The Death Of Fossil Fuels

[IvanV]

Your assumption seems to be that it's cheaper to continue with business as usual than to adopt newer technologies that are lower carbon. B

I was careful not to say that. My post was description, not prescription, until the last sentence. And I carefully put the word "also" into my last sentence to avoid the implication you still read into it.

[IvanV]

Wind power delivers £104bn net benefit to UK consumers

That is, sadly, a rather speculative quantification. It is made up of:

£14.2bn saving from lower electricity prices due to the wind in the market - can easily be quantified, this is probably right
£43.2bn cost from subsidies to wind power - can easily be quantified, this is probably right
£133.3bn saving from lower natural gas prices - a very big and in reality very uncertain number

And we learn the nature of the people who calculated that big and very uncertain number from the fact that they give it to 4sf and give no range of uncertainty around it.

I looked at the actual paper to see how these geographers had quantified that large but hard-to-calculate number, that contributes so much to the net savings. It is indeed speculative. It looks like the kind of thing shameless consultants do when forced to calculate a number for something that in reality is very hard to quantify. They don't even have scenarios for the things they don't really know. If I was forced to try and quantify this unquantifiable number, I would at least insist on protecting myself from "doesn't pass the laugh test" quantification, by having some very broad scenarios.

So I have been rude about this quantification. I'd better set out how they have done it and why it doesn't pass a laugh test. They start by saying, suppose none of Europe had ever built any wind energy, what would the price of gas be now. But there are three problems with this. First, is that really the correct counterfactual, that none of Europe built any wind energy? It seems rather arbitrary. And why not just Britain? That's the market they are computing this benefit for. That would substantially reduce the savings. Then there is data they use to say what the price of gas would be if the demand were increased by that amount, which is some statements by ACER, and relating in particular to judgments about Russian gas supplies. But then the really unknowable thing is what else would have happened in the world - for example development of gas fields around the world, development of additional nuclear power stations, etc - if Europe had never started building any wind farms.

[bjn]

The IEA has released a report titled “Electricity 2026”. Electricity demand is expected to grow strongly in all countries in the coming years, especially in emerging economies. However most of that demand will be met by solar and wind, with some fossil gas and a bit of nuclear. The big thing is that they think the world hit peak coal generation last year despite surging energy demands. Carbon emissions from electricity generation are expected to flat line as a result.

Note, this is the IEA who have habitually under estimated the growth in renewables for decades.

https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity ... ve-summary

[discovolante]

I know this is not 'news' but I'm interested in views here.

Scotland seems to be generating more renewable energy than it can send down to England due to bottlenecks in the grid, so the government has decided to encourage the development of large data centres so soak up the extra capacity, as per this promo piece here: https://apatura.energy/news-insights/sc ... a-centres/

Obviously there is plenty of info about Scottish government policy on the scotgov website.

There also seems to be a disconnect between the number of renewable projects that have been approved and how many are actually going to be connected to the grid, although I've not read up on this properly yet: https://www.neso.energy/neso-implements ... at-britain

I'm genuinely curious about all of this.

Anyway sorry if I've missed a discussion on this already, I had a quick skim but feel free to link to old posts if I have.

[Grumble]

I know this is not 'news' but I'm interested in views here.

Scotland seems to be generating more renewable energy than it can send down to England due to bottlenecks in the grid, so the government has decided to encourage the development of large data centres so soak up the extra capacity, as per this promo piece here: https://apatura.energy/news-insights/sc ... a-centres/

Obviously there is plenty of info about Scottish government policy on the scotgov website.

There also seems to be a disconnect between the number of renewable projects that have been approved and how many are actually going to be connected to the grid, although I've not read up on this properly yet: https://www.neso.energy/neso-implements ... at-britain

I'm genuinely curious about all of this.

Anyway sorry if I've missed a discussion on this already, I had a quick skim but feel free to link to old posts if I have.

Grid bottlenecks are the reason for curtailment, effectively. It takes a long time - too long - to build new grid, at least compared to how quickly you can construct a wind or solar farm. Back in the olden days we used to generate electricity near where it was needed. The “national” grid is actually quite regionalised.

[discovolante]

I know this is not 'news' but I'm interested in views here.

Scotland seems to be generating more renewable energy than it can send down to England due to bottlenecks in the grid, so the government has decided to encourage the development of large data centres so soak up the extra capacity, as per this promo piece here: https://apatura.energy/news-insights/sc ... a-centres/

Obviously there is plenty of info about Scottish government policy on the scotgov website.

There also seems to be a disconnect between the number of renewable projects that have been approved and how many are actually going to be connected to the grid, although I've not read up on this properly yet: https://www.neso.energy/neso-implements ... at-britain

I'm genuinely curious about all of this.

Anyway sorry if I've missed a discussion on this already, I had a quick skim but feel free to link to old posts if I have.

Grid bottlenecks are the reason for curtailment, effectively. It takes a long time - too long - to build new grid, at least compared to how quickly you can construct a wind or solar farm. Back in the olden days we used to generate electricity near where it was needed. The “national” grid is actually quite regionalised.

I'm slightly skeptical that the solution is to build a bunch of data centres though? But it would be nice to think that it is.

[Grumble]

God no, more grid - but also more batteries because they make the grid work better

[discovolante]

God no, more grid - but also more batteries because they make the grid work better

Hm, this page: https://www.neso.energy/industry-inform ... rm-results says: "There are far more battery projects planned than the grid can handle, about three times too many".

So what is going to happen to all the battery projects that won't get connected?

On the data centre thing, my feeling is that if you need to do a lot of something very quickly (I.e. build more renewable technology) then it is going to be messy and you just have to accept that to a large extent, because it's so important and we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But I'm concerned that Scotland is going to end up with a huge number of data centres sitting around in places where they don't even create much long term employment, and then what? Obviously I'm not neutral on this...but it's one of those things I'd really like to be wrong about!

[IvanV]

God no, more grid - but also more batteries because they make the grid work better

Hm, this page: https://www.neso.energy/industry-inform ... rm-results says: "There are far more battery projects planned than the grid can handle, about three times too many".

How easy it is to integrate batteries depends where you put them. If you them near consumption, ie downstream of bottlenecks, then they relieve those bottlenecks, and ought to be easy to integrate. Though that is provided that there is grid to supply local consumption and a suitable connection point. But there is insufficient incentive in current arrangements to put batteries in these best places, as the appropriate reward for it tends to be very location specific. On the other hand, there is a tendency to want to put batteries near generation, to soak it up when it is not being sold. Which can make things worse.

More generally, it is difficult to devise suitable charging/earning arrangements for batteries, so that they will be put in the most useful places.

[Sciolus]

Data centres have massive banks of highly polluting* diesel generators to ensure continuous uptime. The idea that they are there to use up excess generation and will be turned off the rest of the time is preposterous.

* Even if there isn't a power cut the generators have to be tested frequently.

[discovolante]

Data centres have massive banks of highly polluting* diesel generators to ensure continuous uptime. The idea that they are there to use up excess generation and will be turned off the rest of the time is preposterous.

* Even if there isn't a power cut the generators have to be tested frequently.

Well yes, that too.

[Gfamily]

Data centres have massive banks of highly polluting* diesel generators to ensure continuous uptime. The idea that they are there to use up excess generation and will be turned off the rest of the time is preposterous.

* Even if there isn't a power cut the generators have to be tested frequently.

Yes, but we also seem to be told that renewables are constantly being taken offline because of 'lack of demand'
Putting Data Centres next to Battery Parks near to Generation Parks seems, if not optimal, at least less than 'obviously preposterous'

I seem to recall that a Tesla Battery pack in Australia saved consumers millions of AUD because its feeds reduced the peak Electricity cost by lots ^{[c needed]}

[Grumble]

God no, more grid - but also more batteries because they make the grid work better

Hm, this page: https://www.neso.energy/industry-inform ... rm-results says: "There are far more battery projects planned than the grid can handle, about three times too many".

How easy it is to integrate batteries depends where you put them. If you them near consumption, ie downstream of bottlenecks, then they relieve those bottlenecks, and ought to be easy to integrate. Though that is provided that there is grid to supply local consumption and a suitable connection point. But there is insufficient incentive in current arrangements to put batteries in these best places, as the appropriate reward for it tends to be very location specific. On the other hand, there is a tendency to want to put batteries near generation, to soak it up when it is not being sold. Which can make things worse.

More generally, it is difficult to devise suitable charging/earning arrangements for batteries, so that they will be put in the most useful places.

Why do you think it’s worse to put the batteries next to the generator? Surely that will help smooth the output?

[bjn]

One advantage of colocating storage with generation is that they get to share the same grid connection, so making it much simpler to get them on. It still doesn’t help with getting electricity to where it’s needed when transmission to those locations is saturated. The UK is investing a lot of money to overcome grid bottlenecks, but that takes time.

https://www.nationalgrid.com/the-great- ... -happening

Another approach that that has been mooted but rejected is zonal wholesale electricity pricing. Say if Scotland regularly has lots of excess generation that it can’t ship to where it’s needed, drop the wholesale price locally. This will encourage energy intensive industries to setup in locations with abundant cheap energy and so ease the need to build new transmission. That was rejected last year in favour of continuing the grid built out. Other countries have zonal pricing which seems to work fine for them.

[IvanV]

Why do you think it’s worse to put the batteries next to the generator? Surely that will help smooth the output?

Worse from the perspective of needing to reinforce the grid. Putting batteries downstream of grid bottlenecks can avoid you having to reinforce the bottleneck, at much lower cost than the grid capacity expansion. This is typically the highest value for batteries, but institutional issues make it difficult to execute.

A few years ago the most constrained off windfarm was in the north highlands, constrained off about 25% of the time, going on for around a decade. It just wasn't worth the cost of reinforcing the local grid to take all its electricity away. Now there are exceptions to constraint payments to try to reduce the risk of people putting windfarms, etc, in such locations, where an appreciable part of their business would be farming constraint payments. But that is no longer the biggest constraint payment earner, not because the grid has been reinforced where it is, but because new big windfarms have been built where there isn't, or isn't yet, suitable infrastructure for them. Seagreen windfarm off the Angus coast is currently being constrained off over 70% of the time, and earning about 40% of all the £380m constraint payments that were paid in 2025. Without the present day exceptions it would be over £1bn/yr by now. Other badly constrained farms include Moray East offshore off the Moray coast, and Viking onshore in Shetland.

There is today the Western HVDC Link, an 2.25GW undersea link from central west Scotland to north Wales, which on opening about tripled the electricity interconnection between Scotland and England. Other new or expanded links over the Cheviot have been built recently, expanding interconnection to over 6GW, and by end 2027 it should be over 7.5GW. So we are building the capacity to take all this electricity out of Scotland, as a whole. But Scotland needs to expand its interior grid better to get the electricity to those interconnection exit points, or they won't be able to continue expanding all the wind capacity we need there.

[Grumble]

Ok, I understand. Firstly we have the problem that supply and demand are not easily matched in a renewables heavy system. A solution to ease this problem is to add storage. Secondly there are two problems caused by supply bottlenecks, one with supply and one with demand. If there were no supply bottlenecks then it wouldn’t matter where you put the storage. Having storage both near the supply and near the demand means that we can avoid upgrading the grid, as long as the total capacity of the grid in GWh matches the total demand, it doesn’t have to match peak demand or peak supply GW. I’m simplifying of course, and ignoring costs, there are various factors to be applied, but I think this is essentially correct.

Upgrading the grid on an engineering level should be about matching total capacity which is a lot less demanding than matching peak capacity.

In California, where they have effectively installed enough batteries to remove the need to run gas peaker plants in the evenings, I don’t know whether these are installed near the supply or near the demand?

[IvanV]

In California, where they have effectively installed enough batteries to remove the need to run gas peaker plants in the evenings, I don’t know whether these are installed near the supply or near the demand?

I doubt there would be much difference because, especially in the geography of California where industry is mostly side by side the major cities, the gas peaker plants would generally be located relatively near demand. It's renewables that are typically less conveniently located for demand.

[Grumble]

In California, where they have effectively installed enough batteries to remove the need to run gas peaker plants in the evenings, I don’t know whether these are installed near the supply or near the demand?

I doubt there would be much difference because, especially in the geography of California where industry is mostly side by side the major cities, the gas peaker plants would generally be located relatively near demand. It's renewables that are typically less conveniently located for demand.

I wasn’t clear. In California they have excess solar in the day and soak it up with batteries that then discharge in the evening. I’m not sure where the batteries are or whether they have grid constraints within California.

[IvanV]

In California they have excess solar in the day and soak it up with batteries that then discharge in the evening. I’m not sure where the batteries are or whether they have grid constraints within California.

The US electricity system is much more market-orientated even than Britain. Not everywhere in the US, there are some luddite hold-outs. But California is the very market-orientated type. And this means there is none of this building something in a remote place and farming constraint payments. There are no constraint payments. And if your local grid is congested, you'll be stuffed with high market-set grid charges. So it is your own responsibility to build in a sensible place, and/or pay for a wire to a sensible place.

Generally speaking, the US has a thin and poorly interconnected grid in comparison to Europe, simply because of the overall low population density and - in many areas - high population clumpiness. This makes it not very worthwhile connecting those clumps of population, because they are widely separated. California has 40m people in an area 3/4 the size of (metropolitan) France, but a large proportion of them live in a relatively small number of urban areas along the coast, and a few other clumps like the central valley. This means the intermediate areas are thinly populated. And, more widely, there are very few long distance interconnectors in the US. To the E (Nevada) and N (Oregon) of California is thinly populated. More widely in the US, E is barely connected to W. and Texas is barely connected to the rest of the US. It's just too expensive with those big distances.

There are no constraint payments to constrained-off renewable generators in California, nor I expect anywhere in the US. Further, they have locational marginal pricing for grid services, not everywhere in the US, but certainly in California. That means every entry and exit node from the grid has a different price every charging time interval of a few minutes, according to the demand on the grid at that precise node in that interval. There are forecasts of that price at various times ahead, and lively markets in those prices both spot and at various forward times. So that makes people plan their activities and switch off or turn down if the grid (predicted) price is going to be locally high. Finally, the SO will physically constrain off any generator who is causing an overload problem in the instant.

So in California you build your batteries and renewables in the knowledge of the grid constraints, and take your own view of whether you can sell enough of your output at a good enough price, after deducting grid charges. If you need a connection to a better point than the local point to be able to sell your stuff, you are paying for that wire yourself and factoring it into the overall cost of the project. Some batteries are located beside solar farms. Which makes sense in the Californian system. Because the solar/battery farm won't be build unless it can arrange to be sufficiently connected.

[Martin_B]

Generally speaking, the US has a thin and poorly interconnected grid in comparison to Europe, simply because of the overall low population density and - in many areas - high population clumpiness.

Australia says Hi

[bjn]

My understanding of the US is that it is very vertically integrated, so generation, transmission, distribution and retailing are usually handled by a single entity. PG&E in bits of California or the Tennessee Valley Authority for example. The degree of vertical integration varies by state though. Companies are highly regulated and generally rewarded in terms of returns on capital expenditure, as opposed to operations. This is a hangover from the days when they were being encouraged to build generation and transmission. It has also lead to perverse incentives. Public Utility Commissions are meant to regulate them, but regulatory capture is the norm.

Weirdly, Texas is much more market oriented, along the lines of the UK. This has lead to a lot of renewables and battery storage systems coming online, rivalling California.

[IvanV]

My understanding of the US is that it is very vertically integrated, so generation, transmission, distribution and retailing are usually handled by a single entity. PG&E in bits of California or the Tennessee Valley Authority for example. The degree of vertical integration varies by state though. Companies are highly regulated and generally rewarded in terms of returns on capital expenditure, as opposed to operations. This is a hangover from the days when they were being encouraged to build generation and transmission. It has also lead to perverse incentives. Public Utility Commissions are meant to regulate them, but regulatory capture is the norm.

Weirdly, Texas is much more market oriented, along the lines of the UK. This has lead to a lot of renewables and battery storage systems coming online, rivalling California.

They generally haven't had the enforced vertical separation we had in UK. But that hasn't stopped large areas (in terms of population) bringing in what I would call more perfect markets than we have in the UK. In particular those areas that have LMP grid pricing, with deep markets in those grids - PJM area, NYNEX area (ie large parts of the New England/Chicago/DC triangle), California, Texas - then there is free entry in generation, and free trade in electricity, at least wholesale or for larger customers. Much harder for major players to rig the market when you have this grid institution. So I would call all this more market orientated than the UK or EU. Free trade in grid services - with financial settlement rather physical settlement (all very technical) - is what you need for a proper market in electricity. UK and the EU have pretty good markets, but large zones and physical transmission rights results in persistence of market power. It's all very technical stuff, which I used to write reports on 15 years ago.

But there remain "luddite" areas, as I called them, in the US, and the Tennessee Valley Authority is one of the more luddite areas.

A lot of those renewables have come online in the US because there were federal subsidies for renewables, which even generators in red states, like Texas, could access. So ironically Texas went big in renewables, despite the opinions of local politicians. Texas is of course very good for both wind and solar, but being poorly interconnected can only sell that stuff locally. Some states also had state subsidies, before the federal subsidies came in, which is why California went big in wind early on. Mr Trump has turned the tap off on federal subsidies, though I don't think he can refuse to pay the established subsidies for the period they are contracted. Trump is also trying to stop things like new off-shore windfarms on b.llsh.t national security grounds. Some of the windfarms under construction Trump tried to stop have been allowed to continue, because it was more expensive to stop them and pay contractual compensation. Others, less far forward, have been stopped.

[bjn]

Parts of the developing world seems to be set to leapfrog us in terms of electrification and getting off fossil fuels. In 2024 Ethiopia banned the import of fossil fuel cars and removed all tariffs on electric ones. The reason is pure economics, they have lots of hydro power and no oil reserves, and they don’t want to spend what little foreign currency they have on importing oil. Now 6% of all cars are electric and it’s growing rapidly. For comparison, the world fleet is 4% electric. They mandated all sorts of charging infrastructure as well, such as companies selling electric cars need to have chargers, as do petrol stations and various other locales.

https://omny.fm/shows/zero/ethiopias-el ... -countries

[Grumble]

The story in Africa generally seems to be massive imports of solar in the last couple of years. Electric cars, vans and lorries will naturally follow I think.

[bjn]

The story in Africa generally seems to be massive imports of solar in the last couple of years. Electric cars, vans and lorries will naturally follow I think.

There was this lazy assumption that the developed world would follow the same development path that we did and would necessarily have to burn coal/gas to improve the lot of their countries. Unless you are sitting on cheap to extract FF reserves, why would you do that when solar panels are 9c/Wp and batteries and all in BESS systems @ $125/kWh capacity? Sure you import the panels and batteries, but to quote Jenny Chase (BNEF’s solar expert), you only have to import those every 25 years, while you have to import FFs every day. Then add price volatility and possibly vulnerable supply routes and it’s another level of security. Cuba is now installing solar at a great pace given they’ve been reliant on Venezuelan oil until now.