Solar Power Auction Prices Raised By 30%
November 16, 2023
By Paul Homewood
There’s one more thing to note about this announcement:
As well as the massive price rises for offshore wind, prices have also been increased for solar power:
£61/MWh works out at about £85/MWh, which gives the lie to repeated claims of just how cheap solar power is.
It’s a lot to pay for something that despoils good farmland and does not even produce any electricity for most of the time.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
It just confirms the madness of the energy policy. I wonder how many brown envelopes the civil serpents get for pushing through these subsidy increases. The renewable energy industry and its lobbyists have lots of spare cash to hand out.
Ah the Brown envelope myth. Do you honestly believe it could be kept secret if they were getting backhanders? As they’re all signed up the myth of the inherent goodness of renewables, there’s no need for bribery.
The British civil servantist. Almost as by Humbert Wolfe
You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British civil servantist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there’s
no occasion to.
It all rather depends on the modern equivalent of “Brown paper envelopes”. If you achieve a senior civil service position you can likely take early “retirement” and then very lucrative employment in the private sector you were previously associated with – a sort of pension plan. Staff under you are eager to climb the greasy pole and will support whatever view you want them to, to ensure their own promotion and so the system perpetuates.
This Amakudari (“Revolving Door”) was so rife in Japan that it was blamed on the lack of oversight that lead to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant failure.
So yes I do think it exists but in a more refined way.
“Do you honestly believe it could be kept secret if they were getting backhanders?”
At that level backhanders don’t come in brown envelopes.
Have you ever heard of quid pro quo, for example?
I agree with Ray, there is a form of bribery going on but not the obvious brown envelopes. Generous pensions plus the promise of a well paid job in the green swamp is all it takes.
Yes, they are like religious converts swept up in green fervour.
Therefore, because they are so convinced that green energy will save the world, then they believe, like the missionaries of old, that they are right in bringing the benefits of this new faith to the unenlightened natives (us)
I don’t believe that brown envelopes generally come in to it.
The backhanders are not always kept secret .
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tory-peer-lord-deben-in-row-over-600-000-green-payments-rndnwj6bz
But what little is said is mostly kept quiet by the media which seems to be under orders to push the Climate Change fraud and destroy the UK economy .
Wow, tidal which generates nowt useful 10 hours each day, is 4x as expensive!
We will be told it’s cheaper ad infinitum. We are sleep-walking towards the most expensive energy costs in the world.
But the Sun will get very rich 🙂
Yes, closing the gap on Germany in cost and a fading manufacturing economy with huge job losses. It is not just the goods manufacturing that is going down, their construction industry is cratering as well. Unless they can do something they could lose 300,000 jobs by 2025. Germans will soon become economic migrants looking for a better life – perhaps they could head East although that didn’t work out too well last century.
I recall the promoters of Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon claiming it would generate
“UP TO 14 hours a day” so I make that ZERO for a minimum of 10 hours per day.
And, of course, its output is highly variable over the lunar cycle with low levels at neap tides.
Hi Ray.
It was an interpretation of Swansea Tidal’s phrasing. In practice, there’ll be little difference between ‘Nowt’ and ‘Nowt useful’. 😉
RE-watched the Yes Minister about governmental global warming policy: Hacker did not know what he was letting us in for. The madmen now run………. everything.
Is it just me? Why are we paying farmers and other landowners to turn away from food production in favour of ugly black panels that profit the few at the expense of many? We need an explanation of the environmental impact of solar panels. Has an assessment been made and published?
We had around 80% food self sufficiency in the 1960s, it’s now around 60%. Something is very very wrong.
You’re not paying ME ! and yes, BUT 🙂 Many years ago we were teeching the bairns that Markets for grain was also STORAGE ( Intervention) YES – ( and I’ve said that before) Can you believe it – that was the start of Europe, politics in the market place As much as I would like to have a few solar panels on the roofs or waste ground – WASTE ground, the Electr. Supply network couldn’t take back the power because we are at the end of the line and it doesn’t have sufficient capacity. To us, Farming is “farming the land to supply / Meet the needs of the populace by means of Foodstuffs and Materials.” – not farming the system for CASH. Now don’t take us for fools either “YOU, – the Society” have demands of us – our COSTS & Taxation …. how do we pay for that?
Last night we saw the wasted acres of potatoes …. who in the UK eats potatoes nowadays – Pasta pasta pasta it seems – IMPORT Carbon footprint, etc
https://gridwatch.co.uk/ shows a laugh a minute: 40GW demand ( recently very high ) supplied by ….. er emm, Solar ? naw, try again, WIND then – Gee look at how the stoopit wummin has succumbed to the Offshore brigade of weenmulls .. Naw, Take a look at COAL. ( Hmm recent talk of KING chas, ha ha ha – should be KING COAL ! Yeah! ) plus of course Ccgt as the major provider.
Maan its dreich today – NO breeze, no Sun, just cold saturated air ( Fog / Haar) .Any heatpump being used today would freeze that water.
I have relatives who are farmers just north of Coupar Angus who talk almost exactly like you,,saighdear and it always makes me smile – are we related!?
{I see this comment was placed out of context lower down} Yes, I think so! 🙂 It’s in the soil. But when I was in the skool, I missed the lesson in Biology about my Jeans …. and hadn’t a CLUE as to the question about Genes ( geans to me) thinking it was the Bird Cherry or something like that. Maan o maan !
I’m puzzled how converting farmland of any sort into electricity generation reduces Food Miles.
The only thing I can thing of is the output is used to power eBoats and ePlanes
Call me cynical but I suspect imported food, with all its additional emissions baggage, doesn’t count when it comes to our CO2 totals. It’s overseas, out of sight and out of mind. Net Zero folks!
” The only thing I can thing of is the output is used to power eBoats and ePlanes ”
E-boats are generally diesel powered; although mostly sunk or scrapped by now
If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much Toxic Waste?
The problem of solar panel disposal “will explode with full force in two or three decades and wreck the environment” because it “is a huge amount of waste and they are not easy to recycle.”
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in 2016 estimated there was about 250,000 metric tonnes of solar panel waste in the world at the end of that year. IRENA projected that this amount could reach 78 MILLION metric tonnes by 2050.
Solar panels contain lead, cadmium, and other toxic chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel. “Approximately 90% of most PV modules are made up of glass,” notes San Jose State environmental studies professor Dustin Mulvaney. “However, this glass often cannot be recycled as float glass due to impurities. Common problematic impurities in glass include plastics, lead, cadmium and antimony.”
Catastrophic Details here —
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/?sh=541f1717121c
Boost for offshore wind says it all really. Consumers get screwed but who cares about them? At least now they can’t pretend they don’t intend to make us poorer.
Yes, I think so! 🙂 It’s in the soil. But when I was in the skool, I missed the lesson in Biology about my Jeans …. and hadn’t a CLUE as to the question about Genes ( geans to me) thinking it was the Bird Cherry or something like that. Maan o maan !
I see this is a duplicate! MAYBE like the Bags of Seed grain ( from Lincolnshire or somewhere else Darn Sarth) which were bought by Great Grandpa ( the relation ) as he sowed his Wild Oats !!
And the cost of useless renewable power continues to go up, up, up, up – pushing more consumers into more debt, all for an engineeringly incompetent solution to a climate problem that doesn’t exist, it’s a con, an hoax, daylight robbery
Debt will spiral, electricity theft will spiral, misery will be enhanced all for an hoax that’s all about stealth tax and transfer of money from the masses to the globalist elites – it’s disgusting theft dressed as climate support, run by brass neck modern day Dick Turpins and it’s really pissing me off the whole skullduggery of it
Trying to run a country of 70+ million people on ‘off grid’ tech, which loony / loonies thought that could be possible. (I know there’s a long list)
Main issue is we are going to have to live through this scat for many years to come, unless we can rid ourselves of the current scum that inhabit Westminster and it surrounds. The sheep will continue voting the same spineless idiots in to power. There maybe an alternative but the ill informed wont take it.
If only we had a Guy who could help us sort out Parliament….
At £105/MWhr (2023 price) fixed offshore wind is fast catching up Hinkley Point C (£128/MWhr 2023) even though Hinkley Point C was, according to Sir Dieter Helm, Professor of Energy Policy at Oxford University, twice the price it should have been because EDF was required to use Chinese capital at 9% instead of UK Government funding at 2%.
The floating offshore wind at £176/MWhr (2012 prices) so £253/MWhr at 2023 prices is double that for Hinkley Point C.
Since the building cost per unit of power of Hinkley Point C is 3 times that of the successfully built Korean nuclear plants for the UAE and double that for the RR SMRs it shows that nuclear should be the economic choice. Especially since nuclear provides reliable power, doesn’t require expensive backup or grid upgrades, lasts 3 to 4 times longer, and uses 1000 times less concrete and steel and 1000 times less area than offshore wind.
Nuclear is also more secure not relying upon China, a state described by our security services as “hostile” for our infrastructure (turbines and solar panels).
The rises in renewable prices are necessary to set a low carbon benchmark. The Government is preparing for announcement of Sizewell C and needs something to pretend it is economic.
Sizewell C will not be supported by a CfD – even this is not generous enough. It will be funded through a RAB model, so you and I will be paying for it (or our children will).
If, like me, you are not interested in “low carbon solutions”, the relevant benchmark would unabated gas or coal. If this was the benchmark, new nuclear look not economic for comparable discount rates at which the gas or coal investments could achieve FID.
This is the sleight of hand we keep seeing – the claimed costs of nuclear are largely a matter of how to hide risks and liabilities. You suggest 2% funding should be available through “Government funding”. There is no such funding available from the private capital markets. It’s a very poor deal for the GB taxpayer to bear all those risks and liabilities at nothing even approaching commercial rates of return.
The 9% interest rate provided by China looks unrealistically high, but I’m pretty sure that will have been the cheapest deal EDF could get in comparison with borrowing from a financial organisation in the West.
It was high interest rates set by Wall Street from the mid 1970s that effectively killed off nuclear power in the USA, as explained in this article:
http://21sci-tech.com/articles/spring01/nuclear_power.html
The timeline for the high interest rates (according to the article) being imposed on nuclear power is that it followed on from the 1973 Oil Crisis, in which the world was supposedly running rapidly out of oil. The Green lobby responded to the Oil Crisis by coming up with their holy trinity of renewable energy technologies – wind, solar and biomass (burning wood). These three technologies are still pushed to the present day, but the reason for promoting them has switched from the original purpose of oil supposedly running out to tackling climate change. A major obstacle to the adoption of renewable energy is the competition and generally superior product that is provided by nuclear power, so the latter needed to be made more expensive in the USA, and Wall Street duly obliged by suddenly hiking interest rates such that the number of nuclear plants being ordered in the USA dropped to zero from 1975 onwards.
At the same time as the high interest rates were imposed, the Green lobby adopted a tactic of doing things that tended to lengthen the construction time of nuclear projects that were underway, which exacerbated the impact of the high interest rate. Outside the USA environmentalists have much less opportunity to delay construction once it is underway, they are limited to just being able to delay when a project starts up.
The article quotes an interest rate of 17% being charged to US electric utilities in 1981. Compared with that rate, China’s 9% rate looks like quite a bargain.
A major obstacle to the adoption of renewable and nuclear energy is the competition and generally superior product that is provided by gas and coal fired power. So the latter needed to be made more expensive and impractical through carbon taxes and government bans.
Does any half wit in Govt ever look at the electricity numbers on any event – demand just now 40GW and wind output at 5% of total whilst solar = zero and without a load from European deep doodah – God help us in tough winter!!
Despite Paul’s work, the electricity pricing system is so complicated that the householder doesn’t make the connection between this little come today gone tomorrow piece of news in the business section and his mounting electricity bill.
Electricity retail pricing is fundamentally a question of how to price a call option (you sell to customers who then have the right to determine volume). It’s an extremely risky business for the simple fact that the supply chain cannot manage volume (in aggregate), and the marginal cost of production is extremely volatile (the opportunity cost that any rational market will seek to determine).
If households don’t understand this, they are in good company. Lots of new entrant suppliers didn’t understand this and lost their investment. Now the government administered standard variable rates have frequent price re-openers because of the same price volatility and the exposure suppliers bear when fixing tariffs.
This is now moving into the generation and wholesale side of the supply chain. The case for wind is increasingly made on the argument that it offers known (stable) prices. Households are being told that renewable are cheap and have stable prices, so they are flummoxed when they think they are being ripped off while the renewables industry is now seen to be struggling.
How could this be?
First, wind generation comes with excessive uncertainty in the volume produced. It simply cannot operate at the margin (the wind doesn’t blow in response to power demand) and this means it cannot set forward prices.
Second, wind generation does not provide a known and stable cost because it has a relatively short capital replacement cycle (about 15 years). This means wind costs are volatile due to the changing cost of capital replacement.
The government got stuck in a bind when setting the standard variable retail tariffs because of price volatility. It is now getting into a similar bind in having to swiftly revise support prices for renewables against volatile capital replacement costs. The wind fleet is not just a growth story – the existing fleet now needs to be preparing for replacing the oldest installations.
‘The government has increased the maximum price for offshore wind projects in its flagship renewables scheme to further cement the UK as a world leader in clean energy.’
I equate this with an announcement of being world leader in cases of syphilis. Equivalent accomplishments.
‘increased . . . price . . . to further cement’ seems no justification whatsoever for spending billions.
Government and everybody in it has forgotten the basis for renewables – we pay now to avoid bigger costs in the future. If costs now are larger than we thought, we should not do it. It’s that simple. I don’t pay £10,000 to avoid a £9,000 risk. The point is renewables at any cost, it’s having a net positive cost when we look at paying today to avoid paying tomorrow. That’s the basis we were told government was using.
Phoenix-
You may find a discussion between Jeffrey Sachs W/John Mearsheimer – Global Crises – YouTube (1) of interest as they explore communications in democracies vs authoritarian governments.
I found it of interest as one of the sustainable development goals was/is “Affordable Renewable Energy” and as a former Californian the “affordable” portion of the goal was abandoned/ignored long ago. Donn Dears highlighted the danger of using faulty metrics in decision making a decade ago- EIA Levelized Costs Can be Misleading – (archive.org)2. –
“December 8, 2012 at 3:27 pm said:
Great comment.
Not sure what will eventually be included in LCOE calculations. The main point, I think, is for people to understand what is and what is not included, and how these items affect decision making.
Too many people,accept what’s printed in the newspapers without fully understanding the various issues.”
Mark Miller
1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O2XMimgSjw
2) https://web.archive.org/web/20200807213639/https:/ddears.com/2012/12/07/eia-levalized-costs-can-be-misleading/#comment-539
As I sit here their windmills are producing two per cent of demand. What are they going to do? What are they going to do ? What are they going to do?