and likewise for wind, including ROC subsidies. I have used the actual final ROC value including recycle elements where this is know, and uplifted the cashout value by 13%, being the average recycle uplift where the final price is yet to be determined (i.e. since April 2023).
The dramatic fall in day ahead prices is partly due to the big fall in gas prices, but also the fall in UKA carbon allowances, which have dropped to the point where RATS has been running coal much of the year because it is cheaper than gas (albeit they are now looking at trying to use up coal stocks rather than re-export them when it shuts down). A further influence has been low prices on interconnectors, motivated by ample gas stocks and high reservoir levels for hydro even in Spain - which has reduced French prices which have also been pressured lower by the return of nuclear capacity.
Actually RATS has had some recent deliveries of trainborne coal from Immingham but maybe it was stocks stored down there rather than new imports. The fact is RATS is being run almost daily and roughly 50/50 on being their choice or that of the ESO so they've clearly got a customer whose not offering a green tariff!! They still want £99/MWh so gas should be cheaper but there is limited generation in this area so ESO often need them on for reactive power needs.
I think the control room would not choose to use RATS except as a last resort: they make a big song and dance about number of days since coal last used for instance. However, they can do nothing about it if RATS can find a customer at a price that makes sense to both of them. It is then for RATS to decide whether to supply that sales contract from their own production, or to shut down and buy in supply from elsewhere (including via offers to cut back in the balancing mechanism, which the control room would jump on if they made any kind of economic sense). Evidently they have found the former to be the better economic choice most of the time.
Yes they like to tell us this but on plenty of days this year RATS has been on load. Also look at 30/4 they were instructing RATS-2 to run upto 230MW despite an FPN of 0MW. My understanding is this is mainly to manage grid constraints (voltage) as they are short of reactive power in this part of the grid now all the neighbouring coal stations are gone and RATS are offering a competitive price in all SP and once they are instructed on they get six hours. Of course come 30/9/24, if coal stocks lasts that long, they will have to go elsewhere so they can crow about coal being eliminated then. Somehow i suspect it will be a few years before they can say they have gas off the grid although i would prefer to hear that its that polluting Drax thats not being used first.
NGESO Orps & Erps contracts are good earners, for which Ratcliffe is in great position to supply, plus its inherent inertia (stability) - all good stuff our renewables besotted grid needs
Of course, the LCCC data per wind farm are properly weighted by hourly production because they have to be penny accurate for CFD payments (and the data are revised as metering is adjusted for revised loss factors etc.). The average revenue at IMRP prices can be calculated from their data for wind farms operating CFDs (at least excluding periods of negative price). Data on ROC production by subsidy level and technology monthly is available a bit in arrears via DESNZ/OFGEM. It's good enough to weight ROC and CFD production costs. Wind is actually at a slight discount to time averaged IMRP, while solar is at a big discount in summer, but may be at a premium in winter because it isn't producing at the cheapest time.
I am in discussion with Elexon over access to data at the generator level in bulk via their new API platform. I hope that would allow a number of other insights to be derived, as well as more up to date data on ROC production and data on curtailment.
And that last remaining Uniper coal fired power station will close in September - the whole idiotic cabal at DESNZ should be sectioned and charged with crimes against citizen national security
Took a look at Dudgeon accounts and they conveniently break out their CfD payments but only filed upto end of Dec22. They've received 571m in CfD payments and paid out 325m in dividends but to be fair to them they've also handed back 134m in corporation tax!! The rest of the surplus cash is being used to reduce debt which was secured when rates were low. So first movers are the ones making shed loads out of the subsidy regime and as you note have seen considerable increases in the payments due to CPI movement over last couple of years. This now a significant flaw in the scheme and really ought to been tackled with additional taxation on profits. The energy levy is not likely to be invoked given fall back in wholesale prices. Of course the eco loons don't want to talk about this and journalists don't properly challenge politicians either so on the gravy train goes. Rachael Reeves say growth is their priority but until she makes the connection that its lower energy costs that will be key enabler of that outcome we will see no change. That said its fair to say that later awarded CfD's wont be as financially beneficial to those developers and I would be surprised to see AR6 flop in the offshore wind round given the cost of capital is still high even if the build cost inflation has moderated.
Thank you for negotiating the byzantine complexity of energy pricing and making it accessible for the rest of us, explaining how our high energy bills coexist with "low cost" renewable energy.
"But as is the case with many claims about renewables, reality is stubbornly refusing to conform to the theoretical models." Why does reality keep getting it so wrong? :)
I suspect the reduction in Hornsea 2 price reflects a late agreement of the clawback now that TNUoS charges are no longer levied on generators, but entirely on demand. You are now a criminal if you live in an area without much generation, but a wind farm can locate as far as possible away from you with little penalty (curtailment aside).
Progressives sure do seem to lie incessantly about the sacred cows they believe in. It's almost like they can't survive in the real world without running to the government to cover up the failures of their "science".
I should clarify that ideologuee of both persuasions practice the same thing but conservatives seem to display less desire to shut down discussion through authoritarian means while doing so. It's a long way from book burnings to now I guess.
If DESNZ cannot see that the intermittent wind & solar scam is simply ripping consumers off, they are either too dense to be in charge of energy, benefitting, or simply following their globalist masters orders, regardless of the utter stupidity
I remember the days when those in charge of the nations energy and grid, would have laughed anyone out of the building that was suggesting we should replace 24/7/365 reliable, secure & affordable coal, gas & nuclear power stations, with intermittent, weather dependent wind & solar farms, honestly, they would have been labelled cranks, or eco terrorists - but today, the lunatics are definitely running the national energy asylum
Here's a chart of the monthly capacity factors for CFD offshore wind farms. Capacity is defined as the highest daily average output in the life of each wind farm, and the average monthly power output is shown as a percentage of that maximum.
The lines are colour coded across the spectrum by start up date to allow some impression of how age relates to performance. A generally low wind year like 2021 should therefore not distort relative performance. Monthly data also reveals major maintenance shutdowns (e.g. for cable repairs) which are an important part of overall performance and reliability. It is interesting to note that despite being still fairly new (it was fully commissioned in April 2022), Moray East is clearly suffering from significant curtailment because its lower strike price can make it cheapest to curtail more often - its CFD is offering limited protection against that.
Fundamentally there are a series of questions in energy that determine policy (or certainly have and should continue to do so)
1. You need security of supply
2. You need security of fuel (if necessary)
3. You need diversity in supply from common mode or common cause failure.
4. You need the other essentials, voltage support, reactive load management, a significant portion of dispatchable supply
5. A cost trade off with all the above.
There's another fundamental question that covers the entire renewables debate
"If you get a blocking high in mid winter, when temperatures plummet and demand soars and it lasts for three weeks or a month (like Feb 2010), what will supply the grid for that period when there is virtually no wind and almost no solar?"
That would be a catastrophic "common cause failure"
Add to the normal peak grid load of 55-60GW in a cold winter the heating by air source heat pumps (typically 3KW) and car chargers (upto 7KW) and national grid predicts that peak demand could soar to 135-150GW - roughly triple current expected peaks.
There are only a limited range of solutions
1. An absolutely huge array of grid batteries able to supply about 90GWD's of power for about 30 days
(My estimated cost at the cheapest end 6.4 TRILLION)
2. Convert excess renewables to hydrogen - my estimated cost is about £350/MWH WITHOUT the cost of the infrastructure to to make and store the hydrogen AND WITHOUT costing keeping THREE TIMES the number of gas fired power stations available all year round and staffed to be available which I would guess would move the price of that generation to at least £500/MWH
3. Have rolling blackouts to ration supply severely.
4. Allow the grid to collapse.
5. Put in a lot of Tidal (Very expensive and not enough viable sites)
6. Put in a lot of wave power (Highly unreliable on current tech and very expensive)
Therefore there is no cost effective means of ensuring 24/7/365 supply with renewables that is anywhere near affordable, and that's before we even consider the staggering cost of facilitating the grid to take all the renewables costed at 58bn.
I really cannot understand why we are pursuing this fantasy.
Excellent work exposing the corruption of our energy supply.
I updated my chart showing average CFD prices by technology against day ahead prices to cover the recent April indexation uplift
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Production-weighted-CFD-Strike-Prices-vs-IMRP-1714863079.2781.png
and likewise for wind, including ROC subsidies. I have used the actual final ROC value including recycle elements where this is know, and uplifted the cashout value by 13%, being the average recycle uplift where the final price is yet to be determined (i.e. since April 2023).
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Production-weighted-wind-princes-inc-floating-1714912436.393.png
The dramatic fall in day ahead prices is partly due to the big fall in gas prices, but also the fall in UKA carbon allowances, which have dropped to the point where RATS has been running coal much of the year because it is cheaper than gas (albeit they are now looking at trying to use up coal stocks rather than re-export them when it shuts down). A further influence has been low prices on interconnectors, motivated by ample gas stocks and high reservoir levels for hydro even in Spain - which has reduced French prices which have also been pressured lower by the return of nuclear capacity.
Actually RATS has had some recent deliveries of trainborne coal from Immingham but maybe it was stocks stored down there rather than new imports. The fact is RATS is being run almost daily and roughly 50/50 on being their choice or that of the ESO so they've clearly got a customer whose not offering a green tariff!! They still want £99/MWh so gas should be cheaper but there is limited generation in this area so ESO often need them on for reactive power needs.
I think the control room would not choose to use RATS except as a last resort: they make a big song and dance about number of days since coal last used for instance. However, they can do nothing about it if RATS can find a customer at a price that makes sense to both of them. It is then for RATS to decide whether to supply that sales contract from their own production, or to shut down and buy in supply from elsewhere (including via offers to cut back in the balancing mechanism, which the control room would jump on if they made any kind of economic sense). Evidently they have found the former to be the better economic choice most of the time.
Here's an example
https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/balancing-mechanism-bmu-view?bmuId=T_RATS-2&activeTab=Bid+Offer&startDate=2024-04-24T17%3A00%3A00.000Z&endDate=2024-04-25T17%3A00%3A00.000Z
Yes they like to tell us this but on plenty of days this year RATS has been on load. Also look at 30/4 they were instructing RATS-2 to run upto 230MW despite an FPN of 0MW. My understanding is this is mainly to manage grid constraints (voltage) as they are short of reactive power in this part of the grid now all the neighbouring coal stations are gone and RATS are offering a competitive price in all SP and once they are instructed on they get six hours. Of course come 30/9/24, if coal stocks lasts that long, they will have to go elsewhere so they can crow about coal being eliminated then. Somehow i suspect it will be a few years before they can say they have gas off the grid although i would prefer to hear that its that polluting Drax thats not being used first.
https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/balancing-mechanism-bmu-view?bmuId=T_RATS-2&activeTab=Physical&startDate=2024-04-30T17%3A00%3A00.000Z&endDate=2024-05-01T17%3A00%3A00.000Z
NGESO Orps & Erps contracts are good earners, for which Ratcliffe is in great position to supply, plus its inherent inertia (stability) - all good stuff our renewables besotted grid needs
Great work. May I ask where you get the data for day ahead prices, or do you use IMRP?
I use IMRP prices which are available at full hourly resolution from the LCCC slightly in arrears here:
https://dp.lowcarboncontracts.uk/dataset/imrp-actuals
Of course, the LCCC data per wind farm are properly weighted by hourly production because they have to be penny accurate for CFD payments (and the data are revised as metering is adjusted for revised loss factors etc.). The average revenue at IMRP prices can be calculated from their data for wind farms operating CFDs (at least excluding periods of negative price). Data on ROC production by subsidy level and technology monthly is available a bit in arrears via DESNZ/OFGEM. It's good enough to weight ROC and CFD production costs. Wind is actually at a slight discount to time averaged IMRP, while solar is at a big discount in summer, but may be at a premium in winter because it isn't producing at the cheapest time.
I am in discussion with Elexon over access to data at the generator level in bulk via their new API platform. I hope that would allow a number of other insights to be derived, as well as more up to date data on ROC production and data on curtailment.
And that last remaining Uniper coal fired power station will close in September - the whole idiotic cabal at DESNZ should be sectioned and charged with crimes against citizen national security
Took a look at Dudgeon accounts and they conveniently break out their CfD payments but only filed upto end of Dec22. They've received 571m in CfD payments and paid out 325m in dividends but to be fair to them they've also handed back 134m in corporation tax!! The rest of the surplus cash is being used to reduce debt which was secured when rates were low. So first movers are the ones making shed loads out of the subsidy regime and as you note have seen considerable increases in the payments due to CPI movement over last couple of years. This now a significant flaw in the scheme and really ought to been tackled with additional taxation on profits. The energy levy is not likely to be invoked given fall back in wholesale prices. Of course the eco loons don't want to talk about this and journalists don't properly challenge politicians either so on the gravy train goes. Rachael Reeves say growth is their priority but until she makes the connection that its lower energy costs that will be key enabler of that outcome we will see no change. That said its fair to say that later awarded CfD's wont be as financially beneficial to those developers and I would be surprised to see AR6 flop in the offshore wind round given the cost of capital is still high even if the build cost inflation has moderated.
Thank you for negotiating the byzantine complexity of energy pricing and making it accessible for the rest of us, explaining how our high energy bills coexist with "low cost" renewable energy.
"But as is the case with many claims about renewables, reality is stubbornly refusing to conform to the theoretical models." Why does reality keep getting it so wrong? :)
I suspect the reduction in Hornsea 2 price reflects a late agreement of the clawback now that TNUoS charges are no longer levied on generators, but entirely on demand. You are now a criminal if you live in an area without much generation, but a wind farm can locate as far as possible away from you with little penalty (curtailment aside).
Progressives sure do seem to lie incessantly about the sacred cows they believe in. It's almost like they can't survive in the real world without running to the government to cover up the failures of their "science".
I should clarify that ideologuee of both persuasions practice the same thing but conservatives seem to display less desire to shut down discussion through authoritarian means while doing so. It's a long way from book burnings to now I guess.
Superb facts & data David
If DESNZ cannot see that the intermittent wind & solar scam is simply ripping consumers off, they are either too dense to be in charge of energy, benefitting, or simply following their globalist masters orders, regardless of the utter stupidity
I remember the days when those in charge of the nations energy and grid, would have laughed anyone out of the building that was suggesting we should replace 24/7/365 reliable, secure & affordable coal, gas & nuclear power stations, with intermittent, weather dependent wind & solar farms, honestly, they would have been labelled cranks, or eco terrorists - but today, the lunatics are definitely running the national energy asylum
Net Zero -> Absolute Zero
The policy is intended to wreck but is sold to politicians as intended to transform (positively).
Here's a chart of the monthly capacity factors for CFD offshore wind farms. Capacity is defined as the highest daily average output in the life of each wind farm, and the average monthly power output is shown as a percentage of that maximum.
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/CFD-Offshore-Cap-Factors-1714995545.1761.png
The lines are colour coded across the spectrum by start up date to allow some impression of how age relates to performance. A generally low wind year like 2021 should therefore not distort relative performance. Monthly data also reveals major maintenance shutdowns (e.g. for cable repairs) which are an important part of overall performance and reliability. It is interesting to note that despite being still fairly new (it was fully commissioned in April 2022), Moray East is clearly suffering from significant curtailment because its lower strike price can make it cheapest to curtail more often - its CFD is offering limited protection against that.
FiTs were uprated by 5.2% RPI indexation in April
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/feed-tariff-fit-tariff-table-1-april-2024
Am I right in thinking that even the 2025 target load factors are much lower than the actually existing load factors for e.g. nuclear power stations?
Fundamentally there are a series of questions in energy that determine policy (or certainly have and should continue to do so)
1. You need security of supply
2. You need security of fuel (if necessary)
3. You need diversity in supply from common mode or common cause failure.
4. You need the other essentials, voltage support, reactive load management, a significant portion of dispatchable supply
5. A cost trade off with all the above.
There's another fundamental question that covers the entire renewables debate
"If you get a blocking high in mid winter, when temperatures plummet and demand soars and it lasts for three weeks or a month (like Feb 2010), what will supply the grid for that period when there is virtually no wind and almost no solar?"
That would be a catastrophic "common cause failure"
Add to the normal peak grid load of 55-60GW in a cold winter the heating by air source heat pumps (typically 3KW) and car chargers (upto 7KW) and national grid predicts that peak demand could soar to 135-150GW - roughly triple current expected peaks.
There are only a limited range of solutions
1. An absolutely huge array of grid batteries able to supply about 90GWD's of power for about 30 days
(My estimated cost at the cheapest end 6.4 TRILLION)
2. Convert excess renewables to hydrogen - my estimated cost is about £350/MWH WITHOUT the cost of the infrastructure to to make and store the hydrogen AND WITHOUT costing keeping THREE TIMES the number of gas fired power stations available all year round and staffed to be available which I would guess would move the price of that generation to at least £500/MWH
3. Have rolling blackouts to ration supply severely.
4. Allow the grid to collapse.
5. Put in a lot of Tidal (Very expensive and not enough viable sites)
6. Put in a lot of wave power (Highly unreliable on current tech and very expensive)
Therefore there is no cost effective means of ensuring 24/7/365 supply with renewables that is anywhere near affordable, and that's before we even consider the staggering cost of facilitating the grid to take all the renewables costed at 58bn.
I really cannot understand why we are pursuing this fantasy.