Gas can produce enormous amounts of power at short notice 100% of the time and is cheaper per watt, nobody builds a 5MW twin cycle gas turbine power plant. There is a reason it sets the price at market. The CFDs are locked in at persistently high prices for decades. All these actions will increase costs to customers.
There is a reason our energy costs are the highest in the world, it is because our politicians persistently make choices like the ones described in this article.
In the UK the wholesale price was about £80/MWh in 2025. The retail price was about £270/MWh + a standing charge. If you factor in the standing charge, an average user paid about £344/MWh. So the cost of generation was only about 23% of the retail price. I believe the green levies + CfDs accounted for about another 15% of the retail price.
Does this mean that if generation was free, and there were no green policy costs, our electric would still be expensive?
edit: "Network and Distribution" appears to contribute about 23% of the retail price. I guess green energy increased that cost because wind/solar are more spread out and sometimes off-shore.
in absolutly any other business having a 50% cost advantage would be catestrpohic for competition and front page news signaling a new era, but for this it's shrug and unprecidentidly lame mumbling about "uncertainties" and guff guff harumphf!
somehow tommorow there will be worldwide headlines decribing the wonders of science inventing a new better kind of intermitent wipers
It is a new era, and has been for a while. 50% of new capacity globally has been renewable since 2012 and keeps growing. It was 92.5% last year and almost certainly higher for 2025.
In the US it was 99% wind, solar, batteries.
The people talking this down are in an info-bubble of their own creation.
every wind/solar farm on the grid needs backup gas turbines, whether its already built or not, which costs money either way, but those are never included in the cost.
you aren't getting it. You need to match, on demand, any solar or wind generation. On demand means gas turbines, because nothing else can power up quickly enough. X amount of power generation from a wind farm needs X amount of capacity sitting around waiting to come online.
16 comments
[ 66.2 ms ] story [ 2066 ms ] threadThey need to fix their market pricing mechanism before the public benefit from cheaper renewable energy sources.
There is a reason our energy costs are the highest in the world, it is because our politicians persistently make choices like the ones described in this article.
Does this mean that if generation was free, and there were no green policy costs, our electric would still be expensive?
edit: "Network and Distribution" appears to contribute about 23% of the retail price. I guess green energy increased that cost because wind/solar are more spread out and sometimes off-shore.
somehow tommorow there will be worldwide headlines decribing the wonders of science inventing a new better kind of intermitent wipers
In the US it was 99% wind, solar, batteries.
The people talking this down are in an info-bubble of their own creation.