Countdown to Fridays OFGEM Q4 Price Cap Announcement

[Oldgreybeard]

Thought it might be interesting to compare the day-ahead wholesale prices of electricity for today, across Europe, to see how much variation there is (a lot, it seems). These are the numbers for the EU for today, in Euros/MWh:

Day ahead electricity prices EU 26_8_2022.jpg (29.76 KiB) Viewed 1406 times

and the same for the UK (UK price today translates as about 445 Euros/MWh):

Day ahead electricity prices UK 26_8_2022.jpg (55.69 KiB) Viewed 1406 times

I decided to waste ten minutes tabulating the numbers so I could put them in order, from most expensive to least expensive. The difference between the cheapest and most expensive is way higher than I would have thought, and indicates that there are some very distorted markets within Europe:

Day ahead electricity prices Europe 26_8_2022.jpg (101.44 KiB) Viewed 1380 times

[Joeboy]

The good news for me is that I took the opportunity this morning to mention adding more PV, as my wife was in a state of consternation about the price increase. She gave me a golden opportunity by asking me what we were going to do, so I suggested the solar panel walkway along the side of the house and she thinks it's a great idea. Luckily it was sunny here at the time, with the sun shining right on that wall, so she could see straight away that it was a good idea. Sometimes good things can arise from bad news

So for you it was a good day to exploit bad news rather than a good day to bury bad news.

Result, success is found in these moments.

[nowty]

UK day ahead prices for leccy seem to be £600 / MWh which translate to 709.43 Euros so we would be top of the league table.
Very little wind around the UK at the moment, gridwatch down to 0.5GW presently.
https://marketwatch.zenergi.co.uk/price/26-08-2022/

[Oldgreybeard]

UK day ahead prices for leccy seem to be £600 / MWh which translate to 709.43 Euros so we would be top of the league table.
Very little wind around the UK at the moment, gridwatch down to 0.5GW presently.
https://marketwatch.zenergi.co.uk/price/26-08-2022/

Why the big difference (accepting I screwed up the Euro conversion earlier - I'll edit it)? : https://www.catalyst-commercial.co.uk/w ... ty-prices/



Edited to add a plot:

Day ahead electricity prices Europe 26_8_2022 - plot.jpg (76.57 KiB) Viewed 1375 times

[nowty]

Why the big difference (accepting I screwed up the Euro conversion earlier - I'll edit it)? : https://www.catalyst-commercial.co.uk/w ... ty-prices/

If you look at the day ahead price graph from the the one you posted, it does not look like it has enough data points for every day so I reckon they average it over a week or so. The day ahead price was at those levels (£529 / MWh) on the site I look at two days ago. Or it could be they are simply a couple of days behind reporting the data.

[Oldgreybeard]

Interesting to see that Sweden, Spain and Portugal have wholesale electricity prices that are less than 30% of those for the big group of countries to the left of that chart. Spain only gets around 20% of its electricity from gas, though, versus the ~40% for the UK. Sweden barely uses any gas for electricity, most of it comes from renewables, nuclear and a little bit of coal, oil and gas.

[nowty]

Interesting to see that Sweden, Spain and Portugal have wholesale electricity prices that are less than 30% of those for the big group of countries to the left of that chart. Spain only gets around 20% of its electricity from gas, though, versus the ~40% for the UK. Sweden barely uses any gas for electricity, most of it comes from renewables, nuclear and a little bit of coal, oil and gas.

Yep, you can see the current low carbon generator countries on this live map and you can clearly see the very low ones you mention are the cheapest.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

There are a few exceptions, Poland using cheap coal, and France having issues with their nuclear fleet.

[nowty]

These graphs are from OFGEM's press release yesterday.
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/o ... -suppliers

They show six month average lines which they use to calculate the next price cap, notice they lag the actual price period but can you imagine where the next average line will be drawn if prices don't significantly drop from their current levels. The next line will only be 3 months long now for the shorter price period.

EDIT - FYI, a Therm of gas is about 29.3kWh.

[Joeboy]

Interesting to see that Sweden, Spain and Portugal have wholesale electricity prices that are less than 30% of those for the big group of countries to the left of that chart. Spain only gets around 20% of its electricity from gas, though, versus the ~40% for the UK. Sweden barely uses any gas for electricity, most of it comes from renewables, nuclear and a little bit of coal, oil and gas.

I would be interested to see the figure of the kingdom of Nowty and what it pays per MWh across the year?
I may run this one myself too. Can we beat Spain as our own Nation? 'The mouse that roared' type thing.

[Oldgreybeard]

I've been working hard to try and minimise the amount of energy we import from the grid, but as we use electricity for heating and hot water, as well as charging the car, getting the usage down is a challenge, especially in winter. Try as I might I can't completely stop importing from the grid at times, but at least most of it is during the off-peak rate, overnight.

So far this year our total peak rate (day time) electricity usage since the start of the year has been 47kWh. We're on target for our annual consumption (peak and off-peak) to be around 4,000kWh (I'm estimating it will be around 60kWh peak, 3,940kWh off-peak). Before I fitted the battery, which was before I got an EV, our annual grid electricity usage was around 6,000kWh (we've always had PV, though). I can charge the car from PV on a good day, but there are times I need it to be charged when the weather's dire, so then it gets charged overnight, at the off-peak rate.

Another couple of kW of PV capacity, giving me more usable power in the mornings, should knock around 1,500kWh off the total, with luck, so very worth doing.