Economy 7

[JohnW2]

.... Perhaps you are aware of the old "lets play a trick on the new apprentice" one of telling them to go to the stores for a bucket of electricity

Totally off-topic, but ....

... my grandmother was a great practical joker. The story goes that when her daughter (my mother) was a teenager, she sent her daughter off on a long bicycle ride to a 'General Stores' to buy "a pound of elbow grease". The shopkeeper (who knew my grandmother of old!) played along, and sent her back with a jar of some sort of messy grease, with instructions that my grandmother should rub it into her skin every time she did any housework!

Kind Regards, John

 

[JohnW2]

Apples to oranges comparison. You have E7 and (AFAIUI) the Mixergy (sp?) system does not need that. Also you are always (normally?) fully heating you water tank every night whereas the Mixergy 'smart' system looks at the usage and only heats enough water for what you will need and so there will be capacity to use cheaper electricity.

Yes, I realise that. I was merely making the point that for such a system to work (usually!) the remote system would have to have total control of the heating - not just (as I thought had been implied) the 'offer' of additional cheap electricity when the supplier had some 'they wanted to get rid of'.

Well to me 'little, if anything, more' means zero or essentially zero and I think I showed that it is not zero. AFAIUI they do have to start GTs from scratch and roughly halving the efficiency of a multi-MW device for 10-30 minutes is going to cost.

Fair enough - I'm not going to quibble about words. Yes, there has got to be some cost, but how significant, in terms of the big picture, would be the halving of efficiency for 10-30 mins, I'm not sure.

You seem to be taking it for granted that all electricity generating facilities have essentially the same costs* and that the vast majority of differences in the amount charged is down to market manipulation. Do you have any any evidence to support that latter contention? * My understanding is that (after baseload) electricity buyers have to give priority to solar / wind but then choose the cheapest sources. As demand rises, all of the cheapest category (CCGT?) is exhausted and then they choose the next cheapest category.

I'm not really taking anything for granted, and I agree that one would expect, in general, producers to start with the most cheaply type of generation and then move on to more expensive ones than they had to.

I thought it was clear that my point was a totally general one - that with any sort of commodity/product (be it fuel, precious metals/stones, food, antiques or whatever) the cost to the end-user can be majorly affected by factors other than the cost of production (or extraction etc.) and distribution. In general, if supply falls in relation to demand (or demand increases relative to supply) then prices go up, simply because the suppliers know that there will be some people prepared to pay high prices for a commodity/product with is 'in short supply', 'rare' or whatever. However, one would hope that, in the case of something as 'essential' as fuel, regulation (in civilised countries) would prevent this happening in the way (or, at least, to the extent) that it would/could for anything regarded as a 'non-essential' commodity/product.

Kind Regards, John

 

[hard-work]

SimonH2, you obviously did not look at this and Elon Musk's quote. National Grid spokesman said we do not need any further generating capacity, on one of the recent Fully Charged vids.

 

[hard-work]

SimonH2, Battery grid storage is getting big, it will eliminate the need for peak power stations. You obviously need not look at the Tony Seba vid (do you look at anything?), who mentions Tesla in 88 days built a battery grid storage facility to eliminate a peaker.

I still think you fail to understand the Mixergy cylinder. The competent parts are not new (the has filed a patent app for the cold spreader). It is a convergence of technologies that makes it, as what made the Smart Phone. Its control system links all the parts, also the idea of the grid using them to offload surplus electricity for free, or buttons, only comes from the whole package.

Mainstream car makers are now making EVs, not just small niche companies. Jaguar have one on sale, M Benz announced a new EV for later in the year, with $10bn on EVs and $1.5bn on a battery factory. VW have announced an EV and $50bn on EV production. BMW are following. UK, France and Germany have announced phasing out of fossil fuel burning cars and 100% gone in around 25 years.

Charging infrastructure is being rolled out. 350A chargers can charge at approx 100 miles for 5 minutes of charge. Home charging can be while you are asleep, although slower. Conversion of light standards and parking meters to double up as kerb chargers is to take place. In France, UK and Germany, all highway service stations have rapid chargers.

Tony Seba is very interesting and uses adoptions of technologies in different industries showing the rate of uptake. Seba shows the tipping point of colour TV. Once petro fuels are difficult to obtain as filling stations close down, the take-up of EVs will be rapid.

The UK is adopting battery hybrid trains - on the Wrexham to Liverpool line and South Wales for starters. Trains from Wrexham will now be able to enter the underground Birkenhead and Liverpool tunnels and stations accessing Liverpool's city centre underground stations. The Japanese are doing this right now. That is a battery set and overhead wires/3rd rail electric pickup, so trains can run off electrified track onto sections of unelectrified track - this saves a fortune in installing 3rd rail or wires. The batteries will be recharged while on electrified track.

Over a hour but Tony Seba is well worth listening to. He, and the Economist, state that the tipping point for EVs is already here, or next year at most. Look at it from the beginning...

 

[JohnW2]

.... Its control system links all the parts, also the idea of the grid using them to offload surplus electricity for free, or buttons, only comes from the whole package.

As has been discussed, even with the 'whole package', unless/until we reach a situation (like France) in which the great majority of our electricity is not derived from fossil fuels (i.e. mainly nuclear, with some wind/tide/solar/whatever) there is very little scope for the free, or nearly free, electricity you keep talking about.

As things are, and are likely to remain for a long time, the only real opportunity I can see for it making financial sense for electricity to be supplied for little or no cost would be (as implied by Stephen) if, by so doing, one avoided having to shut down a gas turbine (with the consequent brief period of reduced efficiency when it was started up again). As far as I can see, in any other situation the generation of additional electricity (to 'give away') would cost as much as generating any electricity using the most expensive source currently on-line - so it would make no sense for a supplier to 'give it away'. In other words, it would be to their financial advantage to allow any 'surplus' generating capacity to remain unused, rather than to use it to generate electricity (at a cost) which then then 'gave away' for little or no payment (thereby making a loss).

That problem would largely go away if the 'surplus generating capacity' were non-fossil-fuel (i.e. mainly nuclear), but we are a very very long way from that. As things are, there is no way that, even at the lowest-demand times of day in mid-summer, the non-fossil-fuel-sources (nuclear/wind/tide/solar etc.) are (in the UK) ever going to have any 'spare capacity'. Countries like France are a totally different kettle of fish - so maybe you should move there.

Kind Regards, John

 

[hard-work]

For large scale electricity storage, there is nothing yet that can beat pumped storage - but we've already used about every site in the UK that could politically be used.

The Germans are looking at using redundant mines to give peak power generation.
World’s Biggest Grid-Scale Battery Will Be In German Salt Mine
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/07/18/worlds-biggest-grid-scale-battery-will-german-salt-mine/

A spread of grid storage batteries at where the demand is, usually in cities and towns, will eliminate the need for peak power stations.

Opinionated clap-trap about Musk, with no facts to back up the babble.

 

[StephenOak]

I was merely making the point that for such a system to work (usually!) the remote system would have to have total control of the heating

From the video (did you watch it?) i think that the Mixergy system is not controlled by a remote system but just receives data from from a remote server as to what the price will be in the next half hour slot. I would hope that the user has some control over what it does, so they could tell it not to top-up at all (e.g. going on a fortnight's holiday in two days time) or only to top up when the price is below X.

but how significant, in terms of the big picture, would be the halving of efficiency for 10-30 mins, I'm not sure.

When a CCGT is running all the time it is of course trivial. When that CCGT fires up multiple time per day but never gets the steam turbine up to operating temperature it is more significant.

Bear in mind, you were not talking about the big picture of the overall cost of generating electricity but saying that all generation methods cost about the same all the time ('It presumably costs little, if anything, more to produce electricity when demand is high') when that is not true for running CCGTs as OCGTs or running diesels.

I'm not really taking anything for granted

When talking about the electricity spot prices being affected by the cost of generation you said
"Possibly 'some of it'. However, as I said, manipulation of prices in response to changes in supply/demand are not necessarily anything to do with increased production costs."
which sounds like you think it quite likely that variable prices have nothing to do with generation cost and everything to do with exploitation of the supply demand imbalance.

Of course in a free market (for any item or service) people will exploit such an imbalance and that will have some effect on the price, but you seemed (to me at least) to be saying that in this market such exploitation is the cause of the vast majority if not the totality of the price variability, without providing any evidence to support that.

And the electricity market is very far from a free one. If it was free no-one would buy solar or wind electricity unless it was a small fraction of the cost of reliable electricity.

 

[SimonH2]

Well to me 'little, if anything, more' means zero or essentially zero and I think I showed that it is not zero. AFAIUI they do have to start GTs from scratch and roughly halving the efficiency of a multi-MW device for 10-30 minutes is going to cost.
...
* My understanding is that (after baseload) electricity buyers have to give priority to solar / wind but then choose the cheapest sources. As demand rises, all of the cheapest category (CCGT?) is exhausted and then they choose the next cheapest category.

Something like that, except that the operators really hate power cycling CCGTs due to the thermal stresses involved. Hence OCGTs are often used (even lower efficiency) because they are cheaper (both capital and maintenance) - but multiple stops/starts/power changes still cause a major increase in maintenance costs. Also, AIUI, a CCGT is likely to be less efficient than an OCGT that hasn't got steam up because the heat recovery used to generate steam has an impact on the efficiency of the GT.
It's got bad enough that some OCGTs have closed, or been paid to stay available, because the costs have gone up to the point where they can't break even.
Not that we'll see the supporters of intermittent generation talking about these

SimonH2, you obviously did not look at this and Elon Musk's quote. National Grid spokesman said we do not need any further generating capacity, on one of the recent Fully Charged vids.

Try posting links to readable material (so I can scan it and pick out any information that might actually be present) - I don't have time to watch videos of people waffling about snake oil. As far as I'm concerned, if it's buried in a video I have to watch then you haven't posted anything.

 

[StephenOak]

Try posting links to readable material (so I can scan it and pick out any information that might actually be present) - I don't have time to watch videos of people waffling about snake oil. As far as I'm concerned, if it's buried in a video I have to watch then you haven't posted anything.

Totally agree with that. Especially when the video is 65(!) minutes long.

 

[JohnW2]

From the video (did you watch it?) i think that the Mixergy system is not controlled by a remote system but just receives data from from a remote server as to what the price will be in the next half hour slot.

No, I haven't watched the video - like Simon, I have better things to do with my time, and if there is useful information to be had, I want it in writing so that I can quickly scan through it!

As for what you say, then it is is the system, not a 'remote controller' which has to have the 'intelligence'. It presumably has to somehow guess ahead, anything up to 24 hours, to decide whether to heat the water/store 'now' or wait until cheaper electricity is available later. Of course, if it gets its guessing wrong, and 'later' prices do not prove to be cheaper soon enough, then it will eventually have to heat the water/store with 'expensive' electricity!

I would hope that the user has some control over what it does, so they could tell it not to top-up at all (e.g. going on a fortnight's holiday in two days time) ...

There surely would be an 'on'off' switch somewhere!

.... or only to top up when the price is below X.

... but, as I above, it presumably is necessary for some 'intelligence' to have to be able to over-ride such instructions - e.g. if a 'top up' is needed but the price is not falling below X (or, a more difficult decision, if it looked as if a top-up would be needed fairly soon, but the price hadn't yet fallen to below X and there was no certainty that it was going to {rather than rise} in the foreseeable future)..

The thing that surprises me most about all this, I didn't realise that it was yet possible for domestic customers to get supplied with electricity on the basis of a price which changed every 30 minutes. Indeed, if it were done with a smart meter, then it could require an awful lot of registers in that meter if there were dozens, if not hundreds, of different prices during a billing period (unless one trusted the meter to tot up price, rather than usage at each price).

Bear in mind, you were not talking about the big picture of the overall cost of generating electricity but saying that all generation methods cost about the same all the time ('It presumably costs little, if anything, more to produce electricity when demand is high') when that is not true for running CCGTs as OCGTs or running diesels. .... When talking about the electricity spot prices being affected by the cost of generation you said "Possibly 'some of it'. However, as I said, manipulation of prices in response to changes in supply/demand are not necessarily anything to do with increased production costs." .... which sounds like you think it quite likely that variable prices have nothing to do with generation cost and everything to do with exploitation of the supply demand imbalance. ....Of course in a free market (for any item or service) people will exploit such an imbalance and that will have some effect on the price, but you seemed (to me at least) to be saying that in this market such exploitation is the cause of the vast majority if not the totality of the price variability,

This is starting to feel a bit like the interview with the headmaster (or our local surrogate therefor, who seems to be temporarily absent!) Yes, my wording was less than ideal, and I certainly didn't mean to imply that price variations had 'nothing' to do with increased production costs, or even that factors other than production costs were the cause of 'the vast majority' of cost variability.

Given that I am talking to the headmaster .... although, as I conceded, my choice of words was less than ideal, I did include "not necessarily" - which I think is very different from "not" .

Kind Regards, John

 

[SimonH2]

The thing that surprises me most about all this, I didn't realise that it was yet possible for domestic customers to get supplied with electricity on the basis of a price which changed every 30 minutes. Indeed, if it were done with a smart meter, then it could require an awful lot of registers in that meter if there were dozens, if not hundreds, of different prices during a billing period (unless one trusted the meter to tot up price, rather than usage at each price).

That is one of the criticisms of the smart metering "system" - the amount of data it collects, apparently on the basis of "because they can". Yes, it is a part of the spec that the meter can use 48 different time-of-day rates (different price for every 1/2 hour slot), and/or a number of "first X units @ A p/unit, then Y units @ B p/unit, then ..." tariffs. And the meter keeps every reading for every 1/2 hour of every day - and I believe can store at least a years worth of readings pending transmission.
It does NOT just tot up how many units have been used at each price - if it did then some of us might be a bit less hostile to the system. As it is, all this is sent back to "the big database", with (at least) every supplier having some access to it, and we are expected to believe that it will be "totally secure"

 

[JohnW2]

That is one of the criticisms of the smart metering "system" - the amount of data it collects, apparently on the basis of "because they can". Yes, it is a part of the spec that the meter can use 48 different time-of-day rates (different price for every 1/2 hour slot) ....

Indeed - even my meter, which certainly isn't being used as 'smart', theoretically has 48 ToD registers. However, as I said,that might be woefully inadequate for the system which is being discussed, because there could be hundreds of different 'half-hourly' prices during the course of a billing period. Don't forget, we're talking about 'dynamically changing pricing' - not a situation in which the price would be the same for the same time slot every day. One therefore presumably could not use 'time of day' registers - there would have to be one register for each price (without, necessarily, any ToD information being stored).**

In even a 3-month billing period (mine is 6-months) there are 4,380 30-minute periods and if, like my supplier, they price their electricity to a precision of 0.01p, just a 1p range of variation could theoretically result in up 100 different prices. If the range of variation were 'a few pence per kWh', one might need hundreds of registers.

Edit ** I suppose that one could use ToD registers, provided that there was a separate set of 48 of them for each day in a billing period - 4,380 for a quarter, or 17,520 for a year.

Kind Regards, John

 

[StephenOak]

No, I haven't watched the video - like Simon, I have better things to do with my time, and if there is useful information to be had, I want it in writing so that I can quickly scan through it!

As I said earlier, I also prefer text. I only watched this as it was quite short (c. 13 minutes), and I played it at 1.25 times normal speed.

You commented on how this system worked, saying (or at the least strongly implying) things that were quite different from what was in the video. I eventually worked out that you probably had not watched it. This strikes me as odd. As there are so many ways something can designed, I would not have commented on the details of a system I knew nothing about.

The thing that surprises me most about all this, I didn't realise that it was yet possible for domestic customers to get supplied with electricity on the basis of a price which changed every 30 minutes.

AIUI it isn't possible. In the video the 'expert' makes this clear and I pointed that out in post #139.

This is starting to feel a bit like the interview with the headmaster ... Yes, my wording was less than ideal, and I certainly didn't mean to imply that price variations had 'nothing' to do with increased production costs, or even that factors other than production costs were the cause of 'the vast majority' of cost variability.

This all started when you said that all generating systems have essentially identical costs. When I pointed out a real example of a type of system having inflated costs and showed that the sale price clearly fluctuated you just dismissed the evidence and said the fluctuations were not cost based, but never offered anything to support this.

Now you seem to be getting upset because I took what you wrote to be what you meant, when you now seem to be saying that what you meant was quite different from what you previously wrote (not merely worded in a less than ideal fashion).

When talking about the electricity spot prices being affected by the cost of generation you said
"Possibly 'some of it'. However, as I said, manipulation of prices in response to changes in supply/demand are not necessarily anything to do with increased production costs."
which I really cannot interpret as anything other than weasel wording that invites the reader to think it has precious little if anything to do with increased production costs without actually saying so. Whereas it now seems that what you meant was something like "Increased production costs will be part of it and other factors will also be part and I have no idea of the split between them".

Your 'headmaster' comments are essentially the same tactic of 'playing the man not the ball' as hard_work used earlier, albeit more polite and more subtle.

 

[JohnW2]

... I would not have commented on the details of a system I knew nothing about.

All my comments have been responses to what has been written in this thread, not to other sources of information.

AIUI it isn't possible. In the video the 'expert' makes this clear and I pointed that out in post #139.

As I said, my understanding was also that it isn't possible, and it's quite easy to forget what has already been written in a thread as long as this one, particularly when (as has been the case), my contributions have been squeezed in between lots of other jobs I've been trying to get done today!

As I have been discussing with Simon, I'm far from convinced that 'smart' domestic meters, as we currently know them, could ever be able do as is being suggested. As I have said, as I see it, it would require either separate half-hourly 'time-of-day' registers for each day (an essentially unthinkable number of registers), or else would have to 'tot up' actual costs (rather than usage), using the appropriate cost/kWh figure for each 30-minute period (which I doubt that people would trust - since the figures would be essentially uncheckable.

Is there another way? I suspect that the system as described would probably require more detailed records than just a lot of 'cumulative registers' which, as I understand it (maybe incorrectly), is all that current (and envisaged) 'smart' meters offer (and it is those 'more detailed records' that the likes of Simon seem to fear most).

This all started when you said that all generating systems have essentially identical costs.

I sincerely hope I didn't write that, since it is clearly nonsense. As far as I can make out, what 'started all this' was my statement which said ....

The concept of adjusting price dynamically on the basis of changes the supply/demand situation is, of course, questionable in many people's minds in relation to such a basic ('essential') commodity as fuel. It presumably costs little, if anything, more to produce electricity when demand is high in relation to supply, so such a system could presumably only be justified if it resulted in changes of usage patterns which were beneficial to the network (hence preserving customer's supplies) ....

... and my subsequent reference back to that statement, which said ...

... However, as I said, manipulation of prices in response to changes in supply/demand are not necessarily anything to do with increased production costs.

So, in attempt to clarify what I was trying to say .... what I meant was that, at a particular level of total (satisfied) demand at a particular point in time, the cost of generation is the cost of generation (using whatever mix of fuels/sources is in use), regardless of how close that demand is to the maximum generation capacity available.

If, at some particular time, a high level of demand is approaching the the maximum generation capacity, and as a consequence the price is increased (for that time period), with the hope of reducing demand, that price increase has not got anything to do with the cost of generation (which is unchanged) but has everything to do with attempting to discourage use of electricity at those 'peak' times, in order hopefully to preserve customers' supplies.

Now you seem to be getting upset because I took what you wrote to be what you meant, when you now seem to be saying that what you meant was quite different from what you previously wrote (not merely worded in a less than ideal fashion).

I'm not upset - just, perhaps, a little frustrated - but that is a local forum thing.

As you may be aware, we currently seem to be enjoying a break (I suspect only brief!) from the presence of the person who appears to have appointed himself not only as the forum's 'headmaster', but also its police force and goodness knows what else. As a result, I was starting to enjoy what seemed to be an unusually pleasant weekend in the forum, without (as more usually would have been the case) being 'quizzed' about everything I write and being repeatedly confronted about 'what I had written' I'm sorry that you unwittingly got rather entangled with 'local issues' in my mind!

Kind Regards, John

 

[hard-work]

Try posting links to readable material (so I can scan it and pick out any information that might actually be present) - I don't have time to watch videos of people waffling about snake oil.

You have poor comprehension. I said a National Grid man. I do not have time to trawl through all the Fully Charged vids just for you, and they have been going for about 7 years or so.

You can't gasp the big picture for sure. Try harder you appear brighter than the other two.