BRFR Cake Stop 'breaking news' miscellany

[briantrumpet]

Hmm, big numbers. Two other roundabout on the A19 have been upgraded in recent years, at significant cost, but, no where near £775million.

Silverlink Roundabout £75million around 2018

Testo's Roundabout approx £140million, around 2021

Can't see us getting £775million spent on us, we are 350 miles too far North for that sort of money to be spent. 😂

Maybe the aim is to make HS2 look like good value.

 

[BoldonLad]

Maybe the aim is to make HS2 look like good value.

Hasn't it been renamed LS2 or HS1 ?

 

[briantrumpet]

Hasn't it been renamed LS2 or HS1 ?

Or NVHS2

 

[First Aspect]

I'm trying to wrap my head around two roundabout upgrades on the A19 costing £775 million. That's over £10 for every person living in the UK. For two adjacent roundabouts. In Northumberland.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/othe...roundabouts-would-cost-up-to-775m/ar-AA1JwFKS

View attachment 14217

"Up to" £775m. That the most expensive option for both, which involves grade separated junctions. Flyovers basically.

 

[briantrumpet]

"Up to" £775m. That the most expensive option for both, which involves grade separated junctions. Flyovers basically.

Gotta improve traffic flow, no matter the cost (until traffic increases and stops flowing again).

 

[BoldonLad]

Gotta improve traffic flow, no matter the cost (until traffic increases and stops flowing again).

There are other factors in this example ie A flyover in Gateshead having to be demolished, for safety reasons, and the refurbishment of the Tyne Bridge, causing some "rerouting" of traffic, but, upgrading the Testo's Roundabout, moved the congestion on the North Bound A19 about 2 or 3 miles North, to the Tyne Tunnel (which was upgraded several years earlier).

 

[briantrumpet]

There's always political risk in any investment, and renewable energy has been on the wrong side of this many times over the last 15 years. However, capping the amount at which one asset class can sell their product feels like a level direct discrimination that would be hard to do without damaging future investment.

The question you pose doesn't really make sense. There are 48 settlement periods in a day, if in any given one of those, 1% of generation came from gas, then the price would be substantially lower than if 20% came from gas. This is because the efficiency varies a lot. Also, it is not only gas that is price setting, all imported power has a price too.

Note that if 0% is from gas the price can go negative, so renewable generators suffer. Or in other words, when there is lots of wind, they receive less revenue - something that is known as cannibalisation, and is only getting worse. There aren't really super returns to be had.

Anyway, to answer your question in another way, do I think renewables are being overpaid? No. Do I think that using gas should be penalised? Yes. Trump is doing his bit for carbon neutrality.

I think this about where you are. And the last paragraph reflects the question I asked in the subsequent post - when and how.

https://skywriter.blue/@stephenjarvis.bsky.social/3mhzh6m4sys2q

The last couple of paragraphs:

"While it may not sound particularly "radical", I remain of the view that long-term contracts and windfall taxes can already do a lot of the heavy lifting here, all while preserving the proven economic incentives for least cost dispatch that sit at the core of the current market structure.

Ultimately electricity and gas prices will be decoupled, not by fiddling around with market rules, but by the continued expansion of renewable, nuclear and storage capacity to the point where gas becomes an increasingly negligible part of the supply mix. The sooner this happens the better."

 

[Pblakeney]

Ultimately electricity and gas prices will be decoupled, not by fiddling around with market rules, but by the continued expansion of renewable, nuclear and storage capacity to the point where gas becomes an increasingly negligible part of the supply mix. The sooner this happens the better."

Domestic suppliers have already done so.
The awkward part is that electricity is far more expensive per unit than gas.

 

[briantrumpet]

As I can't find a/the covid thread, a damning post here about the covid second wave in the winter of 2020 - remember, the one when Johnson delayed and delayed, because he hated making hard/unpopular decisions?

https://christinapagel.substack.com/p/the-uk-covid-inquiry-has-laid-bare?r=8zv6v

Professor Edmunds, who served on the SAGE modelling subgroup Spi-M, testified that the failure to act to control the second wave “was not because of a lack of situational awareness or knowledge of how to control it. We let this second wave happen.”2 . Professor McLean, now the UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor, described it as the worst period of pandemic, saying:

“We could see what was coming and could not understand why the government did not act upon the science advice by introducing effective interventions”3

This isn’t speaking with the luxury of hindsight - witness after witness testified that SAGE was warning what was coming at the time. And it wasn’t just SAGE. The Academy of Medical Sciences published a detailed report in July 2020 (shared with the government via SAGE) on the need to prepare for a challenging winter, including advice on NHS resilience, contact tracing, and public health mitigations. Indie SAGE too published many reports that summer and autumn, on how to make contact tracing more effective, on how to improve testing, on safer return to work and study, the need to support people isolating. We highlighted the urgency of what was happening in the lead up to Christmas 2020 as things were spiralling out of control, and called for an emergency national lockdown almost two weeks before the government acted.

 

[First Aspect]

Rest assured that we are now as well prepared as we were in 2019.

 

[PurplePenguin]

I think this about where you are. And the last paragraph reflects the question I asked in the subsequent post - when and how.

https://skywriter.blue/@stephenjarvis.bsky.social/3mhzh6m4sys2q

The last couple of paragraphs:

"While it may not sound particularly "radical", I remain of the view that long-term contracts and windfall taxes can already do a lot of the heavy lifting here, all while preserving the proven economic incentives for least cost dispatch that sit at the core of the current market structure.

Ultimately electricity and gas prices will be decoupled, not by fiddling around with market rules, but by the continued expansion of renewable, nuclear and storage capacity to the point where gas becomes an increasingly negligible part of the supply mix. The sooner this happens the better."

Seems like a reasonable summary. It does neglect to mention the extent that LCCC benefits from high gas prices and that perhaps the government could use that money rather than bashing renewable generators.

When there is very little gas on the grid, everyone should celebrate the amazing achievement of decarbonising the grid. As to what the pricing looks like, then I imagine it will be a mess. Perhaps constant very low prices with most generators being paid by way of a CFD, but this won't work for those without CFDs. There will still be a difference in demand during the day and a cost to batteries load shifting which will set prices to some extent. Ultimately though, you don't need to worry about it unless you own some generation assets.

 

[First Aspect]

There's an often under rated skill in explaining things that one specialises in to people who don't, without requiring them to look up jargon.

I basically do this for a living, so if you need any tips let me know.

 

[PurplePenguin]

There's an often under rated skill in explaining things that one specialises in to people who don't, without requiring them to look up jargon.

I basically do this for a living, so if you need any tips let me know.

What jargon would you like to help me explain?

 

[First Aspect]

What jargon would you like to help me explain?

The problem is worse than I thought.

 

[PurplePenguin]

The problem is worse than I thought.

As you know, I'm just not as amazing as you. My expertise knows bounds.