Electricity That's Too Cheap To Meter
By @edent
· electricity environment solar · 20 comments · 700 words · read ~3,229 times.
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."
@Edent Renewables are very significant now and with more battery storage they can handle the variations better. We need to keep going that way.
Hacker News said on :
Electricity That's Too Cheap to Meter | Hacker News
@blog you understand that it's actually a problem, right? That because we have to over provision renewable in the hope of always having a decent load, we will sometimes get way more electricity produced than needed, and will have to find ways to use it pretty fast to avoid blowing up the grid.
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
@blog if we don't find solutions to store the extra energy, at scale, for when you get a few days or weeks of overcast but windless days, we'll have an energy grid that is a lot more like the ones in countries unable to match demand with supply.
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:
Exactly. Having power generation you can't control is not a good thing, even if a few lucky ones make some money from boiling water. In a sane world, the power plants would just be turned down a notch when demand went down.
@edent says:
The thing is, that's not much different to existing power plants. While gas can start and stop relatively quickly, nuclear power stations tend to operate in a way which makes reducing their power output difficult. Coal can reduce somewhat quickly, but that places thermal stress on the plant, which can damage it.
But, luckily, we have lots of things which can take advantage of excess production - be it batteries or smelters.
Max Wainwright says:
Yes it is. It is very very different. Other power plants have different limitations on how fast you can set the output*, but the key thing is you CAN actually set it. Not just cross your fingers and boil some hot water you don't need.
*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:
(I think my answer disappeared.)
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.
@blog
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.
@Edent You might find this really interesting on how we ended up here: Which technologies get cheaper over time, and why?
@blog fusion startups hope for small, cheap, quick plants near demand. Not sure when they get to go live or if they can deliver.
@evanwolf @blog Fusion power will be here in the next ten years. And that has been true since the 1950s. It is always ten years away!
@Edent @evanwolf @blog
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:
Solar is unquestionably the future; not simply because it is becoming much more efficient and much cheaper, but because its productivity roughly tracks demand. Wind & tide whilst more or less predictable are just as inflexible as coal or nuclear, but storage in batteries or Hydro largely addresses the issue. And scaling of electric cars allows charging to take place overnight when there is productivity but no demand. With modern V2G technology these same electric cars can also support peaks on the grid the following morning
@Edent Carbon intensity and deaths per terawatt produced are both very low for nuclear. When 500 ppms are within sight, its worth considering to use it in the mix.
@blog of course nuclear can create “enough” electricity that you’d be paid to use it. Just turn up the power. But why would you do that — intentionally run it at a loss?
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”.
@maxwainwright @blog
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:
Great! So no one is paying. I didn't realise that. What an excellent system, the plant owners get paid, you get paid – and get electricity!
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).
@blog
...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:
While its great that we are getting more electricity from low carbon sources and that we have mechanisms to nudge people to shift demand, the costs are a bit more complex. We are still paying for that electricity because of the agreed strike price, and then paying again for people to take it off the grid. The strike price is now essential, as it would be foolish to build a new wind farm that produced most of its output at a time when no one wants to buy it. The difference between strike price between wind (For 2025 up to £73 for offshore, £176 floating) and nuclear (£92 for HPC or £89 with Sizewell C) is not huge. Fun fact strike prices are always quoted in 2012 pounds.
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