(Note that I'm not opposed to privatization in general, and it has worked out very well in other sectors, noticeably Telecoms, but I'm not aware of it bringing long-term happiness anywhere when it comes to Energy)
Same goes for water and sewer. Maybe garbage could be mixed model. In big enough towns having multiple competing companies for removal is not unreasonable competition. Same could be said for part of bus networks.
The only part of municipal/ regional bus network that is suitable for privatisation in a high labour cost country is contracting out operations. Ticketing, route planning andscheduling all should be under a central governmental authority. There is a reason that, outside of London, England has some of the worst bus services in the developed world
Capacity is constantly being hit by very large population growth. Just like water and housing. Money available is lowered by state-enforced price caps. Purchase prices are raised by state-mandated net zero rules that subsidise green sources.
Is this really true in the UK? Electricity production in the UK peaked in 2005. It's down 20% on that today. The issue here is that in 2005 electricity was primarily produced in large power stations reasonably close to where it was consumed, while in 2025 it's increasingly produced in locations far from population centres. The actual ability of the grid to deliver power to the last mile isn't really a problem. The problem is that most of the houses are in the South, and increasingly large amounts of generation are in the North.
Europe has not been 'hit by a very large population growth' by any stretch of the imagination in recent years. Capacity issues are mostly due to deprecating natural gas, which has lead to an increase in solar, but that's just a minor issue when you look at industry migrating from furnaces to heat pumps.
> Just like water and housing
Water is squarely an agriculture thing and housing has been a shitshow forever. But thanks for bringing those up as well -- it's like a dogwhistle trifecta!
> state-enforced price caps, state-mandated net zero rules
Most parts of Europe lack those entirely. There are (less and less) 'green subsidies', sure, but funnily enough, the increasing cost of fossil fuels is doing most of the work here.
What population growth?
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/uk-population...
So both eastern green link projects (offering more capacity) are due to be finished in 2029, “ok” I think “but surely we’re doing some work onshore to improve the existing network in the meantime..”
> Due to ongoing project work for increased power flow from North to South across two Transmission Owner (TO) regions and the interaction of the outage plans, increased capacity across the boundary will be limited and intermittent till 2029
So basically no transmission, onshore or offshore is going to be improved until 2029, but we’re still green lighting wind farms in Scotland. I’m amazed someone has the foresight to increase generation but not transmission until now, how were these green lit in the past knowing full well this bottleneck existed.
Maybe it’s controversial, but id argue for stopping more generation until transmission or storage is sorted, otherwise curtailment is going to be even higher in the next few years.
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-government-electricity-py...
Of course, the same arguments killed the construction of onshore wind in England, which would have prevented needing the new powerlines (or at least not so much).
> installing wind wherever they can without regard for the local infrastructure and demand
Alternatively, installing it where the energy and topography is, and the local planning environment allows it. We wouldn't be in quite such a bad position if the Tory government hadn't banned onshore wind in England.
That's plain wrong.
Transmission system have massively evolved compared to what they were 30 years ago. Typically, at the TSO I know, the way people work looks nothing like it was 30 years ago.
Nowadays, every 5 minutes, we simulate the whole network for each of the consumption forecasts we have (one per 15 minutes) in the next two hours, plus the effect of every network loss, plus we simulate whether the planned workarounds fix the situation.
There are also newer generations of automated protective mechanisms on the lines, new automata, a new SCADA, etc. The network has also been expanded significantly with several new interconnections, more interactions with our neighbours, etc.
On the "market" side, we have plenty of new tools that allow us to do what's explained in the article's introduction, since the system didn't work like that before Europe's electricity market reforms.
And that's just a very small part of what changed.
> Maybe it’s controversial, but id argue for stopping more generation until transmission or storage is sorted
It doesn't work like that. Transmission evolves over time according to needs. It makes no sense to "freeze" for a time to let TSOs adapt. What needs to be done, however, is maybe give the market a little bit less deciding power, and give the TSO a little better feedback loop to force market operator to provide workable solutions.
Also maybe the political forces pushing renewables with LCOE analysis need to understand that generation build cost is only a fraction of what's paid for an electric system.
Then no redispatch is needed and building more capacity in the south is worth it.
For providing this service, all car (EV) owners must be paid to give the utilities permission to dump excess production and to supply energy back to the grid when needed. Right now, most of the electricity costs are from peak costs (mostly peaker electricity costs). There is no reason that this infrastructure can't be provided by the EV car owners.
For many people in the UK, having an EV charging port on the side of your house isn't possible, because they don't have a house, or they don't have a parking space near their house.
For central London, where I've lived for most of the last decade, yeah, there aren't a lot of parking spots per household, but that's also going to be true in NYC or any other built up older city. As for newer developments, I suspect they get more parking than older ones. My Victorian block has none.
As always, London is not the UK. Outside London it seems good in well off areas for EVs, and, of course, bad in the neglected rest of the UK.
Depending on which research you believe, only 25% of homes don't have a dedicated space - https://www.field-dynamics.co.uk/25-drivers-no-off-street-pa... and https://www.racfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/standing_st...
Lots of local authorities are installing on-street charging.
Basically, the vast majority of people in the UK do have off-street parking. Running a cable to a garage or from a street-lamp isn't overly expensive. Those who park on public streets also have lots of options for charging.
We DO need to solve for it though, because it's ridiculously cheap to drive an EV in the UK if you can have an L2 charger installed (2p per mile versus 20p per mile for even an efficient diesel/petrol car) and that should be made available to all.
Is the solution chargers in every lamp post? Or on every off-street parking, with billing tied back to your energy provider (allowing you to use smart tariffs like Intelligent Octopus Go)?
By a process of elimination, we determine that they must be using on-street parking other than near their house. Which is one of those sneaky subsidies that people don't even realise is a subsidy, a little area of publicly owned land that you can use without having to pay rent on.
But as public transport is electrified, it is perfect to be incorporated into the grid. Vehicles follow predicted schedules, they are used in a predictable way from the depots, so charging can be optimized, and knowing their schedule, the charge on the battery can be kept optimized as well.
Councils certainly would be easier to negotiate?
The UK was ahead of the game with this, mandating chargers that could react to grid demands.
Now they have things were you plug your car in and the grid decides when to charge up for massive discounts.
They don't mention the previous government effectively banning onshore wind in England which seems relevant. The current version of that party is abandoning net zero to win back gullible voters they themselves misinformed about renewables.
If we want to point fingers for mismanagement I'd start there and probably also allege corruption.
Let's not even talk about the capacity factor of solar in the UK.
It's just weird numerology that gets people hung up on these numbers. It's not clear people even understand what they mean when they bring them up.
There's a nice diagram of the Scottish side in this article:
https://www.zenobe.com/news-and-events/blackhillock-battery-...
And with cell chemistry that is more resilient to charge and discharge cycles (LFP) coming to fruition in the last 5 years (and at a lower cost than NMC) it makes sense that we're only now seeing large-scale investment - the yield curve has hit the sweet spot.
Basically it shifts risk to developers and we want developers to install lots of green energy over the next decade.
(I just noticed the recommended related article is research on exactly this topic)
There's other machanisms to incentivize demand closer to production, though whether they are being used optimally is debatable.
I would say that improving transmission seems like a much better solution but again I think zonal pricing can help there as it could then be more easily sold to the public as being able to import the cheaper (say) Scottish energy to your local zone, whereas at the moment there's no apparent direct cost associated with blocking pylon projects forever.
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-government-electricity-py...
The power lines follow the two main road links, the A1 and the A74/M6. I suppose that's not surprising from an access point of view. What is surprising is that the solution to NIMBY opposition is to route offshore and underwater, at considerable expense - and still getting opposition at the landing points. Fortunately one of the landing points is Torness, which already has a scenic nuclear reactor and associated transmission infrastructure.
I do understand the argument that the Borders is "unspoilt", but also .. hardly anybody lives there because it's an odd economic dead zone. Run another line of pylons within sight of the existing ones and call it a day.
I also wonder to what extent building more storage on either end would help. That's got to be brought into the equation. Don't say pumped storage because all the suitable geology for that and one of the biggest existing installations is also in Scotland, we need some in the Midlands.
And should probably be asking why new high usage AI datacenters are still happening in London.
[1] https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-i...
At least they painted it grey to match the sky...
Companies won’t be incentivised to move to Scotland unless there is regional power pricing in place, and both Conservative and Labour governments would rather shoot their own kneecaps off than offer tax incentives for companies to move to Scotland.
That said, there are two AI datacentres opening in North-East England. That’s still a long way for the power to travel, but I feel part of the reason is to soak up surplus wind power even if it’s not actually cheaper.
Relevant quotes:
"this report infers that, almost anywhere on the planet, nearly 100% VRE power grids firmly supplying clean power and meeting demand 24/365 are not only possible but would be economically viable, provided that VRE resources are optimally transformed from unconstrained run-of-the weather generation into firm generation."[1]
"VRE overbuilding and operational curtailment (i.e., implicit storage) are key to achieving economically acceptable firm 24x365 solutions. Because firm power generation could be achieved locally/regionally in many cases with a small premium, optimum implicit storage solution could alleviate the need for major power grid enhancement requirements."[2]
[1] https://iea-pvps.org/key-topics/firm-power-generation/
[2] https://iea-pvps.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Report-IEA-P...
I'd be curious to learn how you intend to amortize that aluminium smelter, while also being competitive on aluminium markets.
> The variable-to-firm transformation enablers include energy storage, the optimum blending of VREs and other renewable resources, geographic dispersion, and supply/demand flexibility.
Yeah... provided someone else does that for them, VREs are very cheap.
In Australia the same firm is vocal that unless the local area moves from coal to renewables they won't hit price points that are competitive on the global market.
Demand-side flexibility is synonymous with surge-pricing, ensuring peak demand energy is a luxury good. Ensuring that energy availability is only mostly guaranteed to those able to outbid the bottom something-percentile: those using energy for economically productive work and otherwise rich.
This is quite opposite of an utility.
This is a well-known issue in the UK, which impacts new solar and wind projects but also charging stations, and large-scale charging in general, and even new developments in areas of too much demand.
I work in the energy sector and hear it mentioned a lot, but I don't really see it published in the media a lot.
In all honesty, most of the dialogue around energy is just unhelpful and partisan - a lot of it seems critical of the idea of a cleaner network, mainly on the assertion that it's making things more expensive. My understanding is that the opposite is true, but either way, I don't often see much discussion of anything past "clear energy bad".
That's just the media. No interest in making things actually work, just in covering the fight, and quite often sponsored by fossil fuel backers or weird overseas media monopolists.
1. Gas-powered electricity generation sets the wholesale rate (for _all_ forms of generation) more often than not, and gas is expensive, especially after we had to find alternative sources in order to punish Russia for invading Ukraine.
2. Other than the wholesale rate, we need to _build_ all this clean energy, we need to attract investment, and it's our promise to pay for that CapEx over 15-20 years (the strike price) that we'll be paying for in our bills once gas is out of the picture, moreso than the actual cost of generation.
Also, Tories in 2023 failed to attract any investment, no capacity added: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66749344
Whereas Labour in 2025: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly8ynegwn4o
... we will find out if this worked, after the auction is finished and they announce the results (around November 2025 - February 2026)
Thats super fucked!
A mitigating factor is PV+storage coming online mostly in the south and balancing this out somewhat.
According to grid operators, total projected grid expansion costs of ~$250 billion until 2045, but the majority is required sooner rather than later (~$200 billion within the next decade).
See: https://www.netzentwicklungsplan.de/sites/default/files/2023...
The majority of the UK’s population is in the South; it has a lot of wind capacity in general but especially in the very North. So the problem is getting it from North to South, not helped by how mountainous Scotland is.
Learned helplessness in the political class has more to do with it, I think.
