Let’s carry on the discussion over there…

Cheers.

Dale made a post about Good Energy dated May 2008 (if you click the ‘Energy’ link under Categories, that’ll narrow down the number of posts). And somewhere there is a discussion between Dale and Adi about Good Energy’s v ecotricity’s approach, but I can’t remember where it is.

Jeff

My guess is that Good Energy are able to retire a percentage of their ROCs because their outgoings are less than ecotricity’s. They don’t build and at a hefty £2 million (ish) per turbine, ecotricity have to sell off their excess ROCs to go towards this where as Good Energy do not.

I suppose this is a way of Good Energy lessening the blow that they dont build by doing something which appears selfless by retiring the ROCs instead of not making money from them.

Im still holding out for a post from Dale about this though…

Cheers

Your explanation sort of helps, but I have to admit to still being a little in the dark.

It helps, in as much as you are saying that the remaining 63% on the New Energy Plus tariff is definately sourced from renewable supplies, but I’m still unclear about why that 63% is not bought in such a way as to allow ROCs to be retired.

I’m also still keen to have some clarification on the ‘(as direct as you can)’ point.

Ta

Now before i try to give my understanding i would like it to be known that i am not sure about the technicalities of the ROC/REGO system so i’m sure someone else or Dale will have to correct any omissions i make.

I think the way it works is ROCs are generated for every 1MW of renewable electricity generated you are awarded 1 ROC which is associated with the generation and is tradeable amongst suppliers that do not meet their renewable obligation.

Now this is where my understanding gets dodgy. I THINK the REGO is also attached to the generation but is only “proof” that the electricity was generated from a renewable source.

I am of course, as always, open to correction.

Ecotricity have 2 tariff options. One is around 37% renewable (generated by the company’s own turbines) and the rest topped up fro electricity purchased from the grid (effectively brown energy).

The other option is again 37% generated by ecotricity but the rest is bought from existing green supply (so 63% is provided similarly to Good Energy’s means). I don’t know if this means ecotricity buy ROCs because they’ve already far exceeded the government set renewable obligation and can then sell off their excess ROCs.

Maybe the purchase of electricity (the 63% i previously mentioned in this case) is separate from ROCs or maybe they are part of the same thing ie ROCs come with the electricity, i dont know. I am inclined to think it is the former.

Does that sound about right?

One of the reasons I came to this forum and have been reading with interest is because I was / am considering switching from Good Energy to Ecotricity.

However, Dale’s comment in the article above,

‘When you buy green electricity what you actually do is buy non-descript (brown in reality) electricity from the market and you buy something called a REGO to go with it.’

made me hesitate, and spend some time trying to find out the difference between ROCs and REGOs, with not a huge amount of success. The main difference, as far as I was able to fathom, is that ROCs are tradeable, and REGOs are not.

Good Energy, when I spoke with them, said that they buy ROCs directly from the generating companies that they deal with, retiring around 15% of them annually to help boost the market price of renewables ( they also said that they are in the planning stages of building their own wind farms which, when activated, would account for about 30% of the energy that they supply ).

Dale’s comment above seems to suggest that Ecotricity buy brown electricity on top of what they produce themselves, and REGOs as a side order to that main purchase, if you like.

If this is the case, why do Ecotricity not buy ROCs direct from producers and retire them ? Or am I reading things incorrectly ?

Anthony, I don’t know why David McKay does it per person either, when statistics for total UK usage is available.

From what I can gather, ecotricity put in the planning application, if the local council don’t accept the application, then ecotricity act on any issues addressed. If the application is still not accepted, ecotricity appeal. Most appeals are upheld, and so most applications go ahead, but only after a long delay and a lot of money spent.
I guess even then the economics still stack up, because ecotricity are still operational.

I retreat lawyer-like to my careful use of the word ‘should’ above.

IMHO, one of Prof MacKay’s main points is that to sustain our current energy ‘gluttony’ entirely with RE would require such intrustive vast building works appart from anything else that reducing demand surely has to be part of the story.

Rgds

Damon

I think Dale talks about planning difficulties in several different publications etc to raise awareness that the planning process is not fit for purpose. Planning permission for Wind Turbines is in the hands of local councils when it should be for government to decide.

On another note the “doing your bit” by being with Good Energy. Good Energy do not build their own renewable energy sources, rather buy renewable electricity from other suppliers (such as ecotricity). While your own carbon emissions will drop as a result of being on supply with Good Energy the carbon emissions of the country as a whole does not change. What is happening in the simplest sense is you are using green electricity at the expense of someone else, great for flying the green banner but unfortunately useless in the bigger picture. Ecotricity build wind turbines therebye replacing units of “brown” energy that would be otherwise used. Ecotricity are also cheaper than Good Energy aswell just so you know ;D.

I like the idea of wind providing 25-50% of our needs, but living fairly near to a proposed redevelopment of an existing farm, and witnessing the fervent protest against, can’t help wonder if this is a realistic prospect.

http://beta.metafaq.com/action/answer?id=S34SJPVB9F8L3TJQKB1EARG1AU&ref=http%3a%2f%2fapi.transversal.com%2fmfapi%2fobjectref%2fEntryStore%2fEntry%2fhttp%3a%2f%2fwww.metafaq.com%2fmfapi%2fMetafaq%2fClients%2fmackay%2fModules%2fwha%3a154771%3a0&visitorNonce=40

Dale speaks elsewhere about the planning difficulties inherent in this kind of activity, so I’m wondering how Ecotricity rate their chances of building on an area the size of Wales in order to fulfil current electricity demand.

But wind could and probably should be a big part of the mix IMHO (maybe 25%–50%?) along with some solar and tidal and baseload (eg nuclear) and dynamic demand or ‘intelligent demand’ to move as much consumption as possible to times when the power *is* available and away from where it isn’t.

Rgds

Damon

Still, I found it good to do a few estimates based on publicly-available data in order to understand the issues a bit better.

I can’t help myself. I’ve looked up the area of the UK on wikipedia: 243,820 square kilometres. I think d squared (6724 squre metres) is easier to work with as a required area rather than pi*d squared/4 as I don’t have to work out how many circles fit into a certain area. That means there is room for over 36 million 2MW turbines if we covered all the UK.

Obviously we wouldn’t do that, but 10% of this allows 3.6 million turbines, and 1% is 360,000 turbines. This still assumes they are placed just far enough away from each other to not touch, and that they run on full capacity all year round.

It’s a good question though. I’d like to know how Dale/ecotricity came to their conclusions too.

It was a slightly leading question. I’m reading the ‘Without Hot Air’ book that Damon mentions, which raises questions about whether we really could meet all our electricity needs using wind – see http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c4/page_32.shtml

I was wondering whether Dale, or Ecotricity, had a counter argument, given their claims elsewhere.

Working out the area of a turbine is easy enough (rotor diameter of 82m: pi*d squared/4=5281 sq metres), but I don’t know how far turbines should be from each other. Again we’ll need an expert/ecotricity to enlighten us…

Also, is it possible to elaborate on ‘(direct as you can)’, above ?

Anthony

The Big Six hedge up to one year ahead and so will not have been buying at the crazy prices that kicked off at the end of this summer. The price rises for customers that we saw then were to reflect the more normal prices that the big six had already bought at.

Wholesale prices coming down to a more normal level now won’t hurt the big six, it will help us though, as we hedge far less fwds.

We’ve not noticed a drop in consumption of electricity, but we have noticed a drop in the number of people looking to switch to green, a bit like the drop off in Organic food sales – when times are tight…

We don’t supply to the grid by the way, we supply to our customers. We use the grid for transport of power and we pay for that use – like a toll road. But we supply ‘direct’ (as direct as you can) to our customers. Hope that helps.

Cheers.

Nor do I think the government would be receptive to anything anyway.

They have their minds set towards big companies, the Renewables Obligation as delivered by those same big companies – and not more, Offshore wind and a new round of nuclear technology. Mindset well within the box. Cheers

Storage and demand management will play a very important part. I built the PV system for my batchelor flat around storage rather than grid connection, Watching demand and the storage means I go off the grid entirely for around eight months of the year.

It’s not widely understood that demand for energy is anything but constant or flat and the grid we have copes with spectacular swings – from 30% load factor in the summer to 80% in the winter.

I also think it’s possible we could ‘go long’ in wind energy and have overcapacity – this would increase the likelihood that we had some/enough all the time, and increase the times when we had too much of course – but there are other things we could do with that – export to Europe for example, or use in heat loads.

Lots of scope, and lots of time before we get there, for new technologies and new ways to do things to make what looks difficult today a breeze.

Cheers.

Rgds

Damon

I read your piece with interest. One point – as you say wind varies and there will be times, for instance, during cold anticyclone periods in the winter, when the only available wind is likely to be a long way away, creating a need for expensive transmission. So, wind energy will always only be part of the solution, albeit hopefully an important part. I wonder what your ideas are on how we should aim to produce the remaining ‘base’ load. Pumped storage might be one option but probably not possible on the scale needed.

I also think we need to see market changes, to take the speculators out of the physical market – so that the only players are the producers and suppliers, and not the people trying to make money from volatility which they tend to cause.

No different to recent short selling of bank shares really, the UK electricity market is very illiquid and it doesn’t take much speculation to drive prices against realities. Un-fettered capitalism is what it is.

Also we’ll need to see energy storage and energy demand management to the fore in this new world, to enable the majority of our power to come from renewables. All entirely feasible though, in fact I would say inevitable – it’s just a question of how fast we get there and how much pain we endure before we realise we need to.

Cheers.

Wasn’t aware of the Tasmanian project though. It is expensive stuff that I know, costs will fall though, that’s how it works. Meanwhile grid costs will rise and that helps too.

Cheers.

Cheers.

have you looked at Vanadium Redox Batteries to help smooth wind power supply and demand? They have been used in Tasmania to very good effect. They are expensive though.