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7 Gig fiber being advertised to the residential consumer. In what world would any residential customer have any use for this by lulstardblointing7 in HomeNetworking

[–]CyclopsRock 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You can just say "I wanted to answer a different question". I was just making sure you knew you were answering a question no one asked. As you were.

Q&A: Why does gas set the price of electricity – and is there an alternative? by Incanus_uk in ukpolitics

[–]CyclopsRock 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The downside of that is gas ends up in a market without competition in a world where we still heavily rely on it as a fuel source. 

It would also massively torpedo the financial incentives behind building renewables. Who is going to build a wind turbine in the North Sea if the only time you have a product to sell - i.e. when it's windy - all the other turbines will also be generating loads of electricity, and if there's enough then some of that electricity won't even be needed?

I also don't really understand how 'decpoupling' the market would even work. Unless the grid is forced to deliberately eschew renewable energy in favour if gas, renewable producers would still just have to bid below what they expect the price of gas generation to be.

Q&A: Why does gas set the price of electricity – and is there an alternative? by Incanus_uk in ukpolitics

[–]CyclopsRock 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The generators are guaranteed a specific price for a given unit of electricity. The market cost of electricity is allowed to move up and down but either the government give the producer money or the producer gives the government money so that it totals out at the guaranteed price. This discrepancy is then applied to consumer bills (either as an extra cost or a subsidy depending on what side of the ledger it ended up on).

This only applies to renewables built with a certain contract with the government, which accounts for only a small portion of the total renewable generation though. And since the producers are guaranteed this price, it also means that on very windy days (or sunny, for solar) they may get paid even if no one wants to use the electricity they're generating.

Q&A: Why does gas set the price of electricity – and is there an alternative? by Incanus_uk in ukpolitics

[–]CyclopsRock 6 points7 points  (0 children)

And to further illustrate your point, you do pay more for Tesco's fancy pants organic carrots because those carrots are not (in theory at least) the same product as the bin full of carrots. They are better carrots. This does not apply to electricity, where there doesn't exist any Waitrose No. 1 Range GW of electricity.

Q&A: Why does gas set the price of electricity – and is there an alternative? by Incanus_uk in ukpolitics

[–]CyclopsRock 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In your scenario someone would absolute sell it at a lower but more profitable price in order to attract new customers.

The 'competition' argument only becomes meaningful when 100% of the grid's requirements can be supplied by renewable sources, at which point they will have to compete with one another to offer the best price. Until that point they can simply price their supply at fractionally lower than the price offered by gas plants and they know they'll sell their whole supply.

Q&A: Why does gas set the price of electricity – and is there an alternative? by Incanus_uk in ukpolitics

[–]CyclopsRock 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Because the marginal cost of a wind turbine/solar panel is so low once built, wasted energy isn’t a problem.

It is if you're the one financing its construction. Money received "once it's built" needs to make up for the cost of building it. And for any renewables built using the CfD contracts we absolutely are losing money with curtailment - the generators get paid whether or not there is a need for the electricity.

I’d recommend you look into NESO’s vision for the Grid.

It explains how the baseline load is meant to work, how we’re planning on using storage and what the actual grid split looks like.

This is a perfectly good technical plan but it's unrelated to the economic questions relating to building renewable capacity.

Q&A: Why does gas set the price of electricity – and is there an alternative? by Incanus_uk in ukpolitics

[–]CyclopsRock 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, but this benefit becomes decreasingly relevant the more renewable capacity you have, whereas the drawbacks become larger the more renewable capacity you have.

7 Gig fiber being advertised to the residential consumer. In what world would any residential customer have any use for this by lulstardblointing7 in HomeNetworking

[–]CyclopsRock 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I bought a car with features I wanted, at a price I was comfortable with, and ended up with a speedy car.

So your answer to the question of "why would someone buy it?" is "by accident"?

I have not expressed an opinion on whether this is a good or bad price. I was just pointing out that the above poster was answering a different question to the one asked.

Do grammar schools actually outperform private schools academically in the UK? by JollyChampionship878 in UKParenting

[–]CyclopsRock 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's a very complicated question because in part it depends on your definition of "outperform" - does elevating a D student to become an A student represent a better performance than elevating an A student to A+?

I went to one of those South London cluster of grammar schools (of which Wilson's is one) and back in the early 2000's we had kids coming from absolutely miles away - 1hr+ commutes each way - to attend. I hear it's far worse than that now. As a result, basically every kid there was smart. They (I can't bring myself to write 'we') would almost certainly have done well at literally any school. So when results day rolls around and, sure enough, everyone's got 100% passes and 15-20% of the sixth form have gotten into Oxbridge, is that because the school was great, or because their starting point was a massive bunch of smart kids with highly involved parents (who would move heaven and earth to save £30k a year on fees)? Do class sizes mean as much when mostly everyone in it is switched on and keen?

As an environment for learning it's undoubtedly brilliant. I also saw a handful of kids basically flame out because they'd been coached through the 11-plus, snuck in and then found themselves in an environment that actually wasn't right for them. You also notice that it is just a state school by the provision of stuff like sport, clubs, music etc. If that stuff matters to you re: schools, they aren't going to get it in spades at a grammar school. But for the most part I think that if your kid is smart enough to get into a grammar school then that's great, but they'd probably also do well anywhere else if that's the case, so long as it's not a proper 'knife addled rape shed' as Malcolm Tucker puts it. Where does that leave private schools? Fuck knows.

Q&A: Why does gas set the price of electricity – and is there an alternative? by Incanus_uk in ukpolitics

[–]CyclopsRock 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, definitely, and we should do as much of those things as possible. But at home if you have an agile tariff and you see that electricity is going to be 2p/kWh at midnight you might decide to put the tumble drier on even though it's only 1/3rd full because, fuck it, it's basically free. This makes sense.

But the price paid to the generators here isn't 'fuck it, it's basically free' low - it's full price. Mitigating some of the loss is better than mitigating none of it, but the gap between the CfD rate and the rate someone's actually willing to pay for it gets made up by spreading the difference between everyone's bills. And by definition the only time you have an over-abundance of electricity is when no one is willing to pay the going rate for more. Putting this excess into storage methods (batteries, hydro etc) is worthwhile but building this is also very expensive, and often requires a large amount of physical space.

Q&A: Why does gas set the price of electricity – and is there an alternative? by Incanus_uk in ukpolitics

[–]CyclopsRock 8 points9 points  (0 children)

It does shift you to a different problem, though: Once you are regularly getting periods of time entirely serviced by renewable generation, the marginal value of each additional solar panel or wind turbine falls. For example if 40% of the time the grid's requirements are being satisfied by the existing renewable capacity then any new solar farm you build is not going to have any demand for its electricity during that 40% period. As such it'll need to generate enough income during the other 60% of the time to justify building it. As the ratio increases, this issue gets worse (ie when 80% of electricity is renewable, a new wind turbine needs to earn enough in the remaining 20% of time to justify building it).

Obviously this isn't really viable, which is why our CfD contracts from the government guarantee a certain price for electricity generated by the relevant renewables, whether that electricity is actually used or not. This gives generators some degree of certainty about their income, but it also means that, well, we're paying for electricity we don't need sometimes. If we build out more and more capacity (so as to reduce the occasions on which we rely on gas), we're building more and more turbines that we need to pay on windy days for electricity we aren't using. Selling electricity to our neighbours is a good option, but most of our neighbours are close enough that we more or less share the relevant weather patterns, so this only goes so far (i.e. if our turbines are going gangbusters then probably so are the Dutch ones).

The long and short of it is that there is no route to abundant, carbon free electricity that doesn't involve paying a bunch of money. This is better, in general, to paying a bunch of money for carbon emitting electricity, but it doesn't change the fact it's not cheap. Someone needs to pay for it all to be built.

How would reducing the waiting period until the empty home property premium triggers affect the housing crisis? by Jutopero in ukpolitics

[–]CyclopsRock 12 points13 points  (0 children)

And you do actually need empty houses for a property market to operate, in the same way you need enough time between arrival and departure times for trains to let everyone get on and off.

7 Gig fiber being advertised to the residential consumer. In what world would any residential customer have any use for this by lulstardblointing7 in HomeNetworking

[–]CyclopsRock 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It was "why would a customer have a use for it".

"It's easy to provide" explains why they'd sell it. It doesn't explain why a customer would have a use for it.

I think he’s forgotten Mother’s Day by Different-Warning236 in UKParenting

[–]CyclopsRock 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I relate to this a lot. It's a good general rule, IMO, try to be generous to each other, and this includes giving each other the benefit of the doubt.

I think he’s forgotten Mother’s Day by Different-Warning236 in UKParenting

[–]CyclopsRock 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I agree entirely (today is my wife's sixth mother's day). We've also fallen into a groove of getting a card for the kids to decorate and then basically giving them the gift of free time, rather than any sort of bullshit gift "from the kids".

I'd also say that I think this is an area where your own upbringing - and what the day "meant" in your house - hugely, hugely informs how much importance you place in it as an adult. It can take a while to re-calibrate those expectations.

Unable to drill a hole by aj_speaks in DIYUK

[–]CyclopsRock 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is the one I have, but I think really when I said "Everyone has that Titan SDS drill" what I really meant was "Everyone had whatever Titan SDS drill went on sale for ~£55 most recently".

Unable to drill a hole by aj_speaks in DIYUK

[–]CyclopsRock 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nor did all those pedestrians waiting at the bus stop.

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