Peoples Energy: any experiences and/or knowledge of this supplier please?

[rogerzilla]

My gas & electric has gone from £65 to £98 a month, which isn't too bad.  It's mostly electricity, which is stupendously expensive given that I use very little of it.  Logs have gone up about 10%, but usually get cheaper in the summer.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Run out of room for more plants then?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-60821657

Could do with some more pumped storage here though.

We really, really need more pumped storage.

As I see it, the medium term problem isn't generating electricity, it is storing it.

Very big hydro schemes are problematic, but pumped hydro storage isn't anywhere near as bad.

There are lots of companies jumping on the bandwagon, but very few stand up to scrutiny (yes, I'm looking at you, concrete-crane block stackers).

[felstedrider]

Run out of room for more plants then?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-60821657

Could do with some more pumped storage here though.

We really, really need more pumped storage.

As I see it, the medium term problem isn't generating electricity, it is storing it.

Very big hydro schemes are problematic, but pumped hydro storage isn't anywhere near as bad.

There are lots of companies jumping on the bandwagon, but very few stand up to scrutiny (yes, I'm looking at you, concrete-crane block stackers).

Lots of battery projects out there seeming to be getting financed.   I have looked at a pumped storage project in Wales a couple of times.   It has planning permission but a 2 year build time and a pretty big capital requirement so I think batteries represent a better and quicker return for funders.

I did see the weights-based storage solution but I also saw something with compressed air and old salt caverns.   I'm not sure I believe that anyone can re-invent the market but people still seem to be trying.

[Frank9755]

People have tried to use the old salt caverns for a variety of things over the years.  I've seen business plans advocating them as the ideal sites for things including document storage (very dry) and for gas (airtight).

A decade or more ago I worked on the sale of British Salt, which owned a lot of the caverns.  Shortly after I was cycling in Gran Canaria and got chatting to a guy who was a chartered surveyor in Cheshire.  He mentioned he was doing a lot of work due to subsidence because of salt caverns!  This issue conspicuously did not arise during the sale.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Run out of room for more plants then?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-60821657

Could do with some more pumped storage here though.

We really, really need more pumped storage.

As I see it, the medium term problem isn't generating electricity, it is storing it.

Very big hydro schemes are problematic, but pumped hydro storage isn't anywhere near as bad.

There are lots of companies jumping on the bandwagon, but very few stand up to scrutiny (yes, I'm looking at you, concrete-crane block stackers).

Lots of battery projects out there seeming to be getting financed.   I have looked at a pumped storage project in Wales a couple of times.   It has planning permission but a 2 year build time and a pretty big capital requirement so I think batteries represent a better and quicker return for funders.

I did see the weights-based storage solution but I also saw something with compressed air and old salt caverns.   I'm not sure I believe that anyone can re-invent the market but people still seem to be trying.

The weights based think just doesn't stack up (sic). There is relatively little energy stored - they also have a problem with the stacking reducing the potential energy that can be recovered (as the 'down' stack gets higher, the 'storage' stack gets lower).

Some of the compressed air solutions look good. Not trying to invent radically new systems, but combine currently available technology in a way to increase efficiency. They will remain relatively small-scale though.

Vanadium batteries are promising; relatively cheap, but lower efficiency. That doesn't matter too much if you have an excess of power. They are being used for farm-scale installations in Australia.

[felstedrider]

There's no subsidy scheme for batteries or storage so you need to rely on market forces.   If you look at where the market cleared for tomorrow, the lowest price over night is £177, it goes up to £251 in the morning pick up, drops to £174 across the middle of the day and then hits £308 in the evening.   This indicates you could cycle the battery twice in a day but, as usual, it's not as simple as that.

When importing you have to pay supplier costs of up to £50 which closes the spread up a lot.   Also efficiencies are something like 95% so you lose a bit more on the round trip.

Suppliers are offering 10 year warranties and guaranteed levels of degradation but no-one has had one in operation long enough to see if these are realistic.   There's a decent amount of interest from the investment community but it's a different model to renewables build.

[Sergeant Pluck]

My gas & electric has gone from £65 to £98 a month, which isn't too bad.  It's mostly electricity, which is stupendously expensive given that I use very little of it.  Logs have gone up about 10%, but usually get cheaper in the summer.

Ours has gone from £89 to £155, flexible. The fixed tariffs are now £220-230. I’ll stay put.

[FifeingEejit]

Cruachan is 440MW
Cruachan 2 will be 600MW
But they'll both run off the same head of power
Which can hold 8.8Gwh

Foyers is 300Mw from 6.5Gwh of storage

I've found info about 2 planned Battery storage schemes one atKincardine (Longannet) one at Hunterston (Hunterston B), both will have a capacity of a whopping 400MWh, no mention of peak delivery.

No mention of when Drax expect Cruachan 2 to come on line (Seems to be at planning stage), but the 2 battery systems were approved around the same time Drax submitted their proposal for planning and reckon 2024 on-line.

No mention of how much space the batteries take up, but I'd suspect there's more capacity available from hollowing out mountains than plonking batteries everywhere.

[Kim]

Batteries have the advantage that they can react instantaneously to grid conditions, where hydro takes seconds, so it's useful to have some battery storage.

[felstedrider]

Dinorwig can go from 0 to 500MW in 8 seconds.

Batteries have been used for balancing contracts such as fast frequency and dynamic containment for a while, but Grid are changing the rules soon to shorter term procurement, so they will be harder to finance.   Co location with solar seems to be becoming popular as you can share the grid costs.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Batteries have the advantage that they can react instantaneously to grid conditions, where hydro takes seconds, so it's useful to have some battery storage.

I'd imagine that having some flywheel storage at the hydro plant could smooth out that reaction time.

[MikeFromLFE]

I've found info about 2 planned Battery storage schemes one atKincardine (Longannet) one at Hunterston (Hunterston B), both will have a capacity of a whopping 400MWh, no mention of peak delivery..
/snip/
No mention of how much space the batteries take up, but I'd suspect there's more capacity available from hollowing out mountains than plonking batteries everywhere.

There's a 50MW battery storage unit being built on prime farmland not far from me.
I can't find the exact area it covers, but there's a LOT of earthworks and it's being under construction for quite a long time.
Google Enderby Battery Storage if you're interested.
I suspect there are quite a few of these smaller developments around the country, almost under the radar.

[Kim]

Batteries have the advantage that they can react instantaneously to grid conditions, where hydro takes seconds, so it's useful to have some battery storage.

I'd imagine that having some flywheel storage at the hydro plant could smooth out that reaction time.

Batteries sound more convenient than flywheels.  Especially if they can be used to black start things.

[rogerzilla]

DRUPS in data centres can be a PITA.  In theory they save on the cost and environmental impact* of replacing tons of lead-acid batteries every 10 years, but the bearings go instead and you have to take a UPS offline to replace them.

*not too bad, as they are 99% recycled

[andyoxon]

National grid currently on 67% fossil fuel...  https://grid.iamkate.com/

edit.

[Ripio]

Is anyone else who was with People's Energy and moved to BG getting bizarre billing statements and payment requests from BG that seem to bear little resemblance to what they should be?

[robgul]

Is anyone else who was with People's Energy and moved to BG getting bizarre billing statements and payment requests from BG that seem to bear little resemblance to what they should be?

My experience with BG is for random and confusing billing over the past 20 years BUT if you fathom out what they are asking/getting it's correct to the tariff I'm on.   

We changed at our new house from AVRO to BG in Feb and Mar 21 - it took a while to get the BG billing sorted.  BG installed Smart Meters in Julv21 and that seemed to confuse them too - stopping the account at the old readings and resatrting at zero.

Our billing is "pay for consumption" not DD and supposed to be billed monthly - it seems that they bill quartery (just like the good old days!) - from a cash perspective we're fortunate that the seasonal variations aren't an issue - the upside is that we aren't at risk of running up big DD credits with them.

[Polar Bear]

Is anyone else who was with People's Energy and moved to BG getting bizarre billing statements and payment requests from BG that seem to bear little resemblance to what they should be?

Yes, we have.

[ian]

I think that's BG's normal billing process. Welcome. Every fourth bill comes by SMS, the other randomly by email or post. The app, of course, seems perpetually in submit-a-reading mode, even though we've had a smart meter for probably two or more years. It's the usual mishmash of systems behind the scenes I suppose. I have detailed my battle with EDF at a previous property (the book is with my agent), trying to get them to stop sending bills to the 'Meter Attached the Wall...' which the postman would diligently deliver for the wind to undeliver. That was never resolved in seven years. Probably isn't now. Mind you, someone there told me they use SAP for all this, which explains a lot.

[felstedrider]

I think that's BG's normal billing process. Welcome. Every fourth bill comes by SMS, the other randomly by email or post. The app, of course, seems perpetually in submit-a-reading mode, even though we've had a smart meter for probably two or more years. It's the usual mishmash of systems behind the scenes I suppose. I have detailed my battle with EDF at a previous property (the book is with my agent), trying to get them to stop sending bills to the 'Meter Attached the Wall...' which the postman would diligently deliver for the wind to undeliver. That was never resolved in seven years. Probably isn't now. Mind you, someone there told me they use SAP for all this, which explains a lot.

BGs problems stemmed from a list of acquisitions they made leaving them with 2 billing systems.   They tried and failed to amalgamate everything and migrate to SAP, hiring Accenture to manage the process.   At one point they were suing each other  for failing to deliver and the project costs were eye watering.

They did a deal with Ensek to migrate onto their 'end-to-end' platform but I'm not sure if that's complete or not.   It is by far the biggest deal Ensek have ever done.

Slightly OT but Octopus's in-house system - Kraken - is now rated so highly that Eon have bought it.

[andyoxon]

...
Slightly OT but Octopus's in-house system - Kraken - is now rated so highly that Eon have bought it.

Not sure if this is the engine behind the Octopus website, but I continue to be impressed with the info / functionality (compared to opaque AVRO/ SSE - a few yrs ago).  e.g. As soon as one submits meter readings, the new account credit or debit status is immediately updated.  Just submitted new readings after 12 days, and credit reduced by ~£20.  ~£170 DD to go out in a few days.

[felstedrider]

...
Slightly OT but Octopus's in-house system - Kraken - is now rated so highly that Eon have bought it.

Not sure if this is the engine behind the Octopus website, but I continue to be impressed with the info / functionality (compared to opaque AVRO/ SSE - a few yrs ago).  e.g. As soon as one submits meter readings, the new account credit or debit status is immediately updated.  Just submitted new readings after 12 days, and credit reduced by ~£20.  ~£170 DD to go out in a few days.

Yes, the web portal writes to the internal systems.   I was a customer for a while and quite impressed.

[Kim]

...
Slightly OT but Octopus's in-house system - Kraken - is now rated so highly that Eon have bought it.

Not sure if this is the engine behind the Octopus website, but I continue to be impressed with the info / functionality (compared to opaque AVRO/ SSE - a few yrs ago).  e.g. As soon as one submits meter readings, the new account credit or debit status is immediately updated.  Just submitted new readings after 12 days, and credit reduced by ~£20.  ~£170 DD to go out in a few days.

Also impressed that they provide a REST API for us mortals to do clever things with: https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/

[andyoxon]

After the first hiked DD of ~£170, we were ~£175 in credit.  Octopus have easy balance adjustment web page which is pretty good.  Can withdraw funds so as to leave 'recommended amount' in account based on time of yr / consumption.  I left recommended £75 in, and withdrew the £100 back to bk acct.  Can withdraw more of balance by email if needed.

[fd3]

I want to change to Octopus from Shell.  How/when can I do this without it costing teh erth?  When they say that you get moved to a cap rate, if we move now will the octopus bill be the same as the one I am on now come the next price increase?