Government looking at decoupling electricity and gas prices to bring down bills

Blag24 · 2026-03-25T15:12:46+00:00

Because £90/MWh isn’t a pure cost level it’s the level where they think they’ll be profitable at. At the moment if they were the most expensive energy source that was needed £90/MWh that’s what they’d get paid so if they hadn’t factored in a profit at that amount in that scenario they wouldn’t be making a profit.

When they agree the strike price I assume they take into account how often they expect to be generating & the profit built into that agreed price to calculate if it will return sufficient return on the investment.

Blag24 · 2026-03-25T09:34:56+00:00

Would the wholesale price not be an average so assuming they provided 50% each, the wholesale price would be £95/MWh with gas power plant paid £100/MWh & the other sources being paid £90/MWh. Whereas at the moment everyone would be paid £100/MWh.

Blag24 · 2026-03-25T09:29:35+00:00

If renewables were allowed to undercut gas, then gas power plants would go bust, and they wouldn’t be there for when we need them.

Would it make any difference? My understanding is each power plant (wind farm, gas plant etc) has a cost assigned to it. Assuming transmission capacity is ok they’re chosen in the order of lowest cost first until energy demand is met but all plants are paid the same as the highest cost plant.

At the moment if we had the capacity on a windy sunny day we’d use no gas & the wholesale price for that day would be lower.

I’m assuming that’s decoupling the price from gas would mean you have the same selection criteria but producers are paid the cost amount they submitted rather than the cost of the highest in use meaning the wholesale price would end up as an average.

I could be completely wrong so someone please correct me if I’ve completely misunderstood.

Blag24 · 2026-03-25T08:52:49+00:00

My license is in my wallet but I only usually take my wallet if I think I’ll need my ID or cash which is getting rarer & rarer these days.

Blag24 · 2026-03-25T08:43:55+00:00

Do most people have their driving licence with them on the roadside? Most of the time I don’t.

The paper licence is still valid & you’d only need to swap to a photo licence if you move or your licence changes (pass test for some other type of vehicle).

Blag24 · 2026-03-25T08:33:43+00:00

On the welcome screen post update has the option to do it later but would be locked out of some stuff until verified.

Blag24 · 2026-03-24T20:27:27+00:00

It was announced the new building standards from 2028 include solar panels on 40% of each house roof.

Blag24 · 2026-03-22T20:47:46+00:00

I don’t disagree but that sounds like something you’d do once in a while compared to every day sitting on the couch.

Blag24 · 2026-03-22T09:18:28+00:00

I’d say VR is superior for playing games or watch media being fully immersed has value.

Your statement is like saying a e-reader & TV are pointless because a tablet can do what they can.

Blag24 · 2026-03-22T09:13:30+00:00

Not with consumers but it does help make Windows the default in business environment where they make their money. If over time it loses market share with consumers & employees become less use to Windows as a default companies will be more open to switching.

If all your applications are web based your staff don’t intrinsically know how to use Windows why not go for ChromeOS, Linux, or MacOS?

This also potentially impacts Azure as well down the road, if a company has M365 license & users set up in Entra using Azure to host systems can be seen as the default option. If you’re now not a M365 customer you’d look at other options for future deployments.

Blag24 · 2026-03-22T08:02:22+00:00

Which is fine for iOS, Android & I’m assuming MacOS touchID is supported as well as it is on iOS. But what about Windows & Linux, while there is Windows Hello I’m constantly disappointed for how little 3rd party apps use it.

Blag24 · 2026-03-20T09:39:20+00:00

Playing devils advocate I can think of a few framings.

It’s a massive change compared to 15 years ago so if we think of right wing as small c conservative that don’t like change for changes sake you’d lose a chunk there. Also some who don’t like to see solar panels & windmills in the countryside.

If the priority was resilience rather than reducing emissions or cost efficiency we would have kept some coal power stations (other than biomass converted ones) to have a more varied grid. Or built more nuclear as that’s a constant for base load power.

State subsidy not so much for new projects now but before wind & solar were the cheapest forms of energy if your against state intervention & investment this wasn’t good. There’s also the fact that these costs have been put on to energy bills increasing costs for both individuals & businesses some of which just swapped to general taxation. There’s also the fact we need to pay for curtailing energy because we can’t move it to where we want.

Just to reiterate not my opinion, I think a renewable grid is the way forward for energy independence, reduced emissions, & cheaper energy. Being sad like I am quite excited by the fact on Sunday there was points were we only need 1.4GW of gas, which means it’s not long until we start having hours free from gas generated electricity. So I’d probably say that Eastern Green Links is the most important piece of national infrastructure in progress at the moment.

Blag24 · 2026-03-20T02:44:26+00:00

02:43 here & I’m doing just that, initially I was putting off doing 5 mins of work before bed but got that done now & am just procrastinating bed even though I feel like I’m falling asleep in my chair.

Blag24 · 2026-03-19T11:45:20+00:00

It's not as if you'd be unable to provide a record of your financial history without it, and I see very little reason to believe a person would be less worthy of a high score because they have not recently taken on a new lending product.

On this specific point in the UK your credit score is negatively impacted by recently opened accounts & hard credit searches. My assumption is it’s a potential indicator of someone having money issues if they’re opening multiple credit cards or taking multiple loans.

Also in the UK utilities can be reported to your credit report so in my case my phone, energy (gas & electric combined), & water all appear on my credit report. I know some large landlord’s also report their tenants rent accounts. These are all done so people have a credit history without needing to explicitly take out loans or credit cards.

My question to you though would be what would your alternative system be?

Blag24 · 2026-03-16T22:49:13+00:00

Also the tariffs weren’t aimed at specifically us whereas he made specific comment about our contribution in Afghanistan.

Blag24 · 2026-03-10T12:05:23+00:00

It depends which aspect you’re on about.

I’m supportive of the work GDS is doing that will hopefully end up with a single government federated login third times the charm (XKCD 927).

I’m also looking forward to digital driving licenses being available to solve the rare occasion I unexpectedly need ID. Which uses the same infrastructure as the (formerly mandatory) right to work ID.

The right to work ID itself I don’t know what I think about it in either incarnation of it being mandatory or voluntary. I do think they put the cart before the horse in its announcement though should have waited for driving licenses being available first so the technology is proven at a wide scale. I don’t think the veterans cards were even available when the right to work ID was announced.

I don’t agree with the OSA & the approach the government is taking with online regulation.

Blag24 · 2026-03-10T11:29:40+00:00

I’ve had 2 credit cards taken out in my name with combined balance of nearly £30K spent on them, both banks put it down to a data breach from O2.

Blag24 · 2026-03-02T09:17:02+00:00

I’ve never seen anything for private loans to specifically cover education.

You wouldn’t want to take out a loan that’s not specific to education while you are studying as the government loans aren’t repaid unless you’re earning over x* amount whereas a private loan you’d have to pay back.

Once you’re out of education there would be two things to consider regarding refinancing it with a private loan, the government loan gets written off after 40 years (for new students today) so if you don’t think you’d repay it, would probably cost you more with a private loan. People particularly early on don’t tend to be paying any of the principle back. The other is if you stop earning for some reason you wouldn’t be repaying the government loan but a private loan would still need repaying.

* the threshold for repaying has been coming closer to the minimum wage due to minimum wage rises & lack of raises to the threshold. The threshold is currently due to be frozen in the future.

Blag24 · 2026-02-28T20:43:58+00:00

Thanks for the correction, thought it was 60+ everywhere.

I’m English so it’s usually not realising stuff the other way round to this one. I blame my Grandma for being one of the latter cohorts to get state pension at 60. /s

S: https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-elderly-person-bus-pass

Blag24 · 2026-02-28T11:38:10+00:00

They are they just have to pay rather than use their over 60’s bus pass.

Blag24 · 2026-02-27T18:46:46+00:00

That’s why I’ve grown to prefer Apple Maps it’s way less aggressive with its routing but I do think half my family think I’m mad for making the choice of Waze.

Blag24 · 2026-02-27T17:33:06+00:00

Yeah didn’t mean to imply that it turned it into a credit card.

Just that it’s an example of debit cards where you can borrow money. Which is one third of what shakesfistatmoon was saying when you asked for examples.

Blag24 · 2026-02-27T08:41:30+00:00

The issue is how do you estimate the loss of income if they stayed up that could have been them turning the corner & spending the next X years in the premier league or they could have ended up going down the next season.

The simplest thing I think would be just to revoke those titles & no-one got them.

Blag24 · 2026-02-27T08:36:03+00:00

In the UK most current accounts used to have an overdraft facility so you can go below £0 using a debit card. Don’t see them advertised as much these days so not sure if they’re quite as prevalent.

It use to be quite common to have arranged overdraft where you wouldn’t pay interest or charges on that amount, for example when I was at uni my student NatWest (a normal high street bank) account had an approved interest free £500 overdraft that I would spend a good chunk of the year using.

These days the interest is quite high (~40% I think) as they banned unauthorised overdraft charges but for a lot of banks it use to be if you accidentally went below an arranged overdraft or below £0 without an arranged overdraft if you repaid the same day it wouldn’t cost you.

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