ccalloway · HackerTrans

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

The thing about burning gas for heat in your home is that it's either very clean, or there is something seriously wrong with your system. There is no scope for it causing 'respiratory issues' except in a setup so broken that it's not legal (or shouldn't be legal) to operate.

Unlike for example a wood stove which might release some smoke into your house, at a level where it's not good for you, but not violently toxic.

ccalloway

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

Obviously my original example, "saying that if you don't need to go to hospital while on vacation, you have wasted money on travel insurance" perfectly fits your definition of economic loss.

ccalloway

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

You didn't directly address anything I said in my post or explain why you think I am poorly informed..

I used to work for National Grid in the Miliband era; I worked, among other things, on theorizing a replacement to the 'circle diagram' for the (then thought to be) coming renewables regime.

ccalloway

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

That doesn't make sense. Most electricity is consumed in the South-East. Generating power in Scotland means that most of it has to be transmitted across the length of the UK, whereas generating it in the South-East means that it doesn't place such a burden on the transmission network. Therefore, it makes sense that the Scottish generators are charged more for use of the grid.

ccalloway

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

But for most of the time, the marginal cost of electricity is the same across the UK. The transmission network is not usually maxed out, and this means that generation anywhere can meet supply anywhere for minimal cost.

Consumers already pay per-unit electricity costs which are fixed over a billing period, regardless of whether gross prices exceeded the consumer price, or dropped below zero, for small intervals during that period. So it wouldn't really make any sense to charge different prices in Scotland and England, only for the periods when they actually diverged due to lack of transmission. And if this occasional discrepancy was averaged over a billing period, it would probably be much too small to really affect demand.

ccalloway

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

But by framing it as a problem of 'curtailment', it looks like a problem which gets worse and worse, the more oversupply of wind capacity that we have. In actual fact, this does not make any sense.

Building additional wind generation can never be more wasteful than the costs of its construction. If it were free, it would make sense to vastly overbuild.

ccalloway

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

This isn't a real economic loss. Claiming it is, is tantamount to saying that if you don't need to go to hospital while on vacation, you have wasted money on travel insurance.

ccalloway

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

There is a hierarchy of time availability of power supply:

  1. power available when you want it, and you can choose on the fly
  2. power available when you want it as long as you know in advance
  3. power available at a time that you don't choose, but you can predict
  4. power available at a time that you can neither choose not predict

Examples are (roughly) 1: gas or hydro, 2: nuclear or coal, 3: sun or tidal, 4: wind. You can also think of demand types that require each of these levels or better. Of course each of these categories contains its own sliding scale of how far in advance you have to decide or can predict. Wind is not completely unpredictable, but it is further down this hierarchy than almost any other source of generation.

Moving generation up this hierarchy, or demand down it, is always going to give some benefit. Well designed power markets should make sure that there is some fair incentive for any such step.

ccalloway

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

You are absolutely right. Building pylons through much of England means dealing with highly organized NIMBYism - from people who care a lot about their local 'environment' but very little about catastrophic floods or fires in other countries, and highly opportunistic landowners who can name their price for use of their land.

ccalloway

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

It can be designed for, but it wasn't designed for when current UK nukes were built; they were intended to replace baseline coal plant.

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