Notices by Steve Hill 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺 (steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org)

@StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 the extra goes into the CFD fund, which is used to reduce the price consumers pay.

@OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 Well, its complicated. A renewable generator can just take the wholesale price - so when the price is high (e.g. set by gas) they pocket the whole lot, and when it is low they make bugger all. But to encourage investment, the government set up the CFD scheme, and most new generators use that since it is less of a gamble.

@OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 So when a new wind farm is built, if they want a CFD they will agree a "strike price" and for a contracted period (usually 15 years), if the wholesale price is below that strike-price they get a top up payment, and if it is above the strike price they pay back into the fund.

@OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 If the fund needs more money, that comes from the energy suppliers (and ultimately your bill). If the fund makes money then that goes to the suppliers (and reduces your bill).

As for benefits for throttling output: there is no fuel cost for running a wind farm, so if the operator is going to make any money at all, they may as well run. If they participate in a CFD they will basically get the strike price for every kwh.

@OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 Depending on when the CFD was agreed, negative prices are handled differently - old CFDs continue to pay out when wholesale prices are negative (so wind farms will want to keep generating), new CFDs generally stop paying out when prices are negative (so wind farms will voluntarily stop generating).

@OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 This is all separate to "constraints", which are a different thing - if a generator has been contracted to supply power, and they are able to (e.g. the wind is blowing), but the grid doesn't have enough capacity to actually transport that power to the consumer, NESO have to find (and pay) an alternative generator and the generator who should have been supplying that power will receive compensation.

@OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 So curtailment payments are basically compensation to a generator when they can generate and there's someone who wants to consume their energy, but the grid has failed to provide the capacity for them to do that. There is incentive for the grid to fix their capacity problem and therefore avoid paying for curtailment.

@OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 On gas setting the price on the auctions themselves, this is just how auctions work and it is hard to see how to make them "fairer":
The marginal cost of renewables is £0, the marginal cost of gas generation is well known (lets say £150/MWh). If the grid needs 40GW of energy, and renewables can supply 30GW, everyone knows that 10GW of gas will be required.

@OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 wind generators could sell their power for almost zero, which would be cheaper than gas and ensure they win the auction. But they know that gas is going to be £150/MWh, so they can just price themselves at £149.99/MWh and they are still undercutting gas, so will still be selected.

@OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 So although "gas sets the price" seems like a weird way to run an auction, it is the natural way that things will always turn out when everyone *knows* that gas will be required, and everyone *knows* the price of gas - there is simply no incentive for generators to bid low, because they know they will definitely be selected so long as they are under the (known) price of gas.

@OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 Of course, when gas isn't needed, the much cheaper renewables suppliers have to bid against each other, and the inevitable result is that prices go to rock bottom. So the "fix" for "gas sets the price" is to just stop needing gas - it's an expensive energy source that we could do without.

@woo @OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 We don't have the energy storage capacity _right now_, no. Environmental concerns aside, hopefully no one would complain too much with high energy costs on the occasional dark windless day. We absolutely can, right now, build out more renewables and relegate generating electricity from gas to a few days a year.

@neil Reminds me of a customer that asked us to quote for a job recently. We put in a *lot* of work for the quote as we were led to believe it was a sure thing. They then gave half of the job to someone else. Needless to say the price of the other half of the job went up significantly as we now have to factor in "arsing around time" for liaising with the other company. Would have been much easier to just do the whole damned thing ourselves!

Hmm, this is a bit horrible. I have #TOR set up on my firewall to catch traffic to a few web sites and send it via not-UK exit nodes. Recently I have noticed some of those sites detecting that I am in the UK regardless, but only when I use my phone (even in Firefox in private browsing mode). I'm not *sure* but it looks like connections are going to socialuserlocation.googleapis.com, and if I send that via TOR I no longer seem to be detected as in the UK.

@GossiTheDog chances of hitting a meeting that is actually in progress at the time are presumably close to nil though?

@Gargron There's also no reasonable case for an OS developer or app developer to have a say over whether I can have root access to my own device. Yet there are a whole shit-load of things I can't do on my phone because it is rooted.

@feld @Hypx It seems likely to me that big industry that requires H2 will generate it on site. I think the kit required to generate H2 is well beyond what you could install at a fuel station though, so H2 for cars is going to need to be transported long distances.

@feld @Hypx I'm honestly not sure why anyone is pursuing H2 for cars now - a few years ago it was debatable but now the BEV has very clearly won, primarily because they didn't require any new infrastructure to be useful (I believe there are 14 H2 filling stations in the UK, compared to a very conservative estimate of maybe a billion sockets that you could charge a car from - 30 million homes + office buildings, maybe 20-30 power sockets in the average home, more in an office building.)

@Hypx It only takes a small amount of critical thought to realise that's not true. Assuming a 100% renewable grid: I need my computer when I'm in work, and I want my dinner at dinner time, so if the wind isn't blowing at those times, some storage is needed. But it is rare to need a car to charge at a specific time - cars charge when there is spare power available on the grid so rarely any need to store energy between generation and delivery to the car.

@Hypx So for a BEV, you're in a situation where the energy used to charge the battery has usually come straight from the generator, but occasionally from storage for the rare situation where the car needs to charge *right now*. If hydrogen is used for storage, it doesn't need to be moved around, which saves a whole load of energy.

Conversely, for a FCEV, you're going through the energy storage steps for *every mile* you drive. And the H2 you're using has to be transported to the fuel station.