zlacker

I think one of the most important elements is buried - electricity pricing is uniform across the entire UK. That seems nuts to me, and incentivizes building in locations that are less useful - it's likely cheaper to build in Scotland, higher production from more wind, you get paid more (for expected yield plus curtailment apparently), and you have less wear on the equipment when you adjust to lower output.

>>fencep+(OP)
Is the UK not a unified grid? Most of the US is. A kwh is a kwh.

>>TylerE+m
england and wales are run by national grid, who also have a huge us operation - scottish operations a bit less clear

>>zabzon+V1
National Grid ESO are the system operator for the GB grid.

National Grid Electricity Transmission operate the transmission network in England and Wales. The transmission network in the south of Scotland is operated by SP Transmission; in the north of Scotland, it's SSEN Transmission.

>>TylerE+m
The US runs three major grids: East, West, and Texas. There's interconnections, but capacity is limited. Sounds like the UK is similar here with the bottleneck between Scotland and southern England.

Within the US grids, there's really subgrids with interconnection and bottlenecks, too, but those interior bottlenecks aren't brought up as often as say overnight wind production in Texas being over local demand as well as interconnect capacity.

>>TylerE+m
Even in the parts of the US that are unified grids, a kWh is not a kWh. Where you live determines how expensive your electricity is. Compare Cambridge, MA https://electricityrates.com/compare/electricity/02139/ with Philadelphia, PA https://electricityrates.com/compare/electricity/19101/. About twice as expensive in MA.

>>timero+pg
GP was (I think) talking about what the grid pays the plants, not what consumers pay the grid.

>>fencep+(OP)
At least this shows different prices in different regions, but I'm not sure why. The article contradicts it.

https://www.edfenergy.com/sites/default/files/r505_deemed_ra...

>>Symbio+pk
Wholesale energy prices are uniform, network service prices aren't.

>>fencep+(OP)
Funnily enough this used to make sense. When you were burning coal, generation skewed north and its cheaper to generate close to source and transport energy. Now, transport of energy is a significant cost, but it’s difficult to price/support that, and the industry/national grid have been working very hard on smart grids for exactly this reason.

>>TylerE+m
> A kwh is a kwh.

Start to finish, the OP is a detailed analysis of why this is not true.

>>TylerE+m
Unfortunately there is no big copper plate in the ground connecting all of the UK. Transmission capacity between different parts of the grid is limited.

>>fencep+(OP)
The politics around changing that would be spectacular to behold. Especially if it resulted in Scotland having cheaper energy.

I do wonder how effective a "you get 0.5p off your bill if you can see a wind turbine from your house" rule would be against NIMBYism.

>>pjc50+ou1
The discount for local wind already exists, currently available in Yorkshire and Wales:

https://www.octopusenergygeneration.com/fan-club/

>>fencep+(OP)
But for most of the time, the marginal cost of electricity is the same across the UK. The transmission network is not usually maxed out, and this means that generation anywhere can meet supply anywhere for minimal cost.

Consumers already pay per-unit electricity costs which are fixed over a billing period, regardless of whether gross prices exceeded the consumer price, or dropped below zero, for small intervals during that period. So it wouldn't really make any sense to charge different prices in Scotland and England, only for the periods when they actually diverged due to lack of transmission. And if this occasional discrepancy was averaged over a billing period, it would probably be much too small to really affect demand.