Is your energy supplier going bust?

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IvanV
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by IvanV » Mon Oct 11, 2021 3:58 pm

purplehaze wrote:
Sat Oct 09, 2021 11:12 am
I've had two speculative letters from companies wanting to install heat pumps - 'FREE OF CHARGE'
This can be true, if you have the right house. But be careful of what you wish for.

There is a government grant available to support the installation of heat pumps. Depending upon the size of the job - usually has to be about an average 3-bed house - and a sufficiently straightforward installation, then it can work out that the grant is sufficient to cover the cost of the heat pump and its installation.

It will be an air source heat pump, so a backwards aircon unit. Ground source heat pumps are a lot more expensive and the grant does not cover the full cost of those.

But there are two important issues as to whether this "free heat pump" is worth it:

Will you be sufficiently warm if you have an air source heat pump?
What will it cost to run?

Air source heat pumps deliver lower grade heat than your gas boiler, so the water in your rads will not be as hot. Unless your house is very well insulated, or your rads are seriously oversized for the current job, you might not be warm enough during the coldest part of the year. Unless your house is already arranged to the very high standards of insulation of recently built new houses, it might be very expensive to upgrade the insulation sufficiently, and/or increase size of the rads, such that the air source heat pump does the job. New houses with a heat pump would typically choose underfloor heating, or fanned air heating such as more commonly found in commercial premises, rather than conventional rads, so that the lower grade heat can do its job without being obtrusive with big rads. Many people choose to have a supplementary source of heat for the coldest days of the winter if they have an air source heat pump. It is mainly installed at locations off the gas grid, where they cannot access the cheap price of piped gas. It is most popular in places like SW Wales and SW Scotland where they have mild winters and no piped gas.

The heat uprate of a good air source heatpump is a factor of 3 - ie it pumps 3 times as much heat as it uses. But in recent times electricity has generally been about 5 times the cost of gas per kWh. Modern gas boilers run 90% efficient, so in money the ratio is about 4.5:3 rather than 5:3. But in general that means that running a heat pump costs 50% more in money to get the same amount of useful heat, on average.

Currently the prices of electricity and gas are all over the place and it remains to be seen where they will settle down. If a large increase in the price of gas becomes settled, then I would expect the elec:gas price ratio to fall from its current 5:1 to something a bit lower. But it needs to get below 3.3:1 for heat pumps to become cheaper to run than a gas boiler in the same house.

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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by mediocrity511 » Wed Oct 13, 2021 7:12 pm

Well that's my Energy supplier gone, Pure Planet. They were hedged into spring but it looks like BP pulled their funding. I must admit to being slightly naive and not even realising they were funded by BP when I signed up.

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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by science_fox » Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:23 pm

IvanV wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 3:58 pm
purplehaze wrote:
Sat Oct 09, 2021 11:12 am
I've had two speculative letters from companies wanting to install heat pumps - 'FREE OF CHARGE'
This can be true, if you have the right house. But be careful of what you wish for.

There is a government grant available to support the installation of heat pumps. Depending upon the size of the job - usually has to be about an average 3-bed house - and a sufficiently straightforward installation, then it can work out that the grant is sufficient to cover the cost of the heat pump and its installation.

It will be an air source heat pump, so a backwards aircon unit. Ground source heat pumps are a lot more expensive and the grant does not cover the full cost of those.

But there are two important issues as to whether this "free heat pump" is worth it:

Will you be sufficiently warm if you have an air source heat pump?
What will it cost to run?

Air source heat pumps deliver lower grade heat than your gas boiler, so the water in your rads will not be as hot. Unless your house is very well insulated, or your rads are seriously oversized for the current job, you might not be warm enough during the coldest part of the year. Unless your house is already arranged to the very high standards of insulation of recently built new houses, it might be very expensive to upgrade the insulation sufficiently, and/or increase size of the rads, such that the air source heat pump does the job. New houses with a heat pump would typically choose underfloor heating, or fanned air heating such as more commonly found in commercial premises, rather than conventional rads, so that the lower grade heat can do its job without being obtrusive with big rads. Many people choose to have a supplementary source of heat for the coldest days of the winter if they have an air source heat pump. It is mainly installed at locations off the gas grid, where they cannot access the cheap price of piped gas. It is most popular in places like SW Wales and SW Scotland where they have mild winters and no piped gas.

The heat uprate of a good air source heatpump is a factor of 3 - ie it pumps 3 times as much heat as it uses. But in recent times electricity has generally been about 5 times the cost of gas per kWh. Modern gas boilers run 90% efficient, so in money the ratio is about 4.5:3 rather than 5:3. But in general that means that running a heat pump costs 50% more in money to get the same amount of useful heat, on average.

Currently the prices of electricity and gas are all over the place and it remains to be seen where they will settle down. If a large increase in the price of gas becomes settled, then I would expect the elec:gas price ratio to fall from its current 5:1 to something a bit lower. But it needs to get below 3.3:1 for heat pumps to become cheaper to run than a gas boiler in the same house.
That's interesting and useful to know thanks.
Of course it neglects to include the externalities cost of preventing climate change and how much extra you'd have to pay for the increased risk of flooding/drought/food etc etc. I'll admit it could be tricky to calculate that as a per/month figure, what would you pay now to help avoid having to pay more later, which in turn pre-supposes that the generic 'you' has enough surplus income to make that choice.
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by dyqik » Fri Oct 15, 2021 3:48 pm

IvanV wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 3:58 pm

Air source heat pumps deliver lower grade heat than your gas boiler, so the water in your rads will not be as hot. Unless your house is very well insulated, or your rads are seriously oversized for the current job, you might not be warm enough during the coldest part of the year. Unless your house is already arranged to the very high standards of insulation of recently built new houses, it might be very expensive to upgrade the insulation sufficiently, and/or increase size of the rads, such that the air source heat pump does the job. New houses with a heat pump would typically choose underfloor heating, or fanned air heating such as more commonly found in commercial premises, rather than conventional rads, so that the lower grade heat can do its job without being obtrusive with big rads. Many people choose to have a supplementary source of heat for the coldest days of the winter if they have an air source heat pump. It is mainly installed at locations off the gas grid, where they cannot access the cheap price of piped gas. It is most popular in places like SW Wales and SW Scotland where they have mild winters and no piped gas.

The heat uprate of a good air source heatpump is a factor of 3 - ie it pumps 3 times as much heat as it uses. But in recent times electricity has generally been about 5 times the cost of gas per kWh. Modern gas boilers run 90% efficient, so in money the ratio is about 4.5:3 rather than 5:3. But in general that means that running a heat pump costs 50% more in money to get the same amount of useful heat, on average.
The actual achieved efficiency can be a bit more complex than this. My experience is with air source heat pumps and gas furnaces for forced hot air heating, but it should mostly be transferrable to forced hot water heating.

A typical gas boiler and radiator system is oversized for the heating system for 90-95% of the usage (it's sized for the coldest nights), and cycles on and off with the thermostat. It might have two levels of heat available, but it won't achieve the same efficiency in both levels. An air-source heat pump will cycle less, and newer ones are variable power, and throttle back rather than cycling, so that they run at a continuous lower output, which is generally more efficient than the maximum output power. By throttling back rather than cycling, there's less wastage of heat (heat loss through walls behind radiators or from pipes to places you don't need it increases with the temperature difference).

I think cooler radiators running continuously should give a better, more comfortable sensible heat, as it doesn't overheat the water or air, and doesn't fluctuate. With forced hot air, we also see benefits from the forced air being less dry (overly dry air is a bigger issue here than dampness in winter - we have to run humidifiers to prevent nose bleeds etc.), but I'm not sure what effects lower temperature radiators have on the more common issue of dampness in the UK.

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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by IvanV » Fri Oct 15, 2021 5:32 pm

science_fox wrote:
Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:23 pm
Of course it neglects to include the externalities cost of preventing climate change and how much extra you'd have to pay for the increased risk of flooding/drought/food etc etc. I'll admit it could be tricky to calculate that as a per/month figure, what would you pay now to help avoid having to pay more later, which in turn pre-supposes that the generic 'you' has enough surplus income to make that choice.
It is very noble of you to think about avoiding externalities. Especially in the case of climate change, where those externalities are particularly hard to value, and you are so unlikely to get any quid pro quo back from it within your lifetime.

Most of us are conditioned to avoid certain externalities. If it's a kind of cooperation, that we can gain some internal happiness from, even though we don't know the people we are cooperating with, then it can happen. It's most likely when the externality is nevertheless shared and experienced within a sufficiently narrow community. So, for example, most of us don't drop litter because we don't like being in places that are covered in litter. So there is a fairly immediate quid pro quo - we don't drop litter in places we go, and the cooperation allows us to avoid suffering too much dropped litter in the places we go. But that is because the quid pro quo operates in a narrow community - the people who go to those places - and the costs on us all are fairly similar. And there are some people who don't care less and drop litter regardless. And if there are too many of them then the cooperative equilibrium is disturbed and those places become heavily littered. When there was a strike by litter collectors at Victoria Station in London, 10 or 20 years ago, soon the concourse was drowning in littler. Litter was being dropped at a rate sufficient to completely cover the concourse to a depth of about 5cm per day. Apparently too many people pass through such a place to get a sense of community with the other passers-by.

For climate change, the community we require cooperation over is the whole world. And for most inhabitants of this planet, the cost to them of avoiding CO2 output is much higher than for us - maybe they will miss the opportunity of a more comfortable lifestlye from their present pretty dire existence, perhaps.

I have argued that it is very important for us wealthy nations to cut hard to have a demonstration effect, to show we care. Because only then will we persuade the large producers to curtail their output, so that they might avoid the large costs to themselves, as well as to all of us. For most of us, the potential benefit is beyond our lifetime. CO2 has a long residence time in the atmosphere.

Whilst a bit of feel-good goes a long way, for most of us our heating system is sufficiently high in cost and important for our comfort that these will be a large element of our decisions over them. I tried very hard to justify putting in a lower carbon heating system when I had to change my boiler 3 years ago. But the cost of being green was just too large - even though unlike most owners of solid-walled houses I have already drylined them on the inside with 50mm of insulation. That insulation decision (now 20 years old) was in fact the best value green thing I could do, saving me money as well as reducing CO2 output, and many people won't even do that.

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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by nekomatic » Fri Oct 15, 2021 6:41 pm

Gas boilers can do variable output for heating, and it’s a mystery to me why it’s not either required by regulation (as I believe it is in some European countries) or suggested by installers. I think the extra cost to put it on our system was less than two hundred quid, but we only got it because I was geeky enough to find out about it and get the installer to do it.
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by TopBadger » Wed Oct 27, 2021 7:23 am

My energy supplier isnt going bust but I just got an email telling me my fixed rate deal is coming to an end...

They've offered another fixed deal at +£700/yr over my last deal, or to go on standard variable rate which they project to be +£200/yr than current deal.

I think I'll go on the variable rate, thanks!
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by plodder » Wed Oct 27, 2021 7:40 am

IvanV wrote:
Fri Oct 15, 2021 5:32 pm
science_fox wrote:
Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:23 pm
Of course it neglects to include the externalities cost of preventing climate change and how much extra you'd have to pay for the increased risk of flooding/drought/food etc etc. I'll admit it could be tricky to calculate that as a per/month figure, what would you pay now to help avoid having to pay more later, which in turn pre-supposes that the generic 'you' has enough surplus income to make that choice.
It is very noble of you to think about avoiding externalities. Especially in the case of climate change, where those externalities are particularly hard to value, and you are so unlikely to get any quid pro quo back from it within your lifetime.

Most of us are conditioned to avoid certain externalities. If it's a kind of cooperation, that we can gain some internal happiness from, even though we don't know the people we are cooperating with, then it can happen. It's most likely when the externality is nevertheless shared and experienced within a sufficiently narrow community. So, for example, most of us don't drop litter because we don't like being in places that are covered in litter. So there is a fairly immediate quid pro quo - we don't drop litter in places we go, and the cooperation allows us to avoid suffering too much dropped litter in the places we go. But that is because the quid pro quo operates in a narrow community - the people who go to those places - and the costs on us all are fairly similar. And there are some people who don't care less and drop litter regardless. And if there are too many of them then the cooperative equilibrium is disturbed and those places become heavily littered <snip>
I love how high falutin’ disciplines like economics are completely underpinned by such cod psychology.

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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Wed Oct 27, 2021 9:39 am

Careful, you'll start giving examples of failed economic models ;)
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by Grumble » Wed Oct 27, 2021 8:02 pm

nekomatic wrote:
Fri Oct 15, 2021 6:41 pm
Gas boilers can do variable output for heating, and it’s a mystery to me why it’s not either required by regulation (as I believe it is in some European countries) or suggested by installers. I think the extra cost to put it on our system was less than two hundred quid, but we only got it because I was geeky enough to find out about it and get the installer to do it.
I’m getting an engineer to quote me for weather compensated control tomorrow. There’s a blanking plate on the front of the boiler where an extra controller slots in.

In other news another thing to think about when choosing your gas supplier is whether they have a contract with Cadent to allow them to fix problems they find. Apparently they’re not required to, so if Cadent (National Grid as was) find a leak they might have to leave you without gas. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by dyqik » Fri Oct 29, 2021 6:11 pm

Looks like Bulb is next up: linky

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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by IvanV » Sun Oct 31, 2021 10:46 pm

plodder wrote:
Wed Oct 27, 2021 7:40 am
IvanV wrote:
Fri Oct 15, 2021 5:32 pm
Most of us are conditioned to avoid certain externalities. If it's a kind of cooperation, that we can gain some internal happiness from, even though we don't know the people we are cooperating with, then it can happen. It's most likely when the externality is nevertheless shared and experienced within a sufficiently narrow community. So, for example, most of us don't drop litter because we don't like being in places that are covered in litter. So there is a fairly immediate quid pro quo - we don't drop litter in places we go, and the cooperation allows us to avoid suffering too much dropped litter in the places we go. But that is because the quid pro quo operates in a narrow community - the people who go to those places - and the costs on us all are fairly similar. And there are some people who don't care less and drop litter regardless. And if there are too many of them then the cooperative equilibrium is disturbed and those places become heavily littered <snip>
I love how high falutin’ disciplines like economics are completely underpinned by such cod psychology.
I thought it was an original analysis by me, though probably others have said similar things. It certainly isn't the kind of argument that commonly underpins economics. One notable and rare economist who did include such types of argument in her studies was Elinor Ostrom. She won a half share of a Nobel Prize for that kind of thing, one of only two women to obtain any share of a Nobel Prize for economics, mainly for her studies of "the commons", ie situations where numerous people share a common resource, such as common grazing. She remains largely ignored.

Taking the common assumptions of economics, the incentive is to drop litter, all of it, as fast as possible. There is a risk of a fine. But fines applied are so unusual it tends to make the news, so I doubt that is much of a consideration in practice. Certainly less than the risk of a parking fine or a speeding fine. Nevertheless, most of us are conditioned not to drop litter most of the time. If you disgree with my analysis of why we mostly don't, and why some of us do and where, then perhaps you would like to present an alternative analysis.

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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by lpm » Sun Oct 31, 2021 11:02 pm

What a load of nonsense.

Humans have loads of motivations. Cod psychology is basically taking one of the motives and spinning a narrative. Easier for morons and economists (I repeat myself) to do this than to consider the complex web of motivations.
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by bjn » Sun Oct 31, 2021 11:37 pm

Ivan, you have a hypothesis as to why most people don’t throw litter, how do you test it?

As LPM says, it’s a narrative, and an appealing one (personally I don’t throw letter because I don’t want to be an a..eh.le), but is it true?

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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by TopBadger » Mon Nov 01, 2021 6:35 pm

Grumble wrote:
Wed Oct 27, 2021 8:02 pm

In other news another thing to think about when choosing your gas supplier is whether they have a contract with Cadent to allow them to fix problems they find. Apparently they’re not required to, so if Cadent (National Grid as was) find a leak they might have to leave you without gas. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.
How do you know?
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by Grumble » Mon Nov 01, 2021 6:42 pm

TopBadger wrote:
Mon Nov 01, 2021 6:35 pm
Grumble wrote:
Wed Oct 27, 2021 8:02 pm

In other news another thing to think about when choosing your gas supplier is whether they have a contract with Cadent to allow them to fix problems they find. Apparently they’re not required to, so if Cadent (National Grid as was) find a leak they might have to leave you without gas. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.
How do you know?
I had Cadent at my house to sort a leak, and had a chat with the engineer.
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by IvanV » Thu Nov 04, 2021 12:04 am

bjn wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 11:37 pm
Ivan, you have a hypothesis as to why most people don’t throw litter, how do you test it?

As LPM says, it’s a narrative, and an appealing one (personally I don’t throw letter because I don’t want to be an a..eh.le), but is it true?
A very good and fair question.

LPM defines "Cod psychology is basically taking one of the motives and spinning a narrative." They (sorry don't know your pronoun, LPM) further comment: " Easier ... than to consider the complex web of motivations."

I'm afraid under that set of definitions, then the trade of economics must plead guilty to employing cod psychology a great deal of the time. But they would also argue that "cod psychology", so defined, can actually be a good and appropriate thing, and perhaps the best you can do. So although it is a pejorative name for it, that doesn't mean it is always bad, as I hope to try and show.

It is a reasonable mode of analysis, found also in the hard sciences, to ask "what is the size and effect of this particular mechanism?" In most real world situations, it is not the only thing happening. We often have to create specially controlled conditions to keep all else equal and assess it, which would rarely occur in nature. But then we know the contribution of that particular effect to what is going on, albeit that we would also need to know how cross-effects combine. So, also in economics, we can isolate a particular motivation, and analyse what the effect of that motivation would be, all other things held constant. We can also often quantify the effect, and show how it compares with the size other effects that are amenable to analyis and quantification in that particular situations. We economists do actually try to get data and quantify stuff, though the experiments are sadly often far from ideal, and there are often statistical identification problems that can be very hard to overcome.

There are clearly complex webs of motivation in most real-world situations. And many individuals behave in unique ways that are hard to characterise. Indeed their behaviour often seems perverse or irrational, to use a terms with pejorative overtones favoured by economists. Though a deeper analysis may find it perfectly explicable. But a bulk population can collectively behave in average ways that avoids a lot of the complexity, in a (very roughly) parallel way that bulk matter has average properties that are highly predictable even when the behaviour of individual atoms or molecules is much harder to explain. At other times, the exceptional and hard-to-explain behaviour of "irrational" individuals does have an effect on the bulk behaviour, which traditional bulk models overlook; but increasingly we understand this and try to take it into account, though typically it can be hard to quantify.

If we are to analyse anything at all, the situation needs to be amenable to analysis. So we will try to characterise what we consider to be the main motivations applying to a particular situation, and analyse their effect. In such a way, we hope to understand the main features of the situation, even if we cannot understand everything. It can be a great help, provide the signal to noise ratio to high enough.

Similar (very roughly) things go on in hard sciences, like civil engineers incorporating a safety factor of, typically 3, to account for the approximate nature of their calculation and random imperfections in construction materials and implementation.

In the particular case of litter, I chose an argument and motivation that Elinor Ostrom used in a parallel situation, and which she won a Nobel Prize for, and so I sought to apply it. It seemed to explain the key feature of what we actually see. I had internally been through the analysis that neither the standard economic cost/benefit explanation, nor the criminal fine/risk argument seemed to explain what we actually see, whereas this Ostrom-esque argument seemed to explain the key features.

So it is a hypothesis that appears to explain key features of the data, but it requires testing for confirmation. Perhaps there's a PhD in it for someone. Though the economics of litter-dropping is perhaps not the most exciting PhD to embark on, though maybe that means you have a lot of space in the field not yet addressed.

Not being an a..eh.le. Why do you worry about being an a..eh.le? Why does anyone worry about not being an a..eh.le? Surely because you do expect some kind of a benefit from not being a..eh.le, from a fairly wide range of people. But then there is a minority that don't see it that way. It's a similar kind of argument to the Ostrom-esque one I was making. But it is also cod psychology as LPM defines it, and we need to find how to test it. Perhaps we can test it by asking people: why do you try not to be an a..eh.le? We could perhaps also interview some a..eholes and try to understand why they don't try to change that.

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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Nov 06, 2021 9:29 am

Visually engaging article from the FT (which doesn’t seem to be paywalled). https://ig.ft.com/europes-gas-crisis-pi ... explainer/

Shows that gas supply problems aren’t just due to political problems with Russia. There’s a combination of: the Netherlands shutting down some production, political problems in North Africa, declining supplies from the North Sea, and China and other governments buying LNG supplies.

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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Nov 10, 2021 3:25 pm

And now the electricity cable between Norway and the UK is out of action, due to a problem at the UK side.

News in Norwegian: https://www.aftenposten.no/oppsummert-x#oW17zR

Data: https://umm.nordpoolgroup.com/#/message ... 0ec17bbe/1

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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by IvanV » Wed Nov 10, 2021 6:25 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Wed Nov 10, 2021 3:25 pm
And now the electricity cable between Norway and the UK is out of action, due to a problem at the UK side.
News in Norwegian: https://www.aftenposten.no/oppsummert-x#oW17zR
Data: https://umm.nordpoolgroup.com/#/message ... 0ec17bbe/1
And not owned-up to on their website. Nor Stattnet's.

In theory it only opened for trial operation at the beginning of October. So they kind of covered themselves for the risk of outages. Perhaps that's why they don't consider it news.

Another recent undersea interconnector, the Western HVDC link from Scotland to Cheshire, has had a terrible history. First they could only run it at part power for a year or so. Then it has had repeated outages due to cable faults, which typically take about a month to fix.

Looking around a bit more on Nordpool, it seems that they expect the outage to be only around 8 days, and then restore some partial functionality. Maybe it will be like Western HVDC, that it takes some time to get it all working.

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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by Grumble » Wed Nov 10, 2021 7:02 pm

IvanV wrote:
Wed Nov 10, 2021 6:25 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Wed Nov 10, 2021 3:25 pm
And now the electricity cable between Norway and the UK is out of action, due to a problem at the UK side.
News in Norwegian: https://www.aftenposten.no/oppsummert-x#oW17zR
Data: https://umm.nordpoolgroup.com/#/message ... 0ec17bbe/1
And not owned-up to on their website. Nor Stattnet's.

In theory it only opened for trial operation at the beginning of October. So they kind of covered themselves for the risk of outages. Perhaps that's why they don't consider it news.

Another recent undersea interconnector, the Western HVDC link from Scotland to Cheshire, has had a terrible history. First they could only run it at part power for a year or so. Then it has had repeated outages due to cable faults, which typically take about a month to fix.

Looking around a bit more on Nordpool, it seems that they expect the outage to be only around 8 days, and then restore some partial functionality. Maybe it will be like Western HVDC, that it takes some time to get it all working.
Doesn’t fill me with confidence for a cable from Morocco tbh.
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by Gfamily » Wed Nov 10, 2021 7:28 pm

IvanV wrote:
Wed Nov 10, 2021 6:25 pm

Looking around a bit more on Nordpool, it seems that they expect the outage to be only around 8 days, and then restore some partial functionality. Maybe it will be like Western HVDC, that it takes some time to get it all working.
Gridwatch suggests it's been back up since about 4:30pm
ETA - Looking at the Nordpool link, it seems to be operating at 50% installed capacity

ETA2 - to add "ETA -" above
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ETA 5/8/20: I've been advised that the result was correct, it was the initial interpretation that needed to be withdrawn
Meta? I'd say so!

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Woodchopper
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Nov 10, 2021 7:40 pm

Gfamily wrote:
Wed Nov 10, 2021 7:28 pm
IvanV wrote:
Wed Nov 10, 2021 6:25 pm

Looking around a bit more on Nordpool, it seems that they expect the outage to be only around 8 days, and then restore some partial functionality. Maybe it will be like Western HVDC, that it takes some time to get it all working.
Gridwatch suggests it's been back up since about 4:30pm
ETA - Looking at the Nordpool link, it seems to be operating at 50% installed capacity

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Link here for them that are interested. ¨

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Woodchopper
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by Woodchopper » Tue Nov 16, 2021 11:47 am

Germany’s energy regulator said it had “temporarily suspended” certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, dealing a setback to the Kremlin-backed gas project and sparking a rise in UK and continental European gas prices.

The regulator said it could not yet approve the project, led by Russia’s Gazprom, because its owners had not yet properly set up an operating subsidiary according to German law.

The suspension comes at a critical time for European gas supply, with prices surging across the continent. Gazprom has been accused by some countries of restricting exports to western Europe in order to increase pressure on Germany and accelerate the approval of the project.

UK gas contracts for delivery in December rose almost 10 per cent to £2.24 a therm on the news while the European benchmark gained 8 per cent to €87.80 per megawatt hour, with both contracts trading near their highest level for the past month.
https://www.ft.com/content/a5141b69-065 ... d841b02702

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shpalman
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Re: Is your energy supplier going bust?

Post by shpalman » Mon Nov 22, 2021 1:59 pm

having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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