but I doubt we generate enough spare PV electricity during the day to charge the battery.

    (If someone could invent a cheap 10,000 kWh battery I'd be interested.)
    I have a Nissan Leaf which can, in theory, double as battery storage. In practice, though, nothing has been done to take advantage of this capability other than a few trials.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    Pulpstar said:

    dixiedean - If you are warm and have a college degree, you may be able to get job teaching in the Seattle Eastside suburbs. (You would probably have to take education courses over the next two years, which, at best, would be annoying. But the schools are pretty good.)

    The shortage of school bus drivers here is so acute that they have twice sent out postcards to everyone in my district (one of the larger ones in the state) advertising for help. As I recall, they were offering free training, benefits, and about 32 dollars an hour.

    Blimey. Has the USA got a whole lot richer than the UK or something, thats an astonishing wage for bus driving.
    Probably just a few hours a day, and only term time.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,821
    edited August 2022

    The Liz Truss bounce seems to be predicted on a tiny, tiny (depending on who you ask) lead over Starmer on best PM.

    Not exactly the same as the polls we saw for weeks when Johnson took over, with him being the only candidate who can win a majority. The fact we haven't seen a VI poll with Liz as leader suggests she wouldn't be winning.

    Any boost is going to be shortcoming unless she gets a grip on CoL.

    The first month of Johnson as PM had the tories slightly lower than they are currently polling generally (labour were screwed of course) but brexit party were getting low teens.
    It was October before he got reliable election winning polling
    Not according to wiki

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election#2019

    One 1% Labour lead versus 14 Tory leads of between 1 % and 14% in that first month of PM Boris.

    Hard to credit now, of course.
    I said the Tories were getting slightly lower than they currently are ,brexit in the teens and labour were screwed. The leads were not consistently majority/election winning and devilishly hard to model on such low %s for the main 2.
    He did not get reliable solid majority winning polling till October. Much of the first months polling was in the 20s, it was a flaccid initial bounce, but it was still a bounce
    That's the other strategic problem for the Conservatives. Although their ratings in Summer 2019 were bad, there was an obvious reservoir of votes to absorb. And so they did. Heck, in a lot of places, Farage delivered those votes to Johnson gift-wrapped.

    From here, the necessary votes are going to be much harder to chisel at.
    Yes. The first port of call should be those that have moved to unsure/wnv. Maybe that gets them to around parity if theyre 5 to 7% adrift now. She'd probably then need to get 2% to switch back direct to get a barebones majority.
    I think she needs (if no big bounce early election) to fight to try and get a result of ca 38% each and 280 seats or so so its one heave back after a weak labour minority for a term. Thats the best i can see them doing unless a freak bounce occurs.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,392
    Andy_JS said:

    Starmer's plan for a windfall tax to pay for lower energy bills sounds like a good idea. The Conservative government may be forced to adopt it.

    Gthe trouble is we can only squeeze BP and Shell for the windfall tax, not the Saudis and Qataris.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    Well if it helps you feel better, any excess power we generate from our PV panels goes back to the grid at 5.99p.

    I am not sure what happens for commercial generators, I assume they agree a contract price with the National Grid.
    That's shockingly low. You would be better investing in a battery and storing it for use in the evening, and not paying 28p per kwh.
    We've just been looking at that but I can't see the finances working.

    We only use about 4 to 6 kWh overnight in the summer.

    Assume 6kWh at a future 50p per unit, that's £3 per day for maybe 150 days of the year = £450 per year for batteries that cost £5k+ and last for 10 years. Not a good payback.

    In the winter of course we use a lot more electricity overnight (air source heat pump heating) but I doubt we generate enough spare PV electricity during the day to charge the battery.

    (If someone could invent a cheap 10,000 kWh battery I'd be interested.)
    Yeah the battery economics don't quite add up*. When electric cars are ubiquitous that could change with a two way cable.

    * They might soon lol
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    The joys of the "free market". The renewable generators receive a Feed in Tariff so they are insulated from variations in the wholesale price. Indeed, if there is insufficient capacity in the power lines they still get paid for curtailing.
    That's not quite true: *historic* renewable generators receive a fixed price irrespective of underlying market rates (and ditto HPC, which gets a much higher rate). A lot of new renewables (and pretty much all residential solar) is not built on that basis.

    It is also worth noting that the government is currently making good money, because the wholesale price of electricity has been well above purchase price agreements.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,392
    Pulpstar said:

    pm215 said:


    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?

    Incidentally, it's not actually possible to feed "excess power" in to the grid. The grid has to stay exactly balanced all the time with the total amount generated and fed in matching precisely the total amount consumed. This is monitored[*] and if there's more supply than demand then somebody's generation gets automatically switched out; conversely when demand increases something gets switched in to meet it.

    [*] conveniently, imbalance shows up as the frequency shifting away from 50Hz so it's very easy to track.
    Couldn't something or other be set up to suck up the extra power being generated that will inevitably arrive if we harness our natural wind resource fully - a national battery bank, electrolysis! or some sort of pushing water uphill scheme to create another source of potential energy for times of generation famine ?
    Green hydrogen, produced via electrolysis, is indeed a potential storage vector for electricity. The trouble is, if you only run the electrolyser when there is surplus power that would otherwise be curtailed then the load factor is rubbish and you've got an expensive bit of kit sat around doing nothing most of the time.

    Talking of which - we have to pay availability payments to CCGT, OCGT and engine set operators to sit there doing nothing so that they can fire up when there is no sun or wind.

    The whole generating system is a bit of a bugger's muddle. And coming soon, the dispatchable power agreement for power plants with carbon capture.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 3,054
    Foxy said:

    Pulpstar said:

    dixiedean said:

    FPT.
    The crisis in schools is another thing not yet visible in the urgent in tray.
    I have remarked on PB before that I've been thinking about going back into teaching for September.
    We are now six weeks since my application for a DBS (I've had one before, and have moved once since, in the same Police authority).
    Still nowt. Target is 14 days.
    Thinking of giving up and doing summat else. Have had positive responses for potential employment from several schools, but they can't just wait for my DBS to come, with no position filled. Or not come.
    Another shambles.

    Surely DBS should be instant in today's digital age ?
    We recruited someone from London recently, and the Met took 6 months to do the DBS.
    I recently had a DBS back in ten days. Was your one an enhanced check or a normal one?
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841
    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    The joys of the "free market". The renewable generators receive a Feed in Tariff so they are insulated from variations in the wholesale price. Indeed, if there is insufficient capacity in the power lines they still get paid for curtailing.
    That's not quite true: *historic* renewable generators receive a fixed price irrespective of underlying market rates (and ditto HPC, which gets a much higher rate). A lot of new renewables (and pretty much all residential solar) is not built on that basis.

    It is also worth noting that the government is currently making good money, because the wholesale price of electricity has been well above purchase price agreements.
    HPC ?
  • pm215pm215 Posts: 926
    Pulpstar said:

    Couldn't something or other be set up to suck up the extra power being generated that will inevitably arrive if we harness our natural wind resource fully - a national battery bank, electrolysis! or some sort of pushing water uphill scheme to create another source of potential energy for times of generation famine ?

    Electricity storage at scale is notoriously tricky. So in principle, yes (and this is what Dinorwig et al do), but in practice doing it cost effectively and in a big enough way is AIUI not yet "just roll out this well understood tech" the way that, say, building a new wind farm now is.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268
    Pulpstar said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    Well if it helps you feel better, any excess power we generate from our PV panels goes back to the grid at 5.99p.

    I am not sure what happens for commercial generators, I assume they agree a contract price with the National Grid.
    That's shockingly low. You would be better investing in a battery and storing it for use in the evening, and not paying 28p per kwh.
    We've just been looking at that but I can't see the finances working.

    We only use about 4 to 6 kWh overnight in the summer.

    Assume 6kWh at a future 50p per unit, that's £3 per day for maybe 150 days of the year = £450 per year for batteries that cost £5k+ and last for 10 years. Not a good payback.

    In the winter of course we use a lot more electricity overnight (air source heat pump heating) but I doubt we generate enough spare PV electricity during the day to charge the battery.

    (If someone could invent a cheap 10,000 kWh battery I'd be interested.)
    Yeah the battery economics don't quite add up*. When electric cars are ubiquitous that could change with a two way cable.

    * They might soon lol
    Thought about that too... but atm if you're not careful your e-car becomes a VERY expensive battery... flat in the morning when you want to use it cos you've run your overnight household electricity from it.
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,395
    Pulpstar said: "Blimey. Has the USA got a whole lot richer than the UK or something, thats an astonishing wage for bus driving."

    I just checked and the per hour pay is just under 31 dollars an hour -- but the benefits are probably worth another 10. Their web site is a little obscure, but I think both full and part time work are available:
    Lake Washington School District: https://www.lwsd.org/

    If I read that schedule correctly on my quick click-through, beginning teachers start at about 56K a year

    Housing costs are high in this area, though.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841
    Is UK energy just irretrievably fucked ?
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,392
    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    The joys of the "free market". The renewable generators receive a Feed in Tariff so they are insulated from variations in the wholesale price. Indeed, if there is insufficient capacity in the power lines they still get paid for curtailing.
    That's not quite true: *historic* renewable generators receive a fixed price irrespective of underlying market rates (and ditto HPC, which gets a much higher rate). A lot of new renewables (and pretty much all residential solar) is not built on that basis.

    It is also worth noting that the government is currently making good money, because the wholesale price of electricity has been well above purchase price agreements.
    Yes and yes. Wind is now viable subsidy-free, and plants on a fixed Feed in Tariff have to pay back the difference when the market price exceeds the FiT. As you say, a nice little earner for the government at the moment.

    Goodnight.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    carnforth said:

    Foxy said:

    Pulpstar said:

    dixiedean said:

    FPT.
    The crisis in schools is another thing not yet visible in the urgent in tray.
    I have remarked on PB before that I've been thinking about going back into teaching for September.
    We are now six weeks since my application for a DBS (I've had one before, and have moved once since, in the same Police authority).
    Still nowt. Target is 14 days.
    Thinking of giving up and doing summat else. Have had positive responses for potential employment from several schools, but they can't just wait for my DBS to come, with no position filled. Or not come.
    Another shambles.

    Surely DBS should be instant in today's digital age ?
    We recruited someone from London recently, and the Met took 6 months to do the DBS.
    I recently had a DBS back in ten days. Was your one an enhanced check or a normal one?
    NHS is usually enhanced.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Pulpstar said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    The joys of the "free market". The renewable generators receive a Feed in Tariff so they are insulated from variations in the wholesale price. Indeed, if there is insufficient capacity in the power lines they still get paid for curtailing.
    That's not quite true: *historic* renewable generators receive a fixed price irrespective of underlying market rates (and ditto HPC, which gets a much higher rate). A lot of new renewables (and pretty much all residential solar) is not built on that basis.

    It is also worth noting that the government is currently making good money, because the wholesale price of electricity has been well above purchase price agreements.
    HPC ?
    Hinckley Point C
  • pm215pm215 Posts: 926

    Talking of which - we have to pay availability payments to CCGT, OCGT and engine set operators to sit there doing nothing so that they can fire up when there is no sun or wind.

    The alternative would be that they're not there and when there's no sun or wind we get blackouts... A similar "pay for facility even though we probably won't use it" is that we pay some power stations extra to be capable of 'black start', ie going from 0 to 'generating electricity' without having to have any external electricity supply to do it. That's a function you hope you never need but you'd look a damn fool if you ever did need it and it turned out nobody had a diesel generator onsite because that costs money...

  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038

    Paul Mason
    @paulmasonnews
    ·
    4h

    Thoughts and prayers with the anti-Labour "left" as they see Keir do something smart for working people...

    https://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/1559244975854030849
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268
    pm215 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Couldn't something or other be set up to suck up the extra power being generated that will inevitably arrive if we harness our natural wind resource fully - a national battery bank, electrolysis! or some sort of pushing water uphill scheme to create another source of potential energy for times of generation famine ?

    Electricity storage at scale is notoriously tricky. So in principle, yes (and this is what Dinorwig et al do), but in practice doing it cost effectively and in a big enough way is AIUI not yet "just roll out this well understood tech" the way that, say, building a new wind farm now is.
    Flood the sea with offshore wind farms. Build in redundancy so that even if only 20% are working they generate enough for the UK's needs. Switch them off when they are not needed.

    (I haven't done the sums but there's a lot of sea out there.)
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    Who would be CoTE in a Rishi Sunak government?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Pulpstar said:

    Is UK energy just irretrievably fucked ?

    Not even close compared to Germany where they will be throwing furniture on fires by February.

  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268
    Pulpstar said:

    Is UK energy just irretrievably fucked ?

    No. Long term we are well placed, especially for wind and tidal.

    Short term, yes this government has royally fucked up on this as on so many things. It's not irretrievable though.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Andy_JS said:

    Who would be CoTE in a Rishi Sunak government?

    Hunt or Raab but not going to happen, instead Kwarteng will almost certainly be CoTE under Truss
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Prediction: The energy and CoL crisis will totally wipe away all the 'get brexit done', 'let's make brexit work', 'don't let them ruin brexit' crap.

    No one other than Mogg and Hannan will give a flying f*ck about brexit after the next two winters.

  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841

    pm215 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Couldn't something or other be set up to suck up the extra power being generated that will inevitably arrive if we harness our natural wind resource fully - a national battery bank, electrolysis! or some sort of pushing water uphill scheme to create another source of potential energy for times of generation famine ?

    Electricity storage at scale is notoriously tricky. So in principle, yes (and this is what Dinorwig et al do), but in practice doing it cost effectively and in a big enough way is AIUI not yet "just roll out this well understood tech" the way that, say, building a new wind farm now is.
    Flood the sea with offshore wind farms. Build in redundancy so that even if only 20% are working they generate enough for the UK's needs. Switch them off when they are not needed.

    (I haven't done the sums but there's a lot of sea out there.)
    Yeah that's not a bad idea. Have them all on when it's still and the ones in the windiest areas when it's not. Turbines turned off aren't going to be wearing out so there's a benefit there long term
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,268
    Pulpstar said:

    pm215 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Couldn't something or other be set up to suck up the extra power being generated that will inevitably arrive if we harness our natural wind resource fully - a national battery bank, electrolysis! or some sort of pushing water uphill scheme to create another source of potential energy for times of generation famine ?

    Electricity storage at scale is notoriously tricky. So in principle, yes (and this is what Dinorwig et al do), but in practice doing it cost effectively and in a big enough way is AIUI not yet "just roll out this well understood tech" the way that, say, building a new wind farm now is.
    Flood the sea with offshore wind farms. Build in redundancy so that even if only 20% are working they generate enough for the UK's needs. Switch them off when they are not needed.

    (I haven't done the sums but there's a lot of sea out there.)
    Yeah that's not a bad idea. Have them all on when it's still and the ones in the windiest areas when it's not. Turbines turned off aren't going to be wearing out so there's a benefit there long term
    Plus tidal all round the coast. The tide's always running somewhere around the UK, and it's entirely predictable.

    TM screwed up badly in quite a few areas but canning tidal was surely one of the worst.
  • pm215pm215 Posts: 926


    Flood the sea with offshore wind farms. Build in redundancy so that even if only 20% are working they generate enough for the UK's needs. Switch them off when they are not needed.

    Overprovisioning generation by a factor of 5 is also a long way from being cost-effective...
  • BalrogBalrog Posts: 207

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Fpt

    pm215 said:

    Can anyone who is more in the know about energy tell me - how do we calculate the payment for second hand energy? If a windmill or a solar panel generates excess power, and that power is stored by battery, or used to pump water up a hill to be converted back into energy when needed, who gets the payment? Does the wind farm or solar farm get the payment because they generated the energy initially? If so, who pays the battery/water pump people?

    I don't think it's possible to track electrons like that. If you're running a wind farm or a solar farm, you generate electricity and sell it into the grid at whatever the going rate is (or whatever you managed to negotiate as a rate). Then you're done, and out of the picture: you got paid. If you're a storage system like a battery, you both buy electricity from the grid to store, and later sell electricity to the grid, again at the going or negotiated rate. You don't care whether the electricity you're storing was generated by wind farm, nuclear or gas -- you're just going to aim to buy low and sell high.

    Thanks to you (and Sandy). That seems rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps that's why so many water pumping schemes are stalled without the investment they need. There is virtually no margin.
    Except electricity prices fluctuate through the day due to the changes in generation and demand.

    Battery owners can buy it cheap in the small hours, or on sunny/windy days and sell it back to the grid at a profit on cold, dark, still nights.

    That's the theory anyway.
    I understand the theory, but it seems strange to me that the generators of useless excess power should be entitled to feed the grid at full whack, and the companies that enable that power to be there when people actually need it have to scrape a profit here and there in the way you describe. It could explain the lack of storage in our system - what's the point?
    I don't think there's ever been a time when combined solar plus wind has ever been 100% of UK electricity usage.

    When Hinckley Point C comes on board then - given that also has guaranteed purchase price agreements - that may change.

    Varying price of electricity != useless excess power.
    Do commercial solar and wind farms have guaranteed prices for all they generate?

    I guess we could export any excess.
    Some do, some don't.

    New commercial solar installations do not. Historic ones do.
    Makes sense.

    @Luckyguy1983 Isn't the problem with pumped water storage that it's very expensive to build?
    I understood problem with pumped storage in the UK is geography - not enough suitable hills where you want them. One experimental approach being explored was pumped storage with liquid many times denser than water. Works well with smaller hills so more opportunities in UK.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841
    I think we could mostly solve the energy for around the same cost as HS2 tbh
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    pm215 said:


    Flood the sea with offshore wind farms. Build in redundancy so that even if only 20% are working they generate enough for the UK's needs. Switch them off when they are not needed.

    Overprovisioning generation by a factor of 5 is also a long way from being cost-effective...
    Not in the long-term if the excess wind power is used to pump water to the top of reservoirs, ready for when there isn't much wind.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Who would be CoTE in a Rishi Sunak government?

    Hunt or Raab but not going to happen, instead Kwarteng will almost certainly be CoTE under Truss
    I thought it was going to be Simon Clarke.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Who would be CoTE in a Rishi Sunak government?

    Hunt or Raab but not going to happen, instead Kwarteng will almost certainly be CoTE under Truss
    Oh joy!

    Hasn't she already promised CoTE to around ten different no- hopers?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Pulpstar said:

    I think we could mostly solve the energy for around the same cost as HS2 tbh

    You realise HS2 will last 150 years?
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841
    pm215 said:


    Flood the sea with offshore wind farms. Build in redundancy so that even if only 20% are working they generate enough for the UK's needs. Switch them off when they are not needed.

    Overprovisioning generation by a factor of 5 is also a long way from being cost-effective...
    Offshore wind strike is around 40 quid per megawatt hour so doesn't it provide 20p per kwh long term power or so if quintuple overprovisioned ?
  • BalrogBalrog Posts: 207

    Foxy said:

    Pulpstar said:

    dixiedean said:

    FPT.
    The crisis in schools is another thing not yet visible in the urgent in tray.
    I have remarked on PB before that I've been thinking about going back into teaching for September.
    We are now six weeks since my application for a DBS (I've had one before, and have moved once since, in the same Police authority).
    Still nowt. Target is 14 days.
    Thinking of giving up and doing summat else. Have had positive responses for potential employment from several schools, but they can't just wait for my DBS to come, with no position filled. Or not come.
    Another shambles.

    Surely DBS should be instant in today's digital age ?
    We recruited someone from London recently, and the Met took 6 months to do the DBS.
    I've applied for a job in school (non teaching), since retirement, to help with new energy bills. Been waiting for a Dbs for a month now. I don’t think it will be resolved for September. Both me and the school are now stuck.
    Have you tried Disclosure Scotland. They provide same criminal records check service as DBS for anyone in the UK but historically are much faster. They used to take a week, I don't know how it takes now. They look at the same national systems as DBS so just as valid.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Andy_JS said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Who would be CoTE in a Rishi Sunak government?

    Hunt or Raab but not going to happen, instead Kwarteng will almost certainly be CoTE under Truss
    I thought it was going to be Simon Clarke.
    No, he will still be Chief Secretary
This discussion has been closed.