Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

https://climate.benjames.io/uk-electricity-bills/

by chmaynard • 2 years ago

193 340 2 years ago

climate.benjames.io

Some of these are "costs" which reduce costs elsewhere.

Smart meters for example, though rollout has hit snags and they've become targets for weird conspiracy theories, they are basically designed to give better real time info on electricity demand which helps with managing the grid.

This in theory should save money elsewhere.

Similarly for CfD. Yes the government may on net be paying a subsidy to get wind power built but what was the next best option? If that costs more than the CfD then that's a win.

jstanley• 2 years ago

But why do you need smart meters at the level of individual houses? Wouldn't putting them on substations get the same benefit with much less cost?

coretx• 2 years ago

Yes, but those don't help manipulate consumer behavior and awareness.

kevin_thibedeau• 2 years ago

It eliminates the need for staff to manually read them and guarantees they are read correctly every month.

Spooky232• 2 years ago

They also identify outages and let you do automatic efficiency stuff — you can enroll in a plan where your car charges during off-peak periods, for example.

conradludgate3• 2 years ago

My energy supplier (Octopus) gives me a tarrif with half-hourly pricing (smart meters in the UK only report with 30 minutes resolution).

This let's me know when electricity is in less demand or high supply and schedule my day around it. Making my electricity bill cheaper and likewise putting less strain on the supplier which reduces their costs too

Nextgrid6• 2 years ago

In a competent implementation, real-time metering can enable near-real-time pricing where consumers are incentivized to vary their consumption to help grid stability.

Your EV can modulate its charging very quickly, and "background" loads like electric heating, water heater or even A/C can also be modulated somewhat quickly (though not as quick as an EV's inverter).

The meter needs however to make sure you indeed complied with the demand in order to pay you fairly (otherwise if people can defect on their obligation and still get paid, it defeats the purpose of the scheme of ensuring grid stability).

Doing this at the substation is not granular enough because then you can no longer determine who contributed what and whom to pay, which then removes any incentive for people actually participate.

In theory, this should lead to significant savings and efficiency benefits, as everyone opted into the scheme can now be used as an on-demand load to dump excess power (during which power is not only free, but the consumer may even be paid to consume that power) to smooth out supply/demand fluctuations.

Of course, the UK's smart meter scheme is administered by Capita, so don't expect any of this to actually happen, work reliably or actually lead to any kind of significant benefits, but in theory, it would be a great thing as long as it's done by competent people without corruption/mismatched incentives.

RobotToaster4• 2 years ago

Maybe, but the long term planning has been atrocious, millions of smart meters already need replacing because of the 3g switch off.

It's massively wasteful if they are all going to need replacing again in 10 years when 4g is switched off.

Not to mention the concerns about electricity companies remotely forcing meters into prepayment mode or switching off people's electricity supply.

Symbiote6• 2 years ago

Something (2G?) is generally staying available so "smart" devices can work for decades.

celsoazevedo• 2 years ago

Planing has been bad, but those smart meters can use 2G/EDGE. The meters using mobile networks use O2, which should keep 2G online until the 2030s.

3G is being discontinued first because it uses more power and is inefficient for data. 2G on the other hand uses less power, allows phones without VoLTE support to make calls, and IoT devices to use (slow) data. Over the next year or so we should see networks restricting data over 2G/EDGE for regular devices (calls only), keeping the data side just for IoT.

blitzar• 2 years ago

the government may on net be paying a subsidy to get wind power built but what was the next best option? If that costs more than the CfD then that's a win.

Direct investment with ownership - that would make money for the tax payer but would be "socialism".

baggy_trough• 2 years ago

29p / kWh doesn't hold a candle to PG&E costs in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It's ironic that it's quite a bit cheaper to use natural gas here, since we're supposed to convert to electricity to save the planet.

barbazoo2• 2 years ago

I would say it's tragic, not ironic.

doctorpangloss6• 2 years ago

The cost of bailing out owners of burnt down homes in Paradise, CA worth $0 for $700k is rolled into every San Francisco PG&E bill.

tristor3• 2 years ago

I think that's a bit of color on that, since those homes weren't worth $0 until PG&E caused a fire that burnt them down by neglecting required maintenance.

riversflow• 2 years ago

That's just factually incorrect. Paradise was forced to take PGE stock (at some unrealistic valuation) as a repayment. The settlement is years in the rear view mirror now. I actually live in the area and meet people from Paradise. Most people involved got absolutely shafted and the money is mostly going to lawyers and accountants in San Francisco. Surprise.

PGE costs have gone up because the state's Public Utilities Commission and many of our leaders in Sacramento are in bed with PGE. PGE has been vastly underinvesting in infrastructure development and maintenance for the last 50 years, which is at least partially the PUC's fault by letting them take profits instead of forcing them to either lower rates or reinvest. The Camp Fire shined a light on the neglect, now they have to play catch up on 50 years of deferred maintenance in many quite remote areas.

Local Sacramento ABC Station actually does some decent investigative report on this. If you are interested there is a fair amount of content to go through, as they started the investigation in 2022, the series is called Fire Power Money.

Link here https://www.abc10.com/search?q=fire+power+money

inferiorhuman6• 2 years ago

And Hinkley, and San Bruno, and Santa Rosa, and elsewhere in Sonoma County, and a few billion in stock buybacks, another few billion in dividends, another few hundred million in executive bonuses, etc., etc., etc.

Buying off the guy doing research into hexavalent chromium wasn't cheap either. Nor was keeping Willie Brown on their payroll.

tehlike8• 2 years ago

For reference, I think we get around 60-65c/kWh here...

I sometimes hangout on /r/homelab, and people are talking about their 600-700W homelab setup. That would cost about 300-350$/month here.

barbazoo2• 2 years ago

That'd be GBP 0.48-0.52

semi-extrinsic• 2 years ago

People are screaming from the rooftops here when we occasionally hit 15 c/kWh in winter. In August this year our electricity cost was $15 for the whole house. Hydropower is nice like that.

My homelab in the basement is running an old Dell R730. It draws 200-300W depending on load. I could get something much more efficient, but then I would need to run a space heater in that room for most of the year...

wil4212• 2 years ago

Yikes, my rate is $0.0825/kWH in the southern US. Part Nuclear but too much Natural Gas in my opinion.

vladslav• 2 years ago

I sometimes catch myself thinking about whether it’s worth collecting wood by the road to burn as a way to heat the house.

tehlike8• 2 years ago

Some people on craigslist sometimes are giving away wood for free (you just need to arrange transport).

So yes, in some ways, it'd be whole lot cheaper, and nostalgic too.

inferiorhuman6• 2 years ago

Sounds great until you check an air quality map. It's been miserable here in the Bay Area between the storms. AQI of 100–150 depending.

secondcoming• 2 years ago

That's the charge for energy usage, but there's another charge - the Standing Charge - that's charged per day just for having a connection to the grid.

In 2021, for me this was £0.236 per day, today it's £0.60 per day.

samatman4• 2 years ago

Third option not discussed: have the military leverage its existing nuclear reactor competency to build a fleet of nationalized nuclear power generation stations. I'm not saying that they should tile the island with submarine-scale reactors, I'm saying that their supply chain for building those knows how to build nuclear power stations.

The only thing which makes this prospect expensive, is the lack of political will to make it not expensive. So find the political will.

this_user• 2 years ago

And how exactly would adding more of the most expensive way to generate power help reduce costs?

See: https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2024/may/24/...

logicchains• 2 years ago

Empirically it doesn't seem that way given countries with nuclear power have cheaper electricity than those without. It's especially illustrative to compare power costs in France and Germany before and after Germany closed all its nuclear plants.

RobotToaster4• 2 years ago

It's only expensive because we build so few, so have to start the design from scratch each time.

If you look at China they design one nuke station and just copy and paste it to reduce costs, since parts can be mass produced.

skippyboxedhero4• 2 years ago

It isn't more expensive than what the UK has.

The reason we are in this position is because we looked at building nuclear in the mid-2010s, the cost would have been about half current prices, we didn't build because they were too expensive.

Nothing has been more costly than not investing in capacity.

chickenbig2• 2 years ago

And how exactly would adding more of the most expensive way to generate power help reduce costs?

Yes, the Australian GenCost report is about generation costs (no mention of transmission or storage in that graphic, for instance).

The https://www.electricitybills.uk breakdown shows that the cost to the consumer consists of far more than just the cost of generating electricity. Intermittents generally connect to the distribution network (given their smaller output). Intermittents necessitate transmission upgrades because wind farms are in a different location to people and require overbuilding of capacity. Intermittents require more balancing because a passing cloud or lull in the wind affects their output. Intermittents require capacity payments for the backup (methane) generators that have to keep on standby.

Plus let us not forget that the intermittent generators get revenue from RO, CfD, and FIT.

immibis2• 2 years ago

I know that at some point in tbe last few years, oil and gas companies invested in uranium mines so they could continue their game of "you base your entire civilization on the stuff that only we can dig out of the ground, so pay up." That was the same time these comments started appearing all over the internet.

Also, I don't want another Chernobyl next to me house, so those reactors had better be properly made, therefore expensive.

samatman4• 2 years ago

Believe it or not, but the matter going into solar panels and batteries also has to be dug out of the ground. The difference is that you need a great deal more of that matter to deliver comparable amounts of power compared to fission.

nradov3• 2 years ago

There is a bit of overlap but military reactors designed for propulsion have little in common with civilian reactors designed for efficient power production. They are optimized for entirely different priorities.

rjsw• 2 years ago

On one level, your idea is being followed. Rolls-Royce build the UK submarine reactors and are working on developing small modular reactors [1] for civilian use.

A big difference though is that UK (and US) submarine reactors use enriched uranium, SMRs won't.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_SMR

samatman4• 2 years ago

A big difference though is that UK (and US) submarine reactors use enriched uranium, SMRs won't.

I addressed that difference in my second sentence. The technological competence is to a large degree transferable, the specific designs are not.

And yes, something like the SMR is exactly what I'm talking about, as long as it comes with enough commitment and momentum to actually do the job.

kergonath2• 2 years ago

Last time I looked the Royce SMR design could use the same fuel supply chain and processing facilities, which is a huge plus compared to having to set up everything all over again for something like metallic fuel.

everfrustrated2• 2 years ago

The Rolls-Royce SMR designs are considerably larger in MW than the subs so I doubt there is anything shared or any efficiencys to come from that sadly.

IshKebab2• 2 years ago

Yeah the "network costs" bit should probably have a caveat about how they are a natural monopoly and are absolutely rinsing the UK for profits.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/20/unite-union...

"Supplier costs and margins" probably should take a fair bit of the blame too.

When Thatcher privatised the UK energy industry to make it "competitive", they basically created an entire complex web of middlemen. The systems they use to communicate is enormously complicated, still kind of stuck in the 90s (think CSV over FTP), and would be basically unnecessary if it were just one company.

Ok in fairness electricity makes more sense to privatise than water or railways - at least you can choose where to buy your electricity from, within reason.

amiga3863• 2 years ago

It's an interesting rathole to go down. On the one hand, there are private equity firms buying power stations and deliberately turning them off to reduce supply, knowing that National Grid will call them in a few hours paying them an even higher rate to turn them back on... but also those operators get detected and, months later, fined out the wazoo by the regulator for pulling a stunt like that.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/29/gas-fired-p...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/31/uk-electric...

https://www.current-news.co.uk/ofgem-fines-intergen-37m-for-...

Also, electricity isn't any less of a monopoly. You can choose your supplier, but they do no more than administer your metering and billing (including the government insisting they install smart meters). Your house is still connected to the same domestic grid as everybody else, and it's National Grid plc that is selecting who's generating and when, and getting paid for it.

RobotToaster4• 2 years ago

but also those operators get detected and, months later, fined out the wazoo by the regulator for pulling a stunt like that.

The ones that were detected were fined, we don't know how much of that goes on but more subtly.

skippyboxedhero4• 2 years ago

They aren't deliberately turning power stations off. We have a renewable system so when those sources aren't generating then we need gas.

All the BBG article proved is the inherent problems with the system that we have. Rather than anyone being blamed for creating that system, rather than anyone being blamed for regulating that system, we get the same politically-motivated nonsense about "evil companies"...this is why we have high electricity costs. There is literally zero political incentive to lower them and, as we have seen, very high political gains from proposing fictional solutions. Guess what? We are still going to be in the exact same place in a few years because we haven't changed the thing causing this (over-reliance on renewables).

euroderf• 2 years ago

I remember reading in the UK papers about one of the first water companies to privatize. The very first act of the board was to vote themselves a BIG pay raise.

Symbiote6• 2 years ago

It's only relatively recently that this is being dealt with:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/dec/19/thames-wate...

HPsquared2• 2 years ago

It does kind of make sense to have a market for the "generation" side with all the different types of power source that exist now. But the infrastructure is privately owned? That's crazy. Like privatising the motorway network!

They did try with the railway network (Railtrack) which was subsequently renationalised and only the train operating companies being private (and even they, like electricity generating companies, are often state-owned by other countries...).

Handing an entire national network monopoly to a single company is foolish.

skippyboxedhero4• 2 years ago

They aren't rinsing profits.

Out of the £1700 average annual bill, supplier profits are £43...this is significantly higher than has been the case normally because of the volatility in energy prices. This return is also controlled by the regulator.

For scale, the cost of government subsidies is £183.

Predictably the first thing the incoming government did was: announce massive new subsidies, and create a state-owned energy company.

Network costs have also gone up because of the well-known problems with performing work on any kind of infrastructure in the UK.

The politics are part of the reason why costs are so high. We constantly rotate through insane policies that relate to the fever dreams of a lawyer. The reason why prices are high is because we have policies in place to increase prices. Companies are not making big profits (again, their returns are controlled by the regulators). Look at share prices, collapsing in the sector (unless they are getting government money).

IshKebab2• 2 years ago

You're mixing up two things. Suppliers (middlemen) aren't making any profit because the government has capped prices. They literally can't. But even when they could they didn't make that much profit because there's pretty good competition between them because consumers can choose.

The issue with suppliers is they are spending a ton of money dealing with complexity that shouldn't exist, so even though they aren't making a profit they're costing you unnecessarily.

The people who are making a profit are DNOs. Totally different thing.

goodpoint2• 2 years ago

...because houses are made of cardboard and use electricity for heating.

xd• 2 years ago

I'm not sure where you've got this idea from. Even "new builds" in the UK, with there questionable building methods (which you may be referring to?) are mostly insulation and incredibly efficient to heat.

desas3• 2 years ago

The new builds are made of brick and block, and are indeed insulated really well. It's the millions of older houses, particularly Victorian ones, that are made of brick, are not usually insulated well, and are often intentionally draughty.

Nextgrid6• 2 years ago

Resistive heating is still a big thing, including new products being developed.

Here's the latest: electric instant water heaters designed as drop-in replacements for gas boilers in hydronic heating systems: https://stromltd.com

All the inconveniences of a hydronic system and resistive electric in a single solution, what's not to like?

This is the perfect "slumlord special", installed in place of more economical (and ecological) solutions such as A/C knowing full well the tenant is going to pay the resulting astronomical bills.

Symbiote6• 2 years ago

Is naming the company in Danish (strøm means power) supposed to suggest Scandinavian efficiency?

AFAIK resistive electrical heating is banned in Denmark, except in buildings for only occasional use (summer house etc).

goodpoint2• 2 years ago

Incredible, downvoted to -4 for pointing out poor insulation.

louthy• 2 years ago

The UK has achieved the fastest rate of grid decarbonisation among advanced economies. A lot of this progress occurred when renewables were still expensive, so we are stuck with a cost hangover. Luckily, renewables are getting much cheaper, so the tradeoffs in future policy are very different.

A silver lining at least. I’m old, so won’t see the benefits of this I’m sure, but it’s still nice to know we’ve made some tangible progress toward a cleaner future

monsecchris• 2 years ago

It’s so insignificant that at best we might delay the climate catastrophe by a few seconds

Xelbair3• 2 years ago

People might not like this, but that's true.

as long as non-western countries keep polluting - even if we achieve net-zero nothing will change other than us feeling better and patting ourselves in the back.

Maken2• 2 years ago

I would like to know what "fastest rate of grid decarbonisation" even means, because the UK is definitely not the nation with the largest share of renewable electricity production. I guess it measures how much energy production has transitioned from non-renewable to renewable sources in recent years.

ZeroGravitas4• 2 years ago

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...

They mean the rate of reduction in the metric graphed above.

chippiewill• 2 years ago

It's the percentage cut in emissions relative to the 1990 bench line.

weebull2• 2 years ago

I don't think it's a particularly cryptic measure.

The UKs peak carbon per kWh was at some point. Since then it's dropped at a percentage rate higher than anywhere else.

The biggest thing has been the elimination of coal even if it's with natural gas as it's a much cleaner fuel. It's still a fossil fuel, but burns with much less pollution.

krona• 2 years ago

the benefits

The UK has 30GW of wind capacity. Two weeks ago wind was generating 1.8GW (5% of demand at the time). The benefits of a power source are only somewhat theoretical when you can't rely on it being there when you need it.

thedrbrian• 2 years ago

I’m old, so won’t see the benefits of this I’m sure

you won't see it because you'll be enjoying one of those lovely blackouts we'll get when we turn off all the AGRs and didn't build more nuclear

jatin101• 2 years ago

Commercial energy broker here - the only 2 'real' costs in your price are the wholesale and supplier costs. Choose suppliers that offer a fully-fixed electricity contract, so that made up variable costs such as distribution, network, etc are all factored into the unit rate that the supplier charges you for your contract. Avoid smart meters at all costs. Renewable / green contracts are always a lot more expensive than standard contracts. I help businesses across the UK get the lowest rates in the market, if it's something you need help with reach out to me - yousaveutilities.co.uk

gnrl• 2 years ago

What's the reason to avoid smart meters?

oceanplexian• 2 years ago

The security is broken and it broadcasts your information in the clear. I set up a RTLSDR plugged into my laptop in my kitchen and was able to read the energy utilization of my entire neighborhood after about 10min of work.

dfawcus4• 2 years ago

Because they're designed for demand side load shedding.

Also to enable "surge pricing" such that folks ration of disconnect themselves, rather than pay the surge price.

Other than that, they don't really have a benefit for the user, the details one variable use could simply be monitored by manual reading on a weekly basis.

lizzas2• 2 years ago

Get a solar system and it can run the meter in reverse. Which is cool!

vel0city6• 2 years ago

Avoid smart meters at all costs

I don't mind smart meters; it's nice getting the metrics and data from them.

I do avoid variable rate billing though.

hagbard_c2• 2 years ago

Variable billing can save you a lot of money, especially if you have your own generation capacity - PV panels, wind/water turbine etc - by making it possible to schedule maximum use during low-price (usually during the night, sometimes in the middle of the day) while minimising use during the morning and afternoon peaks. Play this right and you'll end up with negative electricity bills (in regions where small-scale producers can sell to the market, Sweden being an example of such). Contracts often stipulate that small-scale producers can not produce more kWh than they consume. By scheduling consumption so that it either falls during times of excess own production - which makes it possible to avoid paying energy taxes and transport charges or when the market rates are the lowest you end up with as low a bill as possible. At the same time you can decide to export power to the network when you happen to have excess capacity at high-price moments thereby maximising income from electricity sales. Play this right and you'll end up with net-negative electricity bills even while producing no more kWh than you consume.

philjohn5• 2 years ago

I'd look more into it - Octopus Agile can save you a heap of money, doubly so if you have Solar + Battery so can more effectively load balance.

And Intelligent Octopus Go is a variable rate - 7p 23:30-05:30 (and any time during the day your EV is plugged in and there's a glut of green cheap energy on the grid).

AnotherGoodName2• 2 years ago

Variable rate smart billing can be amazing if you have the right setup though!

Eg. An electric car that can do V2G with the following;

Power to the grid when Rate > Y and carCharge > 50%

Charge the car when Rate < X.

There's various posts on electric car groups where people have the above setup and pull in ridiculous profits. Your typical electric car can output power for a very long time during the ridiculous 10000% price hikes and on the flipside when the price occasionally hits ~0 charging is basically free.

If you have some system of power storage variable rate can make you money.

https://thedriven.io/2024/02/27/australian-evs-could-earn-12...

vel0city6• 2 years ago

And then you get some big energy dry spell and rates go to 1,000x their normal price and it starts costing you $20 to run the kettle for a few minutes.

Hopefully you noticed that spike in prices ahead of time!

hagbard_c2• 2 years ago

on the flipside when the price occasionally hits ~0 charging is basically free.

Not where I live - Sweden - since there is a fixed energy tax raised on electricity. We buy electricity on the artificial 'Nord Pool' market at market rates + 2.5 öre (1 öre is 1/100 Swedish krona, at current exchange rates 1 öre is about equal to $0.009) surcharge which means that the actual electricity costs are 0 when the market rate is at -0.025 SEK/kWh. Such a 'free' kWh costs us around 0.88 SEK due to:

- 0.4280 SEK energy tax

- + 25% 'value-added tax' on top of that tax (yes, tax on tax is a thing here) makes this 0.5350 SEK/kWh

- 0.34 SEK//kWh 'transport charge' (this includes 25% value-added tax)

All this means the market rate per kWh has to fall below 0.905 SEK/kWh for electricity to actually be 'free'. This has happened but fortunately this is a rarity. Fortunately? Yes, of course. This basically only happens when there is a large discrepancy between electricity production and electricity demand/transport capacity which in turn lead to excessive voltage and frequency in the distribution network which in turn can lead to the network going off-line.

longwave• 2 years ago

This smells like an advert. Over the last year I've spent less money on energy by being on Octopus Tracker (which requires a smart meter) over any fixed tariff.

switch0074• 2 years ago

Many have also not and are switching away from Agile.

It hit £1 a couple of weeks ago. Ouch

It's cheap if you use the majority of your energy in the wee hours right?

doctorpangloss6• 2 years ago

This is a deeply flawed but empathetic point of view. Sure, maybe the big bad smart meters are secretly conspiring against you. If things were so simple, why doesn’t someone in the government just negotiate a simple price for everyone? Why have middlemen like you at all?

KaiserPro4• 2 years ago

Disclosure: I have a house battery.

over the last three months, I've been paying on average 16p a unit. Thats with a car as well. On the days in the winter when solar isn't doing shit, we top up at the lowest price that day.

This kinda goes to the articles point which is to you can avoid, or limit the peak with local storage.

The issue with the battery is that its costs a shit tonne. a basic battery is going to cost something like £8k installed.

Its almost certainly cheaper to upgrade the grid compared to adding batteries to a million households. Especially as the lifespan of batteries isn't that long compared to the super grid.

Nextgrid6• 2 years ago

The unsaid, "quiet part" about batteries is that they're a fire hazard. No matter how "safe" they are branded as, the failure mode is disastrous and life-threatening when they do fail. It's insane that those things are being sold and installed in homes at all. But then again this is in a country where installing solar power inverters in the attic of wooden houses was also a thing (no surprises as to what the outcome of a failure would be).

Proper solution is to pool them in a dedicated buildings so you still get the benefit of locality at the neighborhood level while containing the consequences of a failure and limiting them to property damage (vs potential loss of life), but that would use up land that can otherwise be used as a way to (literally) seek rent, so it cannot happen.

philjohn5• 2 years ago

Sorry, but this feels entirely wrong.

If I didn't have a smart meter my levellised cost of energy wouldn't be negative like it is now (EV tariff + Solar + Battery).

nradov3• 2 years ago

I find it so weird that UK citizens have often just sort of passively chosen to be poor. Like they still had food rationing for years after WW2. Is there some sort of cultural blind spot which prevents them from understanding that there are better ways to do things?

jorblumesea3• 2 years ago

This is rich, given you seem to be American.

smeeger2• 2 years ago

you have to admit english people have a weird tick when it comes to poverty. you worship poor people. and yes, you guys willingly live like you are poor when you guys are definitely not poor

petesergeant2• 2 years ago

Can you give some examples? Other than the utter twatscape that was Brexit, it’s a pretty competitive country in most ways

hnburnsy2• 2 years ago

Start by looking at the crazy over-regulation that happens to farmers in the UK.

dukeyukey4• 2 years ago

Like they still had food rationing for years after WW2

To be fair the UK was completely broke and responsible for feeding half of Europe.

everfrustrated2• 2 years ago

responsible for feeding half of Europe.

How so? The UK has not been self sufficient for food since before WWII. Hence food rationing for many years after the war ended.

bfmalky3• 2 years ago

What a bizarre thing to say.

I guess there are some examples of self sabotage, such as Brexit, but no, on the whole people in the UK do not choose to be poor. Like any nation we are at the mercy of the outcomes of the decisions of our politicians and larger global effects that are out of our control.

Also, there are plenty of wealthy people in the UK. You do know that right? The UK is still around 6th in the nominal GDP rankings, so not quite an economic basket case (yet).

skippyboxedhero4• 2 years ago

It isn't bizarre.

The UK has many policies in place that are designed to limit output. These policies are not only not unpopular, they are wildly popular and are basically impossible to change.

Housing is one, infrastructure is another. Like people say we aren't choosing to poor...HS2 is the most expensive rail project ever per mile, double the cost of the outrageously expensive one in California. Why? Because our system gives unlimited power to lawyers, consultants...we were building bat tunnels (literally tunnels for bats) that cost £100m.

And it isn't limited to this. Look at the last Budget: we are in the middle of fiscal collapse. Tens of billions for green energy projects that add to the cost of bills, huge pay rises for the public sector (where productivity is at the same level as 1997), on and on.

How can you not think this stuff is intentional? There is no reason for almost everything we are doing, it makes absolutely no sense but we are being driven off the cliff by politicians, civil servants, lawyers, media/PR, consultants who control this country...to rephrase that: you are saying that there was no reason 11th century Britain couldn't become very rich when it was funnelling all the money to monasteries that were producing nothing but fat monks? The intention of the system isn't to make Britain rich, it is make people inside the system rich...which it is doing (again, HS2 cost £1bn for a railway that didn't get built...where do you think that money goes? there is no railway but there were tens of thousands of consultants...).

amiga3863• 2 years ago

I find it weird that medical bankruptcies are a thing, or people involved in car crashes demanding they don't get an ambulance and critical emergency care, because they know they'll be billed thousands or hundreds of thousands for being out-of-network.

Is there some sort of cultural blind-spot?

Or maybe each country has their own ups and downs, and we can accept that even if there is objectively a "better way" to do things, and a country's government can be convinced to try this better way, it stil has to bring the people along with it, and those millions of people all have all kinds of hangups and incentives that get in the way; politics are hard.

With regard to post-war food rationing, much of it was due to crop failure or stockpiles being ruined by terrible weather, and obviously the rest of Europe was ravaged and destroyed. But it was also political. Labour liked rationing and the Tories didn't, and the Tories stoked public anger at it. Clearly the UK citizens didn't like it, it was the main fight of the 1950 general election.... which Labour narrowly won. Then Labour called a snap election in 1951, won a record high voteshare, but narrowly lost to the Tories.

If you're genuinuely interested in the topic, Wikipedia has an informative timeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdo...

CommanderData• 2 years ago

Soon enough we'll have the best of both worlds. High taxes, stripped out NHS then American style medical and bankruptcy.

Can't wait for people to moan about it on LBC.

switch0074• 2 years ago

No, the US actively chose to make us poor

ben_w2• 2 years ago

Is there some sort of cultural blind spot which prevents them from understanding that there are better ways to do things?

Yes, but it's not specifically British: most nations (and many companies) I've looked at in any depth seem to have this blind spot — "not invented here" is one of several kinds of in-group favoritism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism

Also see this with diets, religious and political affiliations, and back in the day used to see it with Mac vs. PC.

Nextgrid6• 2 years ago

The UK is completely broken by corruption disguised as incompetence, with everyone in power to change things profiting off the status-quo and thus having no incentive to make the change. Add in a steady stream of distractions where the media sows race/xenophobia warfare so the people are too busy fighting between themselves to realize who their real enemy is.

hughes2• 2 years ago

Is 906 GBP (~1100 USD) typical for a household? That seems outrageously high.

bowsamic2• 2 years ago

Yes

Type | yearly usage | average annual cost

Low (flat or 1-bedroom house / 1-2 people) | 1,800 kWh | £669.95

Medium (3-bedroom house / 2-3 people) | 2,900 kWh | £943.36

High (5-bedroom house / 4-5 people) | 4,300 kWh | £1,291.34

source: https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/guides/average-bill.html

lostlogin3• 2 years ago

I was surprised to see how low electricity usage is.

The fairer measurement is probably gas and electric, and your source says ‘ According to Ofgem, the average British household has 2.4 people living in it and uses 2,700 kWh of electricity and 11,500 kWh of gas. This works out at 242 kWh of electricity and 1,000 kWh of gas per month.’

We don’t have gas at home and use about 10,000kW/h here in New Zealand.

dukeyukey4• 2 years ago

Annually, that sounds about right.

hughes2• 2 years ago

Oh, I thought this was monthly. The article doesn't specify, and all other bills I've seen are monthly. Do Brits pay annually?

a2tech2• 2 years ago

In a historic home in the Midwest a single month in the depths of of the winter could easily be 700-800 usd.

Spooky232• 2 years ago

That’s crazy. I live in New York in an old drafty house. My highest bill is about $400-450 and it’s much colder here. Those rates are brutal.

bpodgursky4• 2 years ago

This is an extreme outlier. I have a 4,700 square foot home in the Midwest, electric heating (heat pump + backup direct heat) and only occasionally hit $300/mo in a cold spell.

Havoc2• 2 years ago

Monthly as others have said.

900 is a small household with limited heating, more like a condo than house.

trebligdivad• 2 years ago

How much does digging a hole or laying a cable cost here in the UK compared to elsewhere? I'm just trying to get a feel for whether things like the transmission/distribution network costs are higher than elsewhere.

HPsquared2• 2 years ago

The HS2 project is mostly that - and very, very expensive it seems.

fy204• 2 years ago

I'm in another Northern European country, and 7c/kWh goes towards network and transmission costs.

drcongo2• 2 years ago

The same author wrote the blog post that was on the front page here recently about the plummeting cost of solar [0]. I really like his posts, readable by someone like me who is way below layman on the subject, but I think also pretty interesting to someone with experience in the field.

[0] https://climate.benjames.io/solar-off-grid/

dfawcus4• 2 years ago

Yeah, but that is pretty much an irrelevance here in the UK.

We don't even get that much sun in summer, today sunrise was at 0842, sunset at 1540 - so not even 7 hrs of daylight. Even then it was a very dull day.

So in the period (winter) when we most need power, local solar is essentially useless.

Local wind may be better, but the economics for it don't really work - requiring 100% gas turbine backup, and high costs due to intermittent use of said turbines .

drcongo2• 2 years ago

The author is in the UK and covers most of that in the article.

edent• 2 years ago

Sorry, that's not true. I have (non-optimal) solar panels in the UK. I generate 100% of my annual electricity usage from them across the year.

In summer, I can easily get over 20kWh per day - against a daily usage of 10kWh. I release all of my data at https://gitlab.com/edent/solar-data/

Today, in the dead of winter, I got 2.8kWh - https://bsky.app/profile/solar.bots.edent.tel/post/3ldqqrvkw... - a not insignificant amount. My battery charged overnight, so I only drew about 4kWh from the grid during the day.

You can read all about how well solar works in the UK on my blog https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar/

graybeardhacker• 2 years ago

The graph shows the price for 3100 kWh. I'm not sure if that is a very low annual amount or a very very high monthly amount.

The average US household uses 10,000 kWh annually ~833 kWh per month. So I'm guessing most Americans reading the article and looking at the interactive graph are thinking either: this is very cheap or very expensive, depending on whether they are assuming it's monthly or annual.

In the US the average price for 3100 kWh in California would be $1062 which is among the highest in the continental US. So right in line with GB.

In New York it would be $710. Florida it would be $454.

So it's high, but not as eye-watering as it seemed to me initially.

piva002• 2 years ago

Median income and take home pay should be brought into account though. California has one of the highest even by US standards so a $1000 bill for the median Californian family feels much less expensive than for the median Manchester family.

akira25017• 2 years ago

There are no median families. There are a lot of very high wage earners in CA. You should really be looking for the mode here.

bfmalky3• 2 years ago

That's the annual figure. But just for electricity. Most UK homes are heated with gas, and many have gas stoves, so the average kWh annual gas figure is much higher (~12,000kWh).

Aachen2• 2 years ago

We're at ~3.6 MWh in a ground floor apartment with 2 adults, with water heating (e.g. showering) electric but building heating on gas (though we use a space heater a lot as well, probably to the tune of 0.2 MWh/year)

Hamuko2• 2 years ago

I wonder if I should feel bad since I'm currently at 2830 kWh in 2024 for a single household with all heating costs not coming out of my electric bill.

switch0074• 2 years ago

We mostly don't have AC, we have tiny houses, our heating is gas powered. Lots of showers aren't electric either. We don't use huge amounts compared to the US

nine_k• 2 years ago

Gladly would, but few can afford :-/

pfdietz4• 2 years ago

When you switch to heat pumps you'll get AC for no extra capital cost.

J_McQuade• 2 years ago

3100 kWh is the figure set by the regulator as the representative annual usage used to calculate prices for e.g. tariff comparison between suppliers. It makes sense to use it here.

matthewmorgan• 2 years ago

Californian pricing would be okay if we had Californian living standards.

Hilift• 2 years ago

There is clearly a difference between states that invested in projects that went over budget. Power generation is cheaper in a lot of states due to the price of natural gas is dramatically lower than it was 20 years ago. Florida uses gas for 75% of electricity.

jillesvangurp• 2 years ago

An important reason that power is expensive in the UK is that it doesn't use zonal pricing and is effectively not giving the right price signals to consumers of power to move closer to where the cheap power is (e.g. data centers) or to conserve power when power is expensive; or producers of power to invest in power generation closer to where the power is scarce and expensive.

Another point to make is that the national wholesale price of power in the UK is based on the price of the most expensive thing in the market at any point. Which now that they shut down coal is usually gas which at this point the UK mostly imports because gas production in the North Sea fields has been petering out. It no longer is the cheap resource it once was.

Even Scotland which either exports or curtails dirt cheap wind power most of the time gets to pay expensive gas rates for their power. Why is power curtailment a thing there? Because there is no price incentive to use the power. Otherwise people might be doing sane things like charging their EVs, powering their heat pumps, etc. Instead Scotland imports gas for heating and petrol for driving their cars. At the same time they curtail wind power by the GW.

Greg Jackson from Octopus (who are the largest energy operator in the UK) has been calling for this for some time. I don't live there but his name comes up a lot in several of the clean energy podcasts I follow. Smart person that has a lot of sensible things to say on this topic.

chickenbig2• 2 years ago

and is effectively not giving the right price signals to consumers of power to move closer

While I sympathise with the notion of zonal pricing, there are side-effects to making the change, especially when power is intermittent e.g. https://www.uksteel.org/steel-news-2024/businesses-write-to-... . I'm not sure what the correct metric is.

the national wholesale price of power in the UK is based on the price of the most expensive thing in the market at any point

How much of the electricity demand goes through a bilateral agreement (or one where generation and retail are the same organisation, like EDF)? Also I seem to recall that the "pay the highest accepted bidder model" used to be argued as lowering the bids, resulting in a lower cost to the consumer!

7thaccount3• 2 years ago

Zonal also has issues with congestion, lack of locational price signals, and something called inc/dec gaming. A Nodal design (like in many US wholesale markets) fixes this, but some of the key policy makers are reluctant to go in that direction as it would be a ~7 year project and would introduce revenue uncertainty in the meantime when they are trying to decarbonize and need to make it easy for developers to get financing. Both pro/against arguments for nodal pricing have merit. There have been many discussions on this in government.

Marginal cost based pricing is extremely unintuitive to those outside of the field, but nearly all economists support it. The reason is that this eliminates a lot of the gaming in pay-as-bid designs and helps incentivize investment in more efficient/cheaper generation, while driving out less efficient clunkers that may not be profitable anymore. The reality is of course far more complicated. These markets have saved untold amounts of money by optimizing over large regions, but you can also point out "missing money" problems where there simply isn't enough investment in generators with access to firm fuel (as opposed to when we just had monopoly utilities). As a result, much of the US has an "at risk" or "very high risk" of not having enough generation during summer/winter peak.

singhrac2• 2 years ago

Yeah, I'm not sure I understand your argument here. I work in the area. I can understand revenue uncertainty, but the solution is to sign a PPA. When Texas transitioned to a nodal market many existing generators got grandfathered into zonal pricing via free options, which is doable (e.g. any project built in the next 5 years will get this free option).

Give me an example of a "missing money" problem. I don't think these problems exist when you have capacity markets or ancillary service markets with enough incentives to exist (e.g. payments for standing offline, ready to turn on).

The big issue with UK power markets is that there is no incentive to build a huge power line down the country right now that delivers power from Scotland (where there are huge wind resources) to the rest of the country. Texas did this (very very successfully) with the CREZ.

The UK has many many competent engineers and making the energy grid more efficient is an attractive opportunity for many.

deergomoo• 2 years ago

Greg Jackson from Octopus (who are the largest energy operator in the UK) has been calling for this for some time. I don't live there but his name comes up a lot in several of the clean energy podcasts I follow. Smart person that has a lot of sensible things to say on this topic.

I've got a lot of time for Octopus, which is an odd thing to say about a utility company. It's amazing how much of a difference it can make when a company makes it a. pretty easy to speak to someone when you have a problem or question (especially via email) and b. getting that problem sorted or question answered isn't so arduous you want to jump off a bridge. It once took me six months to convince British Gas to actually start charging me for my gas and electric.

Plus every time there's a price cap change or something out of the ordinary going on, they send out emails explaining it in plain English (including, as you say, reiterating the case that our pricing model is utterly daft). They also have an API for customers so you can pull your usage data, which is pretty neat.

gambiting2• 2 years ago

I must be the only person in the UK that has had an abysmal experience with Octopus, where they gave me a quote in writing, I attempted to sign up for it, couldn't due to "technical difficulties" on their end but got another email promising that the quote will be honoured once the difficulties are resolved....and of course once they finally fixed their system a month later they refused to honour it. I kept forwarding copies of emails they sent higher and higher up and finally was assigned a "senior customer agent" who basically said their decision is final and I can take them to an ombudsman if I want to. Then they couldn't bill me correctly for 6 months straight because no one knew why my smart meter wasn't sending them data, and then another time they literally provided incorrect information about my IHD when I asked why is the price for my tariff wrong. They are an absolutely useless company and I'd switch in a heartbeat if there was anyone else with a similar offering for charging EVs, no one else gets even close.

tgpc• 2 years ago

i like octopus' style too

but i called them to sign up, and they told me my house was two apartments. it isn't. it never has been. and when i asked them to update their data, the operator said that isn't something she can do.

i would be a customer otherwise. sigh.

omnibrain• 2 years ago

It's exactly the same in Germany. In addition the state government of Bavaria in the south east does everything to keep wind power from being built in their state and worked against high voltage power lines to bring cheap and abundant energy from the north to his state.

fakedang2• 2 years ago

To be honest, Bavaria isn't the ideal place for wind power imo, WHEN THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES.

Braindead Germany just woke up and decided that they want to do away with nuclear and suck the icy cold teats of Mother Russia.

Wind isn't suited for inland Germany, especially in a place like Bavaria, which has the frickking Black Forest ecosystem and a mountainous terrain. Not to mention the winds are much slower there than in North Germany. For the cost calculus that wind energy provides, it's best suited for underutilized offshore areas or desert climates.

Germany forcing wind power is basically a sorry excuse they have to compensate for their energy shortfall - wind and solar can be deployed relatively faster, but of course solar doesn't make sense in Germany, hence the government is trying to shove down wind.

graemep4• 2 years ago

Even Scotland which either exports or curtails dirt cheap wind power most of the time gets to pay expensive gas rates for their power

1. window power is not "dirt cheap" because of the rates the wind farms get paid. As you said they get paid the wholesale rate, and IIRC it is the greater of the wholesale rate and a minimum rate they are guaranteed by the government.

2. the reason curtailment happens UK's is because there is a lack of grid capacity to take it where it is needed. Most of the wind generating capacity is in Scotland, which has about 10% of the UK's population. This part of the problem would be helped by cheaper rates when there is excess energy, but increasing the use of wind power would mean higher bills because of 1.

The cost of fixing this will mean building grid capacity, so it means higher electricity bills.

There is a good explanation here: https://climate.benjames.io/uk-electricity-bills/

The TL;DR version is we built wind power when it was expensive, subsidised it at those prices, and now are stuck with paying for it at those prices.

bob1029• 2 years ago

Octopus

I was briefly a customer of theirs in the US while they were still doing variable/index/wholesale rates. They wrote a good article about this:

https://octopusenergy.com/blog/index-prices-are-under-threat...

gehsty• 2 years ago

No expert but there is segmentation in terms of network costs to generators (tnuos), which come out of the CFD generators are awarded, so while bill payers have a single cost the utilities that generate their power do feel the effect of where they build their plant.

pxeger1• 2 years ago

FWIW, the government is in the middle of reviewing how the electricity market works, although it’s probably not going to be implemented until 2025+ https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/review-of-electric...

WalterBright2• 2 years ago

We had similar problems with the Nixon/Ford/Carter price and allocation controls on gasoline. There were shortages and long lines in some states and gluts in others. Carter was baffled about what to do.

Reagan ended it on day one with an Executive Order to repeal the controls. The lines disappeared overnight and never returned.

WarOnPrivacy2• 2 years ago

Nixon/Ford/Carter price and allocation controls on gasoline...long lines in some states and gluts in others. Reagan ended it on day one with an Executive Order to repeal the controls. The lines disappeared overnight and never returned.

We had lines in 73 following OPEC's response to western involvement in Yom Kippur war. We had lines again in 79 when Iran's oil dropped out of the market. I can't recall gas lines (or reports thereof) during the intervening time. Searching didn't turn anything up.

(Anecdotally, I hung out with the Jan-Feb 1979 tractorcade. They came in from all over. Fuel prices were a concern but not availability.)

The latter spurred conservation. 1979's sharp oil price increases peaked in July 1980. Oil prices then began a long and steady fall, until the precipitous fall in Dec 1985.

Gas prices increase sharply in 1979, again in 1980 and again in 1981. In 1982 they drop to the highs that were set in 1980 and stay there, untethered to continually dropping oil prices. Until 1986, anyway.

ilaksh• 2 years ago

I just assume the real reason is that it's an island and there is relatively little competition. The government and power companies can work together to take whatever they want from you and you can't stop them.

mrbadguy• 2 years ago

How’s that not true for just about any country?

ggrothendieck• 2 years ago

Gas production from the North Sea is low because they imposed onerous windfall surtaxes on it so now it is unattractive to produce.

tomatocracy2• 2 years ago

While it's true that the UK doesn't have nodal electricity pricing per unit of energy (and Ofgem, the regulator, agrees that this would have benefits[0]) I'm not sure we'd be in much of a different position if we had.

We haven't seen particularly rapidly growing demand as energy efficiency improvements and the closure of heavy industry has offset the general increase in energy intensity which happens over time as economies grow.

It's also not like there is no locational signal in the current system - the costs which large generators and large consumers pay to use the transmission network do depend in part on where they are connected and how much of the peak network capacity need they are responsible for (so called "triad charges").

There are also significant revenue incentives for building embedded (ie distribution-connected) generation.

Ultimately it's hard to avoid the fact that we closed down old reliable coal and gas generation without having the right replacements in place. Governments of all political stripes didn't want to take decisions (eg on new nuclear especially but also things like pumped storage hydro) because it was easier to pretend these changes were cost free.

0. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/assessment-locational-...

tim333• 2 years ago

It seems to me quite a lot of it is down to having a net co2 zero goal but not anything like market tax for co2 so if reducing emissions by 100kg can be done by spending £100 on insulation or £1000 on domestic solar then solar it is because it sounds sexier to politicians.

jnsaff2• 2 years ago

Here's a controversial take: electricity is incredibly cheap for the utility it provides.

It is also a fairly well working market in the current system context.

I witnessed this by working for an electricity related startup and by doing all the math involved it was really hard to make the math work out right. The possibility to optimize is there but the margins are really slim, even with the large price swings in the time of use markets in EU.

Can the infrastructure be better? Absolutely, it needs ton of work, but again margins are slim and incentives for large improvements are small.

Do we have a dire need for renewable and moreover dispatchable renewable energy? Absolutely. This means more clean generation and more storage (quite hard).

Does energy feel expensive for households? Yes.

Is it actually expensive?

Could you imagine life without it?

What would it be like?

If you were in this situation, how much would you be willing to pay then?

Nextgrid6• 2 years ago

Is it actually expensive? Could you imagine life without it?

I don't think this kind of rhetoric helps in any way those who are in "fuel poverty" (which seems to be a UK specific term, as I've never heard that in any other context) and have to choose between food or heating.

Energy is not some magic supernatural thing we're running out of. Given the right equipment it can be created out of thin air (wind and/or solar). The reason UK's energy prices are so high is decades of corruption disguised as mismanagement/incompetence, not that the absolute price of electricity is somehow high.

dtgriscom• 2 years ago

Nitpick: such recurring costs are not "expensive"; they are "high". It's like saying a plane is flying at a "large" altitude, or a car on the highway is traveling at a "big" speed.

Native english speaker, but definitely not a grammarian, so I can't explain why...

yumraj3• 2 years ago

The rate shown is 29p which comes to 36 cents.

It is substantially less than PG&E California prices, which average around 50-55 cents.

Havoc2• 2 years ago

Nobody is getting california salaries in rural UK though...

yumraj3• 2 years ago

Fair point - I did not consider purchasing price parity.

dmwilcox• 2 years ago

California is not the Bay Area and LA metro. There are lots of places in California you won't get "California salaries" either.

Having grown up in rural California I have will return the favor I get for confusing the UK with London ;)

philjohn5• 2 years ago

I'm in the UK and with solar and battery, and having an EV there are tariffs out there where the levellised cost you'll pay is approaching 7p per kWh.

Intelligent Octopus Go is one example - between 23:30 and 05:30 all of your electricity usage is 7p per kWh, for the entire house. For this, you give up controlling when your EV is charged as Octopus either control it through the car, or through a compatible charger. When your car is plugged in, they build a charging schedule when the grid is cheapest and greenest. You give them an "I need to add this % of charge and it to be done by this time tomorrow morning" and it just works it out. On days with a glut of renewable generation (i.e., it's very windy, or very sunny) you will get half hour slots at 7p during the day as well.

Now comes the solar and PV element - their "outgoing octopus" export scheme pays 15p per kWh, so in the summer you can build a nice credit buffer from exported excess energy, and then in the winter, charge the battery whenever the cheap rate is active and given a big "enough" battery, most of your usage will cost you 7p + 5-10% (efficiency losses from AC/DC/AC conversion).

The payback period for Solar + Battery, especially in the UK where we aren't saddled with high tariffs for panels, is coming down markedly. It used to be well in excess of a decade, but is between 5-10 years now.

lostlogin3• 2 years ago

Is that payback time with a battery?

It’s about 7 years without and 10-12 with here in New Zealand.

I get some installed next month.

jeffbee• 2 years ago

According to the EIA Monthly, average California residential prices were 30¢ in October. Your statement is closer to being correct if you say "PG&E prices" instead of "California prices". PG&E has ~6 million accounts in a state of 40 million people.

yumraj3• 2 years ago

Updated..

inferiorhuman6• 2 years ago

  PG&E has ~6 million accounts in a state of 40 million people.

Apples to oranges. 6 million accounts works out to roughly 16 million people according to their site. That works out to a bit over 40% of the 39 million (38,965,193 says Wiki) people out here.

hansvm• 2 years ago

I've had cheaper, more reliable, higher quality power every place I've lived with a population over a few dozen people. Why is PG&E like this?

inferiorhuman6• 2 years ago

Regulatory capture.

refurb• 2 years ago

PG&E is a terrible example since the rates are so high.

kranke155• 2 years ago

The Uk should just burn coal for a while. I’m sorry but it’s the only sane solution. The current energy prices are wiping out the economy.

asdefghyk• 2 years ago

To pay for renewable energy ? Thats what's happening in my country , although renewable energy supporters claim renewables are cheaper. .....

blindriver• 2 years ago

California regulators just approved its 6th rate hike of 2024.

https://abc30.com/post/california-regulators-approve-pges-5t...

tmnvix• 2 years ago

Important to remember the process of privitisation that occurred and the opportunities for profiteering that the new complexity allowed.

Yanis Varoufakis discusses it at length here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3bo-s_OY4Q

He characterises the energy market as a scam. I tend to agree.

gweinberg• 2 years ago

They are getting reamed. Oops, we pay about the same in California.

nemo44x• 2 years ago

The UK should fire their government and hire one that can deliver cheap energy via policy that creates the potential for a cheap energy market. This isn’t hard.

Symbiote6• 2 years ago

They fired the government earlier this year.

The new one removed the ban on building wind turbines on land within 48 hours of taking power, and are pushing through new transmission lines where they were previously blocked.

archsurface3• 2 years ago

A couple of years ago I found Assassin's Creed 2 for £2.50 - bargain! I'd never played it. At the end of the quarter my electricity bill was £600 higher than usual. Not a bargain!

nahnotreal4• 2 years ago

It seems exaggerated for comedic effect, but it is technically possible under certain extreme conditions. For a £600 increase in an electricity bill, the player would have to use a device with high power consumption for an extended period. Here's a breakdown:

Gaming PC Power Consumption: High-end gaming PCs can consume around 300–600 watts while gaming. Let's assume a power usage of 500 watts for simplicity.

Usage Time: Playing continuously for long hours over a quarter (about 90 days) could significantly increase electricity consumption.

500 watts = 0.5 kilowatts Playing 8 hours daily for 90 days = 720 hours 0.5 kW × 720 hours = 360 kWh Electricity Costs: Assuming a cost of £0.30 per kWh:

360 kWh × £0.30 = £108 additional cost. For a £600 increase, you'd need much higher power usage (e.g., using multiple devices like a high-end PC, large TV, and cooling systems) or running the game nearly 24/7. It’s unlikely but feasible if they had an exceptionally inefficient setup or other contributing factors.

archsurface3• 2 years ago

Thank you for the payment... January 2023 ... of £115 Thank you for the payment... April 2023 ... of £631 I don't watch TV, no cooling systems. It was the second half of winter but I considered the heating usage at the time. No exaggeration intended. £516.

caseysoftware2• 2 years ago

What happened in 2022!?

In 2021, it was 22p/kWh and in 2022, it went to 44p/kWh.

It's come down 6-7p each year since but doubling in one year is crazy.

fy204• 2 years ago

Russia happened.

caseysoftware2• 2 years ago

Ah, thanks. I wasn't aware how damaging that was to UK energy prices.

n0mad01• 2 years ago

I'll mention it briefly here in case anyone missed the answer: short-term tax revenues.

dzonga• 2 years ago

what's not mentioned is the consequence of having expensive power.

the average UK consumer consumes 1/3 of the power consumed by a US consumer.

which makes the average UK energy consumption is equivalent to one of a low-middle income country.

energy consumption is heavily tied to prosperity.

psd1• 2 years ago

No, it's more like: whether you live in a rain-lashed tepid shithole, a sun-beaten desert shithole, or an ice-smothered frigid shithole.

AC is barely even desirable here. It occasionally reaches a whopping 30. We don't have AC at home because it's a silly frippery in a brick house at 54°N in Europe.

We certainly need heating, but not like in saskatchewan.

guerby• 2 years ago

Nodal vs Zonal pricing definition : https://diversegy.com/nodal-pricing-vs-zonal-pricing/

nickdothutton• 2 years ago

Im old enough to remember when Prof. Ian Fells [1] discussed most of these problems in the early 1980s in the UK. Our “time from problem identification to solution deployed” is absolutely abysmal in the UK.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fells

stonesthrowaway• 2 years ago

The answer is because the UK moved away from their most abundant and cheapest energy source. It's not rocket science.

FL33TW00D• 2 years ago

So many uninformed people in the comments here.

"The Carbon Price Support (CPS), introduced by the UK Government in April 2013, has led to a substantial reduction in electricity generated from coal, which fell by 93% from a monthly average of 13.1 TWh in 2013 to only 0.97 TWh in 2019 (Ofgem, 2019a)."

They actually correctly priced the externalities and managed to decimate coal usage in the UK in a single decade. This increased prices accordingly.

This should be applauded, they correctly designed a scheme so that the economics aligned and coal was quickly removed. We can now focus on increasing energy production from other means and decreasing prices.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/sustainable/sites/bartlett/fi...

macspoofing• 2 years ago

Use local solar generation, and a lot of batteries. This works well in most of the world, but less so in northern Europe (it's not very sunny).

WHERE???? Nobody gets their electricity this way at any reasonable scale.

Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

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