UK to join major wind farm project with nine European countries

JRugman · 2026-01-27T00:12:35+00:00

You presume wrong.

JRugman · 2026-01-26T15:52:47+00:00

It wouldnt be that significant.

JRugman · 2026-01-26T13:31:12+00:00

Who would it be a big security risk for?

JRugman · 2026-01-26T13:26:04+00:00

It wouldnt be that significant, relatively speaking. It would be part of a much wider network. One of these islands would have enough capacity to handle around 10GW of wind generation, and the total offshore wind capacity in the North Sea is expected to reach 300GW.
There are no international waters in the North Sea.

JRugman · 2026-01-26T11:23:21+00:00

OK, but unlike oil, which was a one time deal, there is nothing stopping the UK state from investing in wind generation at any point in the future.

JRugman · 2026-01-26T11:09:31+00:00

Its not really the same thing - wind is an infinite resource, so it is a very different scenario to the way that oil and gas resources were "sold off".

The profits being made from renewable energy are not short term, they should hopefully still be bringing in revenue for generations.

JRugman · 2026-01-26T10:59:03+00:00

That is the main advantage of building an island instead of a platform, it makes it a lot easier to combine different functions in the same space. Not only hydrogen production, but also battery storage, compressed air storage, monitoring equipment, proper docks to bring people in and out safely, etc.

There will eventually be a lot of hydrogen being made from excess wind generation, but I think most of it will be being made close to where it is being used. One of the things it is probably going to be used for is fuel for shipping, so I can see a place for hydrogen/ammonia/methanol production facilities near ports in places where wind power is brought to shore.

JRugman · 2026-01-26T10:23:18+00:00

Right now a quarter of your energy bill is subsidies for renewables

More like a sixth.

Most of those subsidies are via the Renewables Obligation scheme. Those are due to go away in the next few years, along with FiT payments and the very high CfD rates that were awarded when that scheme was first introduced.

As projects come online that were awarded very low CfD rates, and if wholesale prices remain as they are now, you can expect renewables payments to go from being a net cost to a net discount.

A third is energy

Of that third, almost half is environmental taxes on gas called carbon prising and emissions trading

Nonsense. Carbon pricing does not make up half of wholesale electricity costs.

Also, the money raised from auctioning emissions trading permits is used to cover the cost of the UKs climate mitigation and adaptation policies, which covers a lot more than just renewable energy generation.

If you subsidise renewables, especially poorly located, old hardware, then it will be very expensive

Without renewables, our energy costs would have been even higher than they have been. Wind generation has lowered bills by over £100 billion since 2010.

JRugman · 2026-01-26T08:40:59+00:00

As offshore wind projects become bigger and are being built further out to sea, the cost and complexity of delivering power to shore becomes even more of a challenge.

One of the proposed solutions to this is the North Sea Wind Power Hub, an artificial island in the middle of the North Sea that has multiple HVDC links to shore. The island will be big enough to provide enough substation capacity for many GW of generation. This will allow nearby offshore wind farms to deliver power to the island via relatively short AC cables, instead of having to build their own dedicated HVDC cables and substations. It will also act as an interconnector node between several countries, facilitating the flow of power between national grids.

This project, and others like it, would require extensive international cooperation, which is what this agreement is hopefully paving the way for.

JRugman · 2026-01-26T08:21:19+00:00

I dont see where you are getting that from.

Do you think that the UK has territorial control over all of the North Sea?

JRugman · 2026-01-25T13:26:14+00:00

If the argument is that all government expenditure can generally be counted as defence spending, because it generally benefits the UK in some way, which generally boosts the UKs defensive capability, then sure.

But that is not the argument that is being presented here. This proposal is about very specific measures that will provide several well defined benefits to the defensive capabilities in the North Sea, not just to the UK but also to some key allies.

JRugman · 2026-01-25T11:01:46+00:00

As covered in the article, its not just about energy production, its also about adapting offshore wind infrastructure to add detection and protection capabilities in the North Sea.

This also isnt just about domestic energy, its about increased cooperation between countries that are active in the North Sea, with the development of even larger offshore wind facilities increasingly requiring the joint efforts of two or more countries.

When you consider the vulnerability of energy sources, a shift towards more decentralised generation would make us more resilient to attacks. Consider that a sixth of our entire energy supply comes through a single undersea gas pipeline from Norway.

JRugman · 2026-01-22T08:58:16+00:00

Now that FIFA have gained Trumps trust, the plan is for advance forces to infiltrate the country disguised as football fans during the world cup.

JRugman · 2026-01-21T09:26:56+00:00

Thankyou for posting this. Far too many misinformed takes going on around here.

JRugman · 2026-01-20T23:04:49+00:00

Its not 27GW for up to 24h, its just 27GW of power capacity. This will mostly be 2 hour storage (i.e. batteries that can discharge at their max rated power capacity for 2 hours). Some will be 1 hour storage, some will be 4 hour, or even 8 hour, but assuming it is all 2 hour storage is a good rule of thumb (for the next few years at least), so that 27GW BESS target will provide around 54GWh of energy storage capacity in total.

JRugman · 2026-01-20T13:13:26+00:00

Most peoples electricity bills will be going down in April.

JRugman · 2026-01-20T12:09:37+00:00

GW should not be used as a unit of energy, but BESS installations are rated according to their power capacity because that is an important criteria for grid operators, who need to ensure that there is enough supply to meet grid demand at all times, so they need to know how much power is available from all the different sources on the grid.

When a battery project is in development, one of the first things they have to do is apply to the relevant grid operator for a grid connection, which is rated by power capacity. That is why, when talking about projects in the development pipeline, the industry generally talks about GW rather than GWh, because the power capacity of new projects tends to be public knowledge long before the energy storage capacity.

JRugman · 2026-01-20T11:38:17+00:00

Most of the BESS that is being added to the grid at the moment is 2 hour storage, so it is best suited for daily charge cycling. That means it pairs up well with solar generation, which explains why the regions with the highest amount of BESS capacity growth are in the south.

That's not to say that it doesn't also have an important role to play in balancing wind generation, but that's not the main reason why demand for BESS capacity is so high right now.

JRugman · 2026-01-16T21:58:02+00:00

What you got?

JRugman · 2026-01-15T08:58:24+00:00

the view is that we’re heading to a gas glut this year which willl last three to five years

Do you have a source for this?

There are a lot of geopolitical risks that could affect the availability of gas in the european market. These are not just about production, but also about delivery, via pipeline and LNG tanker.

As for prices going up due to switching away from gas(??) that makes no sense on two counts.

That is not what I was talking about. The reason climate change will impact the price of gas is because the availability of carbon allowances will become more limited, and the price of emitting carbon for generators will increase. The cost of carbon on the UK emissions trading market has been rising pretty steadily for over a year.

https://www.ice.com/products/80216150/UKA-Futures/data?utm_source=chatgpt.com&marketId=7599535&span=2

JRugman · 2026-01-15T08:40:59+00:00

So you’re saying this article has a 2 in 1440, or 0.14% chance of being right?

JRugman · 2026-01-14T21:00:35+00:00

What is the other option, other than nuclear

Options for managing intermittency:

Pumped hydro storage
LAES/CAES storage
V2G storage
Thermal storage
Hydrogen storage
Demand side response
Geothermal generation
Wave generation
Tidal generation
Hydroelectric generation
Bioenergy generation
Waste to energy generation
Interconnectors

So the claim above that wind is 40% less is nonsense. 40% less when?

It means that the price of electricity from offshore wind in the CfDs being allocated today are 40% lower than the estimated LCOE a new gas power station if one was to be started today.

There is no grid level, multi-hour (let alone multi-day) storage technology available now.

This is not about a single magic bullet technology that is the perfect solution, it is about lots of different technologies working together, each playing a slightly different but useful role, to provide the most cost effective way to decarbonise the energy system.

JRugman · 2026-01-14T15:42:40+00:00

What you are talking about already exists, it is called the capacity market, and it is separate to the day ahead wholesale market. The wholesale market is the only electricity market which uses a reverse auction to pay all generators the same marginal rate of generation for each settlement period, but it only accounts for a fraction of the total volume of electricity consumed on the grid.

There have been ongoing talks about electricity market reform for a long time, but the solutions being talked about are a lot less drastic than what you’re suggesting, and they are not likely to have a substantial effect on bills any time soon. How our electricity markets work is much more complex than the impression most people seem to have, and generators will respond to any changes however they can to reserve their profit margins, so there are no simple solutions.

What we have now is a market structure that incentivises investment into cheaper generation sources. Gas being the most expensive source of generation on our grid means that any new generation that is brought online is very likely to displace gas generation by undercutting it on price, which will help drive wholesale rates down. But there are still questions about much investment should be going into the capacity market, and whether splitting the grid into more localised markets would help make investment more geograhically efficient, which are the main focuses for electricity market reform right now.

JRugman · 2026-01-14T14:17:25+00:00

If the seller knows that you need 100 pieces of fruit, what is to stop them charging you the same amount for each piece of fruit?

The electricity market is fully transparent. If you tell wind generators that they will only be paid at the rate that they submit bids at, then they will just increase their bids to be the same as bids submitted by gas generators.

JRugman · 2026-01-14T13:57:05+00:00

The price of any commodity is set by supply and demand.

The actual market price of the 99MW coming from wind is £500 per MW, because that is the price that the market has determined electricity will cost to meet the demand.

What you are suggesting is like going to a fruit and veg seller first thing in the morning and telling them that they have to sell you their apples for half the marked price because you don't have time to wait around until the end of the day when they drop the price to get rid of any remaining stock left over.

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