Britain Makes Cheap Energy. Why Are Our Bills So High?

Comments · 727

• 17

  @17crescent · 5 days ago

  If public money is used to fund or subsidise a project, private corporations should not be allowed to take the profit.

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• BE

  @bellshooter · 5 days ago (edited)

  Ahem! Hold my beer..<br>HS2 Rant<br>As a Railway Engineer (retired) I was involved in &apos;HS2&apos; before it was finalised, and nobody remembers it was not a &apos;High Speed&apos; project , it was a relief line to allow higher speed FREIGHT on existing lines. Only designated HS2 as building an HS line was an incremental cost on building any line to Interoperable standards. The failure was poor definition at day 1, and allowing politicians to f*** with the project on the way. This increased costs and reduced utility, a tunnel not a cut, a cut not surface rail, an extra station .... COST. <br><br>Electricity Rant<br>There is little that needs to be done to achieve total energy independence. It is blindingly obvious that mandating the inclusion of battery storage and solar on every new or refurbished house, building, car park, and banning the sale of fossil boilers would be transforming. Plus requiring all car parks and commercial buildings to install the same within 5 years. &nbsp;Plus real planning reform , preventing local councils blocking energy infrastructure. &nbsp;Nuclear is too little too late, too expensive. Make all electricity suppliers price on the energy basket cost, not the gas generation rates.

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• MI

  @michaelfountain3898 · 4 days ago

  Outstanding analysis sir &nbsp;!

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• PA

  @palemale2501 · 6 days ago

  We have become accustomed to the massive Red Tape involved in all UK projects - things take 3 times as long and cost 3 times as much, yet we get half of what was expected.<br>We saw similar in nuclear power station construction - endless committees, enviornmental impact surveys etc etc - jobs for the boys, but more for admin amateurs, than engineers.

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• PA

  @paulj6 · 5 days ago

  If only we did this 10 years ago when interest rates were low instead of wasting time and money on Brexit. Unfortunately those with vested interests in oil have a loud voice in this country.

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• ST

  @stephenfidler1005 · 5 days ago

  We could have had regional pricing. &nbsp;This would restrict the peak prices to specific regions allowing others to have cheaper electricity and incentives large users like data centres to follow the cheap energy prices.

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• RO

  @robertbarnes2889 · 5 days ago

  A few thoughts, 1) for the Olympics that were awarded to uk on 6th July 2005, giving us 7 years, what we were building was relatively straightforward using existing technology. Energy system won&apos;t be.<br>2) how legally compliant do you wish to be in your solution. Some essential power components have worldwide patents on them preventing anyone else manufacturing those parts. You wait in line with the rest of the world. If uk was operating under &quot;war footing&quot; rules we would ignore the patent, copy the design and manufacture it in uk.<br>3) Rolls Royce engineering that produces the nuclear power plant for the uk attack and deterrent submarines has a prototype modular nuclear power station. These are small in size so we make many of them and cluster them where we have good power grid connections, such as where we had the coal fired power stations.<br>4) getting the people to re-skill to &nbsp;participate is this endeavour will be the hardest problem, incentivise them by giving them an energy discount for the rest of their lives.

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• JA

  @Jaw0lf · 5 days ago (edited)

  A clever use of battery storage is to send the amount of power that a power line can handle, the storage should be big enough to collect the capacity of the renewable source and would then trickle electricity overnight. Many of these would help a whole lot of being self sufficient.<br>The whole system does need change and profits could be easily used to continue upgrading the grid and lowering the electricity bills for consumers.<br>A fantastic video and this needs to be seen by all of the MP&apos;s.

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• ST

  @stephenfidler1005 · 5 days ago

  Fogstar do a 10kwh battery for 1300-1600. &nbsp;Allow households to borrow the money to be repaid from a reduced electricity bill would 1. Flatten the duck curve like in Australia, 2. &nbsp;Give every household a electricity rebate. 3. Give households protection from power cuts

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• MA

  @mattesla · 5 days ago

  We need distributed energy, the government should be subsidising domestic battery install and build a UK VPP that&apos;s a lot harder to disrupt

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• TO

  @tomsdaddy · 5 days ago

  I don&apos;t understand why you are asking this question ?<br><br>The question you need to ask is not so much &apos;How can we be energy independent in 5 yrs ?&apos;, but &apos;How can we significantly reduce Energy Bills in LESS than 5 Years ?&apos; - ie - if you want to get Re-Elected, - within the life of the next Parliament (!)<br><br>And yes, some of that will come from new, additional infrastructure, - but surely a large part of the answer will come from administrative re-organisation of the existing energy Market ?<br><br>That means NOT having ever more-expensive Gas as the Fuel that sets the price to consumers !<br><br>We can&apos;t just deliver lower prices by reducing the time that Gas contributes to the energy mix, - we have to just stop its price being the price that sets the market

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• TR

  @trevormangham9957 · 5 days ago

  Regarding price, we need to minimise the amount of gas used as this is the most expensive way to produce electricity. The fact that consumer prices are based on gas simply means that electricity will always be expensive. The cheaper producers are then allowed to charge the same as gas which is crazy as their operating costs could allow them to supply so much cheaper.

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