England, Scotland & Wales about to be hit with massive increase in electricity prices

mercury14 said:

Andrew Montford the accounting major?

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Consumers are being warned they face higher energy bills as the UK becomes more reliant on energy imports.

In a speech, Ofgem chief executive Alistair Buchanan will say that falls in Britain's power production capacity are likely to lead to more energy imports and customers paying more.

The energy watchdog predicts power station closures could mean a 10% fall in capacity by April alone.

Mr Buchanan has said the UK needs more gas supplies to fill the shortfall.

His warning comes as older power stations close and renewable energy is still growing.

Global market
Existing plans to take ageing and polluting power stations off the UK network over the next few years mean the amount of energy the UK can produce is set to fall.

The BBC's John Moylan says that, while we have heard such warnings before, the difference with this one is that the process is already underway. Plants are already closing, and although planning permission for new ones is out there, nothing is actually being built.

While the shortfall in supply can be filled by increasing gas imports, competing for those supplies on the global market is likely to cost more.

Longer term solutions to the UK's energy needs, such as new nuclear power stations or tapping domestic shale gas reserves, have yet to be given the final go-ahead by the government.

Mr Buchanan told the BBC that Britain "would be very tight on power station capacity in three to five years' time".

"We're going to have to go shopping in world markets at a time when they will be very tight [on supplies] themselves."

"There isn't a single person or people to blame. In my view it was a single event - the financial crisis. Before the financial crisis the government had backed a visionary approach to energy on wind, water and nuclear... then came the financial tsunami."

He said that crisis had a major impact on the government's ability to pay for such expensive schemes.

Plugging the gap
Mr Buchanan added that it was very important to resolve "leaky homes" and become more energy efficient in order to avoid the approaching "near crisis".

He is stepping down as Ofgem chief executive later this year.

A spokesperson for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said that "we cannot afford to be complacent".

"The reforms we are making to the electricity market through the Energy Bill and through our gas generation strategy are aimed at plugging this gap in order to keep the lights on," he added.

Analysts said there was little chance of the UK running out of gas.

"We must not fear," said Ashton Berkhauer, the deputy chair of Energy Forecaster, which gives companies advice on their energy bills.

"The UK is very well connected. We have a number of different inter-connectors based all around the country as well as huge import facilities."

However, he added that both consumers and businesses "need to make sure they are not using more than they need to".

The chief executive of Consumer Focus, Mike O'Conner, warned that it would be those who can least afford it who would suffer the most.

"With six million households in fuel poverty, rising to over nine million by 2016, and an increasing proportion of our incomes being spent on essential items like energy, this latest news... is chilling."

Caroline Flint, Labour's shadow energy and climate change secretary, said it was important for the UK to have an energy market that "delivers fair prices and works in the public interest".

She said Labour had plans to create "a tough new energy regulator with the power to force energy companies to pass on savings to consumers".

"We must also prioritise making Britain's homes better insulated and more energy-efficient," she added.

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trysail said:

Wrong. Again.

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mercury14 said:

Andrew Montford the accounting major?

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Readers of this column might have been astonished by the media response last week to that warning by Alistair Buchanan, retiring head of the energy regulator Ofgem, that next month we will see the closure of five major coal-fired power stations that between them contribute nearly a sixth of the UK’s average electricity needs.

Over the next few years, Mr Buchanan feared, we will be dangerously close to not having enough power in the grid to keep Britain’s lights on.

I have been trying to explain this here for so long that my readers may be weary of it. It was back in 2006 that I first reported on why, within a decade or so, we might see Britain’s lights going out. In fact, as I set out in my book, The Real Global Warming Disaster, in 2009, the writing was already on the wall in the government’s energy White Paper of 2003. Tony Blair signed us up to an energy policy centred on building thousands of windmills, already fully aware that we would be losing many of our coal-fired power stations due to an EU anti-pollution directive, and that we were unlikely to build any new nuclear power stations to replace those that by now would be nearing the end of their life.

This made a nonsense of Mr Buchanan’s claim in a vacuous interview with Evan Davis, on Tuesday’s Today programme on Radio 4, that everything was fine with Britain’s “visionary” energy policy until we were hit by that “financial tsunami” in 2008. This prompted Mr Davis to comment, “So we can blame the bankers for it, as we normally do”. (Nine months earlier I had written a column headed, “When the lights go out, you’ll know who to blame” – it wasn’t the bankers.)

The most interesting passage in Mr Buchanan’s interview was where he began hinting at what has recently been emerging as a terrifying new element in the Government’s energy policy. It well knows that electricity from the tens of thousands more wind turbines it hopes to see built in the coming years will cost between two and four times as much as that from conventional power stations. Its solution to this is to rig the market with new taxes and other devices so that this will make electricity from wind farms somehow seem competitive – not by making wind cheaper but by doubling the cost of electricity from the gas, coal and nuclear power stations that still provide virtually all the electricity we need to keep our lights on.

Around lunchtime last Monday, for instance, National Grid was showing that all our 4,300 wind turbines put together were providing barely a thousandth of the power we were using, 0.1 per cent, or a paltry 31MW (as compared with the 2,200MW we can get from a single gas-fired plant).

The harsh fact is that successive governments in the past 10 years have staked our national future on two utterly suicidal gambles. First, they have fallen for the delusion that we can depend for nearly a third of our future power on those useless and unreliable windmills – which will require a dozen or more new gas-fired power stations just to provide back-up for when the wind is not blowing.

Yet, at the same time, by devices such as the increasingly punitive “carbon tax” due to come into force on April 1, they plan to double the cost of the electricity we get from grown-up power stations, which can only have the effect in the coming years of doubling our electricity bills, driving millions more households into fuel poverty.

If our government were not lost in a bubble of complete make-believe, it would keep open those coal-fired power stations the EU is forcing us to close next month (although it may be too late), it would stop subsidising grotesquely expensive wind farms, and it would go flat out to exploit Britain’s vast reserves of the shale gas that has more than halved US gas prices in four years.

But we do not have such a government. Our lights will go out, our economy will suffer a catastrophe, our bills will double, and tens of thousands more people will die of cold in those freezing winters that our politicians were somehow fooled into believing would never come again.




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/en...turning-off-the-lights-wont-be-up-to-you.html

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Our daughter Claire was one of 21 activists who spent a week up a chimney at West Burton power station to protest against the use of gas-fired power stations.

It was a peaceful protest to draw attention to the environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels for power. No one was hurt but now EDF Energy are suing our daughter and her fellow activists for £5 million.

We believe this is totally unfair and unprecedented. That's why we have started a petition to call on EDF to drop the suit against our daughter and her friends, the West Burton activists. Click here to sign our petition.

Our daughter and her friends protested peacefully. They knew they would be arrested but were brave enough to accept this possibility. Peaceful protest has never before been followed by an injunction for costs like this. If EDF are successful in this suit it will set a dangerous precedent for the right to peaceful protest in this country.

We are proud of what Claire and her friends are trying to do. It’s heartbreaking to think that they are being punished for putting themselves at risk for the good of humanity. If EDF pursue this suit they will put my daughter and her friends in debt -- possibly for the rest of their lives. For EDF it is a mere drop in the ocean, but for them it is a lifetime's income.

EDF might think it can silence 21 activists but it has to listen to consumers. If enough consumers show they are outraged by EDF's actions, the impact to the company's brand will be worth more than £5 million and the suit will be dropped.

Please sign our petition asking EDF to drop this unprecedented legal assault.

Thank you,
Russ and Barbara Fauset

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I have no idea where you managed to get my email address, Mr & Mrs Fauset, but you have chosen the wrong party from whom to request support for your cause.

As far as I am concerned it is high time people who hold your kinds of irresponsible views in regard to power generation took a step back and reviewed them absolutely and became a little more realistic. Otherwise the lights will simply go out and we'll be traveling around in carts pulled by the few horses that are not on our dinner plates.

Are you serious? Do you really and truly believe that the children you have taught all your lives will thank you for reducing the number of jobs available to them in industry when gas and coal fired power stations are switched off and they have to rely on wind turbines and so forth? Renewables simply do not work well enough to replace tried and tested (and far cheaper) sources. So let's get real and embrace the fact that there is a glut (not a shortage) of oil and gas in the world, and use it to our advantage.

I would respectfully suggest that you might want to read a little more widely to find out what the facts are rather than relying absolutely on 'Guardianista' sources for your views. For instance, why not buy a copy of The Real Global Warming Disaster (Is The Obsession With 'Climate Change' Turning Out To Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder In History?) by Christopher Booker. This and many other extremely well researched and well founded books are worth the effort because they do not ignore the hard facts of the matter.

Naturally, as the parent of two sons, I would not wish any suffering on anyone's offspring. But frankly EDF have every right to get on with their work without being interrupted by badly informed activists such as your daughter. She was trespassing on EDF property rather than how you have it. Peaceful protest it was not. Had she and her friends protested outside EDF property, on the public highway, that would have been more defensible. But she did not. I wish her well but I will not support her cause, nor yours.

Please do not write to me again.

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BY REBECCA SMITH
SAN FRANCISCO—California is weighing how to avoid a looming electricity crisis that could be brought on by its growing reliance on wind and solar power.

Regulators and energy companies met Tuesday, hoping to hash out a solution to the peculiar stresses placed on the state's network by sharp increases in wind and solar energy. Power production from renewable sources fluctuates wildly, depending on wind speeds and weather.

California has encouraged growth in solar and wind power to help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. At the same time, the state is running low on conventional plants, such as those fueled by natural gas, ...


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323699704578328581251122150.html

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trysail said:

Madness. Simple madness.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ch-coal-wood-chips--wont-help-planet-jot.html

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As the snow of the coldest March since 1963 continues to fall, we learn that we have barely 48 hours’ worth of stored gas left to keep us warm, and that the head of our second-largest electricity company, SSE, has warned that our generating capacity has fallen so low that we can expect power cuts to begin at any time. It seems the perfect storm is upon us.

The grotesque mishandling of Britain’s energy policy by the politicians of all parties, as they chase their childish chimeras of CO2-induced global warming and windmills, has been arguably the greatest act of political irresponsibility in our history.

Three more events last week brought home again just what a mad bubble of make-believe these people are living in. Under the EU’s Large Combustion Plants Directive, we lost two more major coal-fired power stations, Didcot A and Cockenzie, capable of contributing no less than a tenth to our average electricity demands. We saw a French state-owned company, EDF, being given planning permission to spend £14 billion on two new nuclear reactors in Somerset, but which it says it will only build, for completion in 10 years’ time, if it is guaranteed a subsidy that will double the price of its electricity. Then, hidden in the small print of the Budget, were new figures for the fast-escalating tax the Government introduces next week on every ton of CO2 emitted by fossil-fuel-powered stations, which will soon be adding billions of pounds more to our electricity bills every year.

Within seven years this new tax will rise to £30 a ton, and by 2030 to £70 a ton, making it wholly uneconomical to generate any more electricity from the coal and gas-fired power stations that last week were still supplying two thirds of our electricity. Put all this together and we see more starkly than ever the game the Government is playing. It knows that no company would build wind farms unless it is given subsidies that, in effect, nearly double or treble the price of its electricity. The Government will only get CO2-free nuclear power if it promises it an equal subsidy. And now the Coalition is also hell-bent on driving our much cheaper and more reliable coal and gas-fired plants out of business, by imposing a carbon tax that will not only eventually double the cost of their electricity, but also make it impossible for them to survive. So mad is this policy of “double-up all round” that it is driving even the largest and most efficient power station in the country, Drax, capable of supplying seven per cent of all the power we use, to switch from burning coal to wood chips, imported 3,000 miles across the Atlantic from the US. And how has the Government forced Drax to do this? By giving it a subsidy on wood chips that doubles the value of its electricity, while putting an increasingly prohibitive tax on coal.

This is all insane in so many ways that one scarcely knows where to begin, except to point out that, even if our rulers somehow managed to subsidise firms into spending £100 billion on all those wind farms they dream of, they will still need enough new gas-fired power stations to provide back-up for all the times when the wind isn’t blowing, at the very time when the carbon tax will soon make it uneconomical for anyone to build them...

So we are doomed to see Britain’s lights going out, all because the feather-headed lunatics in charge of our energy policy still believe that they’ve got to do something to save the planet from that CO2-induced global warming which this weekend has been covering much of the country up to a foot deep in snow. Meanwhile, the Indians are planning to build 455 new coal-fired power stations which will add more CO2 to the atmosphere of the planet every week than Britain emits in a year.

Thank you, David Cameron, leader of “the greenest government ever”. Thank you, Ed Miliband, father of the Climate Change Act, the most expensive suicide note in history. Between you, you seem determined to switch off our lights, lock the door and throw away the key. We owe you more than we can say.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/en...ayback-time-for-our-insane-energy-policy.html

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Centrica Plc, the U.K.’s largest household energy supplier, signed a 20-year deal to import natural gas from the U.S., securing supplies as production from British North Sea fields decline.

Centrica will buy 1.75 million metric tons a year of liquefied natural gas from Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Sabine Pass plant in Louisiana, the Windsor, England-based company said today. That’s equivalent to the demand of 1.8 million U.K. homes. The deal can be extended for another 10 years, it said. Prices will be linked to Henry Hub, the U.S. gas benchmark, and deliveries will start in September 2018.

The deal shows the U.S.’s emergence as a natural gas exporter after fracking technology created a glut of fuel, sending prices to decade lows. In contrast, U.K. gas prices spiked to a seven-year high last week after a fault on a Belgian pipeline, raising concern that Britain is vulnerable to supply shortages as indigenous production slumps.

“It’s a nice contract to have if the fundamentals that exist today are there in five years’ time,” Iain Turner, a utilities analyst at Exane BNP Paribas in London, said by phone. “It’s a sensible sort of move.”

The contract sales price will be $3 per million British thermal units plus 115 percent of the settlement price traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Henry Hub for the month in which the cargo is scheduled, Cheniere said today in a filing. Henry Hub in Erath, Louisiana, is the delivery point for Nymex futures, a benchmark price for the fuel.

Qatar Contract
Natural gas in the U.S. traded at $3.94 at 4:57 p.m. London time, meaning Centrica would pay $7.53 per million Btu under the contract terms. In the U.K., the front-month contract was at 73.90 pence per therm, or $11.21 per million Btu.

The cost of shipping LNG to Europe from the U.S. is estimated at $1.85 per million Btu, according to a presentation by Jean Abiteboul, Cheniere’s president of supply and marketing, in Amsterdam on March 11.

In February 2011, Centrica signed a three-year LNG contract with Qatar Liquefied Gas Co. for 2.4 million tons of the fuel annually. QatarGas, as the company is known, is the world’s biggest LNG producer.

Centrica gained 1.3 percent to 362.10 pence by the London close, valuing the company at 18.8 billion pounds ($29 billion).

Cameron Welcome
“I warmly welcome this commercial agreement between Centrica and Cheniere,” U.K. Prime Minster David Cameron said in the statement. “Future gas supplies from the U.S. will help diversify our energy mix and provide British consumers with a new long-term, secure and affordable source of fuel.”

Sabine Pass is the only project so far to obtain full U.S. approval for an LNG export terminal outside of Alaska. Cheniere has said the proposed gas export facility may start up in 2015, with as many as six units operating there in the future.

The gas for Centrica would come from the fifth unit, or train, on which preliminary engineering work has already begun, the U.K. company said, adding it will buy the LNG on a “free-on-board” basis, meaning it can choose where to send the fuel.

Existing Cheniere customers include BG Group Plc, Korea Gas Corp., Gail India Ltd. and Spain’s Gas Natural SDG SA.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print...-in-20-year-deal-as-british-output-wanes.html

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U.K. measures to curb carbon emissions may raise power and gas bills for the biggest corporate consumers by as much as 36 percent by 2020, the Department of Energy and Climate Change said.

Energy-intensive companies will see energy bills soar by as much as 5 million pounds ($7.6 million) a year due to carbon taxes and support for nuclear and renewable energy, according to a study e-mailed today by the department. Medium-sized companies face an average rise of 22 percent, or 330,000 pounds.

The government is spurring renewables and nuclear power to meet the U.K.’s target to cut greenhouse gases 34 percent in 2020 from 1990 levels. It’s also seeking to gain a bigger share of the 3.3 trillion-pound global market for clean energy while sparing households the burden of carbon cuts. Consumer bills will be reduced by 166 pounds, or 11 percent by 2020.

“Our strategy of shifting to alternatives like renewables, and of being smarter with how we use energy, is helping those that need it most save money on their bills,” Energy Secretary Ed Davey said in a statement. “The picture for businesses is less positive, which is why our new proposals to exempt and compensate the most energy intensive industries from certain policy impacts are crucial.”

The study shows costs to business have risen since the government last published an analysis in November 2011. Then, the maximum impact of government policies on the heaviest corporate energy users was a 20-percent rise in 2020; with the projection for medium-sized companies being a 19-percent gain.

‘Wake-Up Call’
“This is a wake-up call,” Steve Radley, policy director at EEF, a manufacturing lobby group, said in an e-mailed statement. Rising energy costs “risk making the U.K. an increasingly unattractive location for industrial investment.”

The concerns of British companies about rising energy prices is shared by counterparts in Germany, where manufacturers including auto-companies Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, Daimler AG (DAI) and Volkswagen AG (VOW) are putting up their own power plants in order to sidestep clean-energy surcharges on power bought from commercial producers.

In the U.K., the estimated impact of government policies on corporate energy users is even bigger in 2030, with bills rising as much as 60 percent for the biggest users and 39 percent for medium-sized companies, according to today’s study.

The research doesn’t take into account government proposals for a 250 million-pound compensation package for industry through to the 2014-15 tax year, exemptions from a climate change tax for ceramics and metal companies from April 2014, and support for energy-intensive companies that will be detailed in June, according to the department.

Household Bills
The average household bill for power and gas will still rise to 1,331 pounds in 2020 from about 1,255 pounds this year, at 2012 prices, according to the energy department. The projection for 2030 is for bills to average 1,476 pounds.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...y-rules-to-add-36-to-company-power-bills.html

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Two diesel power stations planned in Plymouth will compensate for fluctuations in supplies from green energy, say developers.

Green Frog Power got planning permission last year and Fulcrum Power has made an application for a similar power station.

The Devon-based Regen centre for green energy questioned the use of diesel generators.

Both firms said their power stations supported renewable energy.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-22845487

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This panel debate is tonight (1 May) in central London.


Will the lights go out?

In February this year, Alistair Buchanan of OFGEM, warned that Britain was on an 'energy rollercoaster' with the combination of old coal and atomic power plants closing and overseas gas supplies shrinking leaving future domestic energy reserves "uncomfortably tight". More recently the finger was again pointed at government for significantly underestimating the scale of the capacity crunch facing the country. But with government denying any complacency and confident of the provision of secure supplies and the current cold snap testing the stored gas supplies, we ask 'Will the lights go out?' ' FES has brought together 4 excellent and highly knowledgeable speakers covering a range of specialist perspectives to find out;


■Volker Beckers, Former Group CEO, RWE nPower plc
■Ian Marlee, Senior Partner, SG&G Transmission at OFGEM
■Peter Atherton, Utility Research at Liberum Capital and giver of the FES 2012 annual lecture - Utility Finance in the 2010s
■Gaynor Hartnell, Chief Executive of the Renewable Energy Association.

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Care to guess how much "gas prices" have surged over the last six years, as the average household bill has climbed by roughly thirty per cent?

They are up by just ten per cent. That's strange.

And it gets stranger. RWE npower's analysts believe that the relatively small rises in commodity/production prices we've seen will probably go away again by 2020, so that their costs in this regard will return to the same level as they were in 2007. This will be due to gas fracking, more efficient powerplants and other factors.

In the year 2020, then, "gas prices" will have gone up by zero per cent since 2007. What will have happened to bills? Will they have gone down again to reflect this, in npower's view?

Certainly not. By that point, the company forecasts that our energy bills will have climbed even more. They will be up no less than fifty-six per cent on 2007 levels, on top of no increase at all in "gas prices".



http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/0...e_truth_on_how_greengov_cranks_up_your_bills/

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The U.K. will pay offshore wind developers triple the market price for electricity they generate under a subsidy program to boost renewable energy that by 2020 will cost consumers 7.6 billion pounds ($11.6 billion) a year.

The Department of Energy also detailed rates paid for solar, hydropower, biomass conversion and onshore wind farms as well as boosting to 3.8 billion pounds the capitalization of its Green Investment Bank. The Treasury will guarantee debts for building a new nuclear station.

The measures are part of an effort by Prime Minister David Cameron to lure 110 billion pounds for new power plants by the end of the decade. Offshore wind and nuclear reactors are at the heart of the plan to replace aging power plants and cut pollution from fossil fuels. The nation’s biggest utilities have yet to pledge enough funding to reduce the risk of blackouts.

“This is another clearing of the fog, but there’s still a huge amount to be resolved,” Paul Massara, chief executive officer of RWE AG (RWE)’s U.K. Npower unit, said today in an interview in London. “I don’t believe we’re at that stage where there is enough detail to make investment decisions.”

Blackout Risk
The U.K. has an EU target to get 15 percent of all energy for heat, power and transport from renewables. Figures released today showed that in 2012, 4.1 percent of energy came from renewables, and the average for 2011 and 2012, at 3.94 percent, fell short of the EU’s first interim target of 4.04 percent for the two years.

The statistical probability of major power shortages in the U.K. will increase to about once in 12 years in 2015 from once in 47 years now as a result of closing power plants, the energy regulator Ofgem said today in a separate statement. About a fifth of Britain’s power generation capacity is scheduled to close in the next decade, including all except one nuclear plant.

Ministers are seeking to overhaul the current system of renewables obligations placed on utilities to use clean energy and to stimulate investment while keeping a lid on prices paid by consumers. Separately, the government said shale gas fields in northern England are twice as big as previously thought.

Davey’s View
“The combination of the announcements that we’re making will mean that the lights of the country will stay on,” Energy Secretary Ed Davey told delegates today at a conference hosted by The Economist in London.

In a statement, he said a cap on support for low-carbon electricity that suppliers can pass to consumers will start at 4.3 billion pounds for the tax year that begins in April 2015, rising to 7.6 billion pounds in 2020.

The flurry of initiatives overshadowed the first results from the government’s “Green Deal,” which allows consumers to take out subsidized loans to pay for insulation, double-glazing and other efficiency measures. It was the centerpiece of the Cameron’s first energy law. In its first five months of operation, only four of the nation’s 26.9 million households took up the incentive.

The so-called “strike price” earned by offshore wind power plants will be 155 pounds ($237) per megawatt-hour generated starting next year, declining to 135 pounds by 2018, according to Davey’s department. The government estimates that funding will spur construction of 8 gigawatts to 16 gigawatts of turbines at sea.

Strike Prices
Wind farms based on land will get 100 pounds a megawatt-hour, declining to 95 pounds from 2017. Biomass operators receive 105 pounds, large solar 125 pounds and hydroelectric dams 95 pounds a megawatt-hour.

Other strike prices announced include 305 pounds per megawatt-hour for tidal and wave projects, 65 pounds for those that use gas from landfill sites, 90 pounds for energy from burning waste, 125 pounds for geothermal power, 120 pounds for dedicated biomass plants and 145 pounds for anaerobic digesters. The front-month electricity price in the U.K. has averaged 47.80 pounds a megawatt-hour over the past year.

Most of the contracts will last 15 years, while those for plants converted to biomass will get 20-year deals, according to the proposals. Drax Group Plc (DRX), the country’s biggest coal plant, is spending $1 billion to convert half of its six units to burn wood pellets. Its shares rose as much as 8.2 percent today.

‘Step Forward’
RenewableUK, the main industry lobby group, said that while the proposals are a “step forward,” the 15-year length of the contracts makes industry development “challenging.”

“The levels of the strike prices are challenging but possible considering the reduced time periods that renewables will be supported for under contract for difference system compared to the Renewable Obligation,” Chief Executive Officer Maria McCaffery said in an e-mailed statement. “More details do need to be set out. The most important ingredient remains investor confidence and that will take time to land.”

Subsidies paid “aim to make the U.K. market one of the most attractive for developers of wind, wave, tidal, solar and other renewables technologies, whilst minimizing the costs to consumers,” Davey said in a statement. He said the goal is for renewables to contribute more than 30 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2020.

The price for offshore wind is within the range of 145 pounds to 175 pounds recommended by the government’s global warming policy adviser, the Committee on Climate Change.

Nuclear Guarantee
In a speech to Parliament today outlining infrastructure spending commitments, Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander slipped in that the Treasury will extend a “multi-billion pound guarantee to advance the new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point. Electricite de France SA is considering whether to build the plant in southwest England, the first facility of its kind in two decades and is still in talks with the government about the strike price.

The government said it will run its first capacity market auctions next year, for delivery in 2018. The purpose of the mechanism is to ensure there is enough generation capacity that can be brought online at times of peak demand.

Existing power plants will receive one-year capacity market contracts, those that require refurbishment to remain operational will receive payments for as many as three years, and new generators will get longer agreements, according to a document posted on the energy department website.

RWE’s Massara said the 15-year span of the contracts for difference for renewable power is too short, and that all power plants should be eligible to contracts of the same duration within the capacity market, rather than the current proposal, which rewards new generators with longer deals.

‘‘The capacity mechanism should be non-discriminatory and open to old or new plants’’ and different fuel types,” Massara said. “A megawatt is a megawatt is a megawatt.”





http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...d-companies-triple-market-rate-for-power.html

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The Telegraph examined a snapshot of RWE’s own figures on Thursday afternoon last week. One wind farm Trysglwyn, which is in Anglesey in Wales, was producing a total of 6 kilowatts (KW) - just enough to boil two kettles each with 3KW of power.

The wind farm has 14 turbines and a theoretical capacity of 5.6 megawatts (MW). In other words, the wind farm was producing just 0.001 per cent of its maximum capacity.

According to RWE’s own data, three wind farms on Thursday afternoon appeared to be taking electricity from the National Grid rather than supplying it.





http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/en...e-enough-power-to-make-a-few-cups-of-tea.html

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