About gen 4 and modulation: you don't need them. Gen 3 can modulate fast too. By design it's about 5-10%/min but in upper range is higher.
If you want faster you need BWR/ABWR (like japan built or like germany had). These can modulate about 1%/second in 60-100% range. I'm sure that with some $ guarantees Hitachi will start offering abwr again
Can you just explain where the cost of balancing comes from? I understand that balancing means balancing the supply and demand of electricity across the grid. So does the cost occur because they have to have generators such as gas powered stations on standby in case they are needed and we have to pay them to be ready or is it more complicated than that?
Imbalances arise because demand and supply aren't matched. Mostly, this is unintentional. Most retailers now try to forecast their customer demand as accurately as they can and buy supply to match, to avoid being exposed to Balancing Mechanism prices which can be highly disadvantageous if they under or over estimate. Likewise, generators aim to avoid exposure by providing the power they have contracted to sell. A breakdown can be expensive because they will be charged for the other supply brought in to cover. Oversupply may be paid a very low BM price that could be lossmaking. These were the dominant features of the BM before renewables.
With the best will in the world, forecasting wind and solar even an hour ahead (the last moment when purchases and sales can be registered, known as gate closure) is often some way from perfect. Since most renewables get subsidies for what they generate (rather than what they are contracted to sell), they may have little incentive to cut back if production is higher than forecast. Oversupply then results usually in other generation being turned down. Sometimes it is important to reduce or increase supply in particular parts of the country to keep grid flows on an even keel so the choice of plant to make corrections narrows and the cost will usually be higher. That is the feature behind regional curtailment due to transmission constraints. Batteries, interconnectors and pumped storage and even demand side reduction (paid for power cuts) can also be used to help adjust imbalances.
Where there is a renewables shortfall other supply must be brought in at short notice, and this can lead to some very high prices when overall demand is high and there are few alternatives.
All parties are subject to imbalance payments in the Balancing Mechanism on any differences between their contracted and actual positions. The calculations are run by Elexon, who record all the contract positions and meter readings and calculate the differences with appropriate adjustments for grid losses. These calculations are first run a few days afterwards, but get successively refined in subsequent months as more meter readings come in, with a deemed final calculation 14 months later.
There must have been a balancing mechanism even before renewables. They still had to balance supply and demand. Is it possible to say how much of that £2.54 bn is down to the renewables effect?
20 years ago costs were of the order of £500m, but coal and gas were somewhat cheaper than today. So perhaps £750m without trying to be sophisticated about it.
Thanks. In David's report he says that in 23/24 the cost of balancing was £2.4 billion. The implication seems to be that most of this is due to renewables. Do you think that's right? By the way, I fully agree that the high cost of electricity is due to government policy regarding renewables but it's hard to understand because it's very complicated. In the comment below David assigns a lot of the balancing cost to switching off windfarms which I think are called constraints payments but are constraints payments really included in balancing cost?
Yes, constraints are included in balancing costs. In calendar 2024, balancing cost £2.53bn. In Sunday's article I have assumed that the pre-renewables balancing cost of £500m would have gone up 40% to £700m and assumed the rest (£1.83bn) is down to intermittent renewables. Spread that across wind and solar generation for the year and it adds ~£19/MWh. Capacity Market adds another ~£13/MWh.
What percentage of retail electricity prices are "environmental charges", carbon.tax on gas, RoC, CfD, FIT etc rather than the actual cost of electricity reflected in LCOE.
How much are costs due to intermittency, grid balancing, backup etc
These are all "political" costs of electricity v. the figures like LCOE used to justify renewables.
Great submission covers all the areas well but will be lost on most of the committee members. I do wonder if several of us had just focused on the marginal pricing of renewables hiding the true cost may have achieved some cut through ie one simple message just keep repeating it.
Anyhow have sampled a few more of the 80 submissions avoiding the pro renewable lot (eg Octopus etc) and was disappointed that many of them just parrot govt policy. The Chemicals Association come closest to point out the various subsidy schemes are clearly a driver given the price of leccy hasn't fallen with the drop in gas.
Thanks for an excellent report. This is probably a daft question. Is it possible to compare the amount of corporation tax paid by the fossil fuel industry as compared with the renewables industry. It occurred to me that the renewables industry get subsidies but do they also pay corporation tax and does it make any sense to do that?
Sorry David I didn't mean to give you a load of work. Regarding Renewables it suddenly seemed a little odd that we give them a load of subsidies which they need to make a profit but tax them on their profits at the same time.
Excellent recommendations. Cancel the carbon tax on gas generation, lower the IMRP, reduce compensation for ROCs, windfall tax on CfDs , build RR 470MW SMRs at legacy coal sites and S Korean AP1400s at nuclear sites to use the existing grid. Use the money saved to replace 1960s transformers like the ones thst caused the Heathrow outage. How do you get them into Tory and Reform policy recommendations?
Your post provides facts useful to our attempt in Dalry, Ayrshire to oppose the proposed construction of the Crosbie wind farm within a few miles of the Hunterston nuclear site. Having lived quite happily with nuclear power for most of their life, many if not most local people are favourable to nuclear power. Thank you, keep up your informative posts.
Good luck with your Dalry wind farm campaign. Unfortunately, presenting facts to oppose such projects seldom gets anywhere in my experience of a decade and more ago. You can only hope that the climate (no pun intended) is changing a bit now.
Excellent work again David. The substance and implications are clear and destroy Milivolt's case. Therefore, I assume you will be ignored. But at least it's all on the record.
The big question to consider about wind and solar is if they were people would you hire them?... ….. they only work when they feel like it, and Mr solar wont work on the nite shift, and they expect to be backed up by others when they don’t work.
An expanded version of the analogy which illustrates the difference between some of the main energy sources for power. Imagine the grid is running a restaurant. Good ole "Cole" is mister dependable, comes in on time, always there, works a 12 hour day and works harder when there's a rush, even comes in for extra days if some other staff is off sick. "Cole", however, is black and some customers are telling the boss to fire him, accusing him of making a mess. The boss is feeling the pressure to let "Cole" go, despite his loyal service for many years. In contrast, there is the new kid "Windy", young and attractive but only comes in when the notion strikes her. She doesn't tell the boss in advance when she will work, but it's arranged that she can come in whenever she wants and when she does, "Cole" has to step back and let her work. When that happens the boss cannot let "Cole" go home because "Windy" can suddenly decide in the middle of a shift that she's feeling depressed and just stops working. Oh, and "Windy" gets paid a higher wage than "Cole" because she needs the money or won't work at all otherwise. Who should the grid keep on?
Excellent, the only possible improvement I can see would be to change the reference about cheaper reactor build costs from Korea to South Korea to avoid any confusion.
I’m somewhat surprised at the overall full fleet thermal efficiency of gas fired generation is around 50% given fewer run hours and significant load following.
Me too! But a brilliant and badly needed repost to the insane and frighteningly ignorant ESNZ support for Miliband which appears to me to be accelerating the bankrupting the UK during this present UK Government's present term in Parliament.
A summary table of all the subsidies and additional costs linked to carbon tax, back up base load, grid expansion, energy import costs, restraint subsidies, CCS, etc. that you have worked out, would make a stunning spread sheet with a staggering bottom line that would/should stop this insanity pronto. The ReformUK party would be delighted to use it.
See next week's article, where I draw it all together and compare the cost per MWh of gas and renewables through the various subsidy schemes. I did this in response to some of the gaslighting submissions to the same inquiry.
An excellent pulling together of all the facts. They can’t say they haven’t been told and without a mention of “climate change” (aka alleged man-made global warming), the hoax based on never-validated, obviously-flawed pseudoscience spurned by President Trump and the leaders of the majority non-Western rest of the world.
UK unilateral Net Zero = pointless national self-suicide, all in the name of what?
The establishment’s bunkum climate change narrative is really very easy to debunk.
Here’s Tom Nelson’s debunking of the establishment’s corrupt global temperature record which shows global temperatures rising remorselessly because of “climate change” (video film + transcript): https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/09/the-graph-that-lied/.
OK, it takes time and effort to find and read such studies, which is what makes the climate change hoax so pernicious: most people don’t have the time, inclination or capability to take them in and are sadly at the mercy of the corrupt establishment and complicit MSM who spread nothing but climate lies and misinformation.
Politicians charged with overseeing hugely important questions of national energy infrastructure workability and energy affordability and security should not be categorised as “most people”. They have a duty to research the subject properly (and are funded to do so) and to use their noggins to see through deliberate lies and misinformation.
Our Uniparty politicians clearly don’t do this, either because they are lazy, stupid, gullible or because they know it’s an establishment hoax and are willingly going along with it to kowtow to the establishment’s nefarious hidden agenda to deliberately deindustrialise, impoverish and in due course depopulate the country.
Which is it? Based on how they do nothing but lie to us on every major issue (Covid showed their true colours), I suspect the latter.
It would seem to be deliberate sabotage of our economy. It is virtually impossible to believe it is anything else considering what has been done and what continues to be done. Massive abuse of taxpayers money.
Fab summing up of the energy problems we are experiencing. I would assume that your views won't fit the current rhetoric so will be ignored in favour of submissions that do. We all need to spread this far and wide!
Cheap ABUNDANT energy. Stop plans for energy rationing. Nations thrive on cheap, abundant energy. China and India know this. Stop UK deindustrialisation .
About gen 4 and modulation: you don't need them. Gen 3 can modulate fast too. By design it's about 5-10%/min but in upper range is higher.
If you want faster you need BWR/ABWR (like japan built or like germany had). These can modulate about 1%/second in 60-100% range. I'm sure that with some $ guarantees Hitachi will start offering abwr again
Can you just explain where the cost of balancing comes from? I understand that balancing means balancing the supply and demand of electricity across the grid. So does the cost occur because they have to have generators such as gas powered stations on standby in case they are needed and we have to pay them to be ready or is it more complicated than that?
Some detail from the Elexon CEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7SrUbYOXyU
More discussion of where things are headed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FUVpTEjye8
Imbalances arise because demand and supply aren't matched. Mostly, this is unintentional. Most retailers now try to forecast their customer demand as accurately as they can and buy supply to match, to avoid being exposed to Balancing Mechanism prices which can be highly disadvantageous if they under or over estimate. Likewise, generators aim to avoid exposure by providing the power they have contracted to sell. A breakdown can be expensive because they will be charged for the other supply brought in to cover. Oversupply may be paid a very low BM price that could be lossmaking. These were the dominant features of the BM before renewables.
With the best will in the world, forecasting wind and solar even an hour ahead (the last moment when purchases and sales can be registered, known as gate closure) is often some way from perfect. Since most renewables get subsidies for what they generate (rather than what they are contracted to sell), they may have little incentive to cut back if production is higher than forecast. Oversupply then results usually in other generation being turned down. Sometimes it is important to reduce or increase supply in particular parts of the country to keep grid flows on an even keel so the choice of plant to make corrections narrows and the cost will usually be higher. That is the feature behind regional curtailment due to transmission constraints. Batteries, interconnectors and pumped storage and even demand side reduction (paid for power cuts) can also be used to help adjust imbalances.
Where there is a renewables shortfall other supply must be brought in at short notice, and this can lead to some very high prices when overall demand is high and there are few alternatives.
All parties are subject to imbalance payments in the Balancing Mechanism on any differences between their contracted and actual positions. The calculations are run by Elexon, who record all the contract positions and meter readings and calculate the differences with appropriate adjustments for grid losses. These calculations are first run a few days afterwards, but get successively refined in subsequent months as more meter readings come in, with a deemed final calculation 14 months later.
There must have been a balancing mechanism even before renewables. They still had to balance supply and demand. Is it possible to say how much of that £2.54 bn is down to the renewables effect?
20 years ago costs were of the order of £500m, but coal and gas were somewhat cheaper than today. So perhaps £750m without trying to be sophisticated about it.
Thanks. In David's report he says that in 23/24 the cost of balancing was £2.4 billion. The implication seems to be that most of this is due to renewables. Do you think that's right? By the way, I fully agree that the high cost of electricity is due to government policy regarding renewables but it's hard to understand because it's very complicated. In the comment below David assigns a lot of the balancing cost to switching off windfarms which I think are called constraints payments but are constraints payments really included in balancing cost?
Yes, constraints are included in balancing costs. In calendar 2024, balancing cost £2.53bn. In Sunday's article I have assumed that the pre-renewables balancing cost of £500m would have gone up 40% to £700m and assumed the rest (£1.83bn) is down to intermittent renewables. Spread that across wind and solar generation for the year and it adds ~£19/MWh. Capacity Market adds another ~£13/MWh.
Excellent, thanks David.
A lot of it is paying windfarms to switch off because the grid can't handle their output plus turning on gas-fired stations to cover the shortfall.
What percentage of retail electricity prices are "environmental charges", carbon.tax on gas, RoC, CfD, FIT etc rather than the actual cost of electricity reflected in LCOE.
How much are costs due to intermittency, grid balancing, backup etc
These are all "political" costs of electricity v. the figures like LCOE used to justify renewables.
See this just-published concise summary from NZW: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/656f411497ae14084ad8d03a/t/682210f519b3591e966eb5cf/1747063029222/WhyHavePricesRisen.pdf.
See next week's article.
Great submission covers all the areas well but will be lost on most of the committee members. I do wonder if several of us had just focused on the marginal pricing of renewables hiding the true cost may have achieved some cut through ie one simple message just keep repeating it.
Anyhow have sampled a few more of the 80 submissions avoiding the pro renewable lot (eg Octopus etc) and was disappointed that many of them just parrot govt policy. The Chemicals Association come closest to point out the various subsidy schemes are clearly a driver given the price of leccy hasn't fallen with the drop in gas.
Thanks for an excellent report. This is probably a daft question. Is it possible to compare the amount of corporation tax paid by the fossil fuel industry as compared with the renewables industry. It occurred to me that the renewables industry get subsidies but do they also pay corporation tax and does it make any sense to do that?
That's an awful lot of work and hard to separate out international profits from UK profits.
But I did attempt something similar here:
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/obscene-profits-offshore-wind-farms
Sorry David I didn't mean to give you a load of work. Regarding Renewables it suddenly seemed a little odd that we give them a load of subsidies which they need to make a profit but tax them on their profits at the same time.
Excellent recommendations. Cancel the carbon tax on gas generation, lower the IMRP, reduce compensation for ROCs, windfall tax on CfDs , build RR 470MW SMRs at legacy coal sites and S Korean AP1400s at nuclear sites to use the existing grid. Use the money saved to replace 1960s transformers like the ones thst caused the Heathrow outage. How do you get them into Tory and Reform policy recommendations?
I take it this was submitted before all those Spanish renewables had to do The Timewarp trying to frequency mimic with the grid?
Yes. Submitted mid-March. They won't allow evidence that has been published before, so I waited until they published everything on 30 April.
Your post provides facts useful to our attempt in Dalry, Ayrshire to oppose the proposed construction of the Crosbie wind farm within a few miles of the Hunterston nuclear site. Having lived quite happily with nuclear power for most of their life, many if not most local people are favourable to nuclear power. Thank you, keep up your informative posts.
Good luck with your Dalry wind farm campaign. Unfortunately, presenting facts to oppose such projects seldom gets anywhere in my experience of a decade and more ago. You can only hope that the climate (no pun intended) is changing a bit now.
Excellent work again David. The substance and implications are clear and destroy Milivolt's case. Therefore, I assume you will be ignored. But at least it's all on the record.
The big question to consider about wind and solar is if they were people would you hire them?... ….. they only work when they feel like it, and Mr solar wont work on the nite shift, and they expect to be backed up by others when they don’t work.
An expanded version of the analogy which illustrates the difference between some of the main energy sources for power. Imagine the grid is running a restaurant. Good ole "Cole" is mister dependable, comes in on time, always there, works a 12 hour day and works harder when there's a rush, even comes in for extra days if some other staff is off sick. "Cole", however, is black and some customers are telling the boss to fire him, accusing him of making a mess. The boss is feeling the pressure to let "Cole" go, despite his loyal service for many years. In contrast, there is the new kid "Windy", young and attractive but only comes in when the notion strikes her. She doesn't tell the boss in advance when she will work, but it's arranged that she can come in whenever she wants and when she does, "Cole" has to step back and let her work. When that happens the boss cannot let "Cole" go home because "Windy" can suddenly decide in the middle of a shift that she's feeling depressed and just stops working. Oh, and "Windy" gets paid a higher wage than "Cole" because she needs the money or won't work at all otherwise. Who should the grid keep on?
easy... keep cole and help him clean up his act... fire windy and refer windy to your worst enemy.
Excellent, the only possible improvement I can see would be to change the reference about cheaper reactor build costs from Korea to South Korea to avoid any confusion.
I’m somewhat surprised at the overall full fleet thermal efficiency of gas fired generation is around 50% given fewer run hours and significant load following.
Me too! But a brilliant and badly needed repost to the insane and frighteningly ignorant ESNZ support for Miliband which appears to me to be accelerating the bankrupting the UK during this present UK Government's present term in Parliament.
Excellent David, circulate it in any way you can to all MPs and anyone else that might just listen.
A summary table of all the subsidies and additional costs linked to carbon tax, back up base load, grid expansion, energy import costs, restraint subsidies, CCS, etc. that you have worked out, would make a stunning spread sheet with a staggering bottom line that would/should stop this insanity pronto. The ReformUK party would be delighted to use it.
See next week's article, where I draw it all together and compare the cost per MWh of gas and renewables through the various subsidy schemes. I did this in response to some of the gaslighting submissions to the same inquiry.
An excellent pulling together of all the facts. They can’t say they haven’t been told and without a mention of “climate change” (aka alleged man-made global warming), the hoax based on never-validated, obviously-flawed pseudoscience spurned by President Trump and the leaders of the majority non-Western rest of the world.
UK unilateral Net Zero = pointless national self-suicide, all in the name of what?
The establishment’s bunkum climate change narrative is really very easy to debunk.
Here’s Tom Nelson’s debunking of the establishment’s corrupt global temperature record which shows global temperatures rising remorselessly because of “climate change” (video film + transcript): https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/09/the-graph-that-lied/.
Here’s Stephen Andrews’ debunking of the myth that the Keeling Curve (of atmospheric CO2) will continue to rise remorselessly because of “climate change”: https://sandrews.substack.com/p/a-very-different-interpretation-of.
Here’s my own debunking of the climate change hoax: https://metatron.substack.com/p/debunking-the-climate-change-hoax.
OK, it takes time and effort to find and read such studies, which is what makes the climate change hoax so pernicious: most people don’t have the time, inclination or capability to take them in and are sadly at the mercy of the corrupt establishment and complicit MSM who spread nothing but climate lies and misinformation.
Politicians charged with overseeing hugely important questions of national energy infrastructure workability and energy affordability and security should not be categorised as “most people”. They have a duty to research the subject properly (and are funded to do so) and to use their noggins to see through deliberate lies and misinformation.
Our Uniparty politicians clearly don’t do this, either because they are lazy, stupid, gullible or because they know it’s an establishment hoax and are willingly going along with it to kowtow to the establishment’s nefarious hidden agenda to deliberately deindustrialise, impoverish and in due course depopulate the country.
Which is it? Based on how they do nothing but lie to us on every major issue (Covid showed their true colours), I suspect the latter.
It would seem to be deliberate sabotage of our economy. It is virtually impossible to believe it is anything else considering what has been done and what continues to be done. Massive abuse of taxpayers money.
Do not confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up!
Ed Miliband's epitaph.....
Fab summing up of the energy problems we are experiencing. I would assume that your views won't fit the current rhetoric so will be ignored in favour of submissions that do. We all need to spread this far and wide!
Superb, many thanks. The slogan must be: Cheap Energy!
Cheap ABUNDANT energy. Stop plans for energy rationing. Nations thrive on cheap, abundant energy. China and India know this. Stop UK deindustrialisation .