Electricity That's Too Cheap To Meter
Nuclear power was sold to the world as a safe, clean, and economically viable source of electricity. We were told that it would be "too cheap to meter"0. Even the most ardent proponent of nuclear power will have to admit that hasn't come to pass. Construction costs for nuclear power stations are dwarfed only by their decommissioning costs. Yes, politics and regulation conspire to increase the price - but nuclear hasn't made electricity particularly cheap. Indeed, we mostly seem to be paying more than ever for our power.
Well, not quite.
On Christmas Eve, my electricity company emailed me to say that I would have several hours of free electricity. They would charge me £0.00 per kWh. More than that, at a few specific times they would pay me for my electricity use!
Here's the graph of my half-hourly prices:
Most factories and heavy industrial plants weren't running the day before Christmas. UK power usage spikes when everyone boils a kettle at the end of a football match or other similar event - but there was nothing so momentous happening at 3AM. So supply outstripped demand.
Anyone with a smart-meter could have been paid to charge their car, run their tumble dryer, or stay up until the wee hours playing on their console.
And was it nuclear power which did this? No.
As shown on the live grid tracker about two-thirds of the day's electricity came from renewables. It was pretty overcast, and our solar panels barely made 1kWh.
It wasn't mined uranium which gave us power which literally had to be given away; about 62% of the electricity came from wind.
At this point, the nuclear lobby will start whinging about subsidies (both nukes and renewables are generously subsidised) and how wind can't provide a base load (which is fair). But although sticking a bunch of turbines in costal waters is an engineering marvel - it's pretty cheap compared to building and maintaining a nuclear power station.
Wind - and other renewables - have done what nuclear couldn't. They have provided such an abundance of electricity that consumers are paid to use it.
History and the Future
It's worth looking at the original quote from 1954 about electricity becoming too cheap to meter:
As well as nuclear, he talks about "photosynthesis". Well, the UK now has 15.6 GW of solar capacity across 1,430,994 installations. A small part of that is my solar panels!
The UK also has around 27GW of wind capcity installed.
It is entirely possible that the UK will have generated the majority of 2023's electricity from renewables.
Because home appliances are increasingly efficient, domestic energy use is falling - it's down 19% since 2010. Electricity use by domestic properties was about 96.2 TWh in 2022 and 135 TWh was generated by renewables.
Yes, electricity is fungible, but you can convincingly make the case that every home in the UK was powered by renewables.
Solar panels don't work at night, and wind-turbines don't work when there's no wind. We'll always need something to be able to provide a base-load of electricity. That might be nuclear, or fossil fuels, or it might be storage from the excess power from renewables.
Sadly, the world is still filled with war, famine, and disease. But, for a few moments on a winter's evening, wind power genuinely became too cheap to meter.
Shameless Plug
If you want to move to a time-of-day electricity tariff, you can join Octopus Energy - if you use that link, we both get £50 bill credit.
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There is a lot of contention about that phrase. It was (probably) about the future prospects of nuclear fusion - but it became attached to nuclear fission. You can read more at the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission ↩︎
Why are there no viable nuclear power plants for the home?
We pay 12p / kWh for electricity - thanks to a smart tariff and battery
"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid that computation is too carbon intensive."
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Hacker News said on :
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It's starting to be a problem now, with renewable being a minority part of the energy mix, the more we'll have, let alone trying to use it as base load, the worse it'll become.
Storage will make or break
Sure nuclear is more expensive than envisioned, and indeed it's in part because of how high we put the security bar. If we were going for the cheapest, we would use coal as base load, which is a big no at this point.
Max Wainwright says:
@edent says:
But, luckily, we have lots of things which can take advantage of excess production - be it batteries or smelters.
Max Wainwright says:
*I've read different things about nuclear in that regard, but even if nuclear is slow I'm sure you've heard the word baseload, something Random Power™ can't provide. And hydroelectric is an excellent fast power source for fast surges.
Yes, wind and solar place thermal stress on other plants, and other parts of the grid, because they are uncontrollable.
Lots of batteries? Where? Do you mean that power banks in peoples' homes should pick up the slack? Or you you mean grid-level batteries? i think you'll find that that is both economically and ecologically not viable.
Max Wainwright says:
Yes, it is very different to existing power plants. While power plants have varying capabilities of fast turn on/off, they CAN do it. With wind and solar you have to cross your fingers and boil water you don't need. (also, doing it unneccessarily fast because wind/solar are so unpredictable causes excess wear. With a good baseload and no added noise, this won't happen as much)
What batteries exist that can handle the overproduction? Cars? Do they, really, and will they, at the scale needed?
Those smelters you mentioned are off for the holidays, though. I think the companies running them would prefer to run them when people are there working, not just when it's windy.
So glad to hear that the UK is making great progress with renewables.
Your points about nuclear power are spot on. The only constituency that wants to build more of them are the huge corporations capable of constructing then and the utility companies looking for ways to maintain centralized control of electricity generation.
Which technologies get cheaper over time, and why?
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As I wrote in a post recently (re https://apple.news/ANqoWxuU_TF2n6f6FqugzMQ):
National Ignition Facility at LLNL: “We’ve taken another step in the quest for fusion energy, which, if mastered, could provide the world with a near-limitless source of clean power.”
The sun: “Hold my beer.”
Peter Brown says:
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Do you think it makes investors in wind power more likely to invest more if they occasionally have to pay to run their turbines?
Wind power is a burden on the power grid.
Also, nuclear is safe, clean and economically viable. Not just “sold to the world as”.
I don't think you understand how the UK electricity markets work.
The wind farms aren't running at a loss - they have a guaranteed per MWh price. Just like the "strike" price for nuclear.
Nuclear isn't particularly clean - mining Uranium and disposing of spent fuel are both major polluters.
As for cheap - how much does it cost to decommission a power station?
As for safe - let me know when a fire at a windfarm causes cancer, pollutes milk, and needs to be covered up.
Max Wainwright says:
Yes, per MWh, which is the only reasonable measure, it is particularly clean. How do you think solar panels are made? And disposed of? Where do you think the neodymium in generators in wind farms comes from?
Sure, decommissioning nuclear power plants is expensive. But before that, they've run for a very long time indeed, generating a LOT of electricity. You can't just say "expensive" and ignore what you got for it. You got a lot of reliable, safe, clean power.
Regarding safety – do you know how many workers die manufacturing wind farms? Either in Vietnam where they make the towers, or when assembling them? It's not uncommon. Then divide that per MW and you'll see it isn't as safe as you imagined (we can ignore the fact that the power is unreliable and doesn't include useful thermal power).
...saying anything even vaguely critical of nuclear power is like leaving out milk and cookies for a very particular strain of Reply Guy...
Sam says:
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