Wind Power and UK Energy Use

[AndrewE]

My feeling is that this is "too little, too late!"
The Guardian agrees: https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-low-carbon-housing-in-england?CMP=GTUK_email

Buyers of new homes are likely to be shackled to high gas prices for years to come, as the government has delayed bringing into force new regulations on low-carbon housing.
Most newly built homes will come equipped with solar panels and heat pumps from March 2028, according to updated regulations for England called the “future homes standard” (FHS), but the government has relented on plans for more stringent rules under pressure from housebuilders.
A loophole in the regulations that allows for wood-burning stoves in new homes could also help to scupper plans for homes to be fully carbon-free.

and

The future homes standard has taken more than a decade to draw up: it was supposed to be published by the last Conservative government, and was intended to replace a previous commitment by the last Labour government for a zero-carbon homes standard to come in from 2016, which was scrapped by David Cameron.

 

[Trainbike46]

My feeling is that this is "too little, too late!"
The Guardian agrees: https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-low-carbon-housing-in-england?CMP=GTUK_email

and

I agree; I don't see why this standard going into effect needs to take ~4 years from the general election. In the Netherlands, the notice given to builders that there would be no more new gas connections was a few months*, not the two years Labour appears to think is necessary. Obviously the conservatives are at fault to, not in the least for scrapping the 2016 zero-carbon home standard.

*After the government announced new standards that banned gas connections for new homes, it came into effect for new planning / building regulations applications a few months later - any buildings that already had the planning and building regulations approved could continue as approved.

 

[AndrewE]

Private Eye (I think it was) pointed out that after developers fundied the Tories for decades, the biggest source of income for the Labour party now comes from developers.

 

[jon0844]

Perhaps developers would have acted sooner if buyers of new build properties were more demanding. Demand to know why there's either no solar panels or just a token panel or two covering 5-10% of the available roof space.

We're our own worst enemy. No doubt there are many who not only didn't moan but had been convinced that they're somehow better off not having solar (or a heat pump).because of something they read on the Internet.

 

[HSTEd]

Perhaps developers would have acted sooner if buyers of new build properties were more demanding. Demand to know why there's either no solar panels or just a token panel or two covering 5-10% of the available roof space.

We're our own worst enemy. No doubt there are many who not only didn't moan but had been convinced that they're somehow better off not having solar (or a heat pump).because of something they read on the Internet.

I think the most important explanation is a crushing shortage of housing.

It is a sellers market and has been for decades. You either buy what is on offer or you have no housing.

 

[quantinghome]

My feeling is that this is "too little, too late!"
The Guardian agrees

The Guardian says a lot of things...

The best time to do this was 15 years ago. The second best time is now. What else can we do?

 

[HSTEd]

The Guardian says a lot of things...

The best time to do this was 15 years ago. The second best time is now. What else can we do?

Cancel the end of radio teleswitch, auction solar panels for almost nothing and start fitting teleswitch controlled hot water cylinders......

Oh and extent the EV grant to the BYD Dolphin Surf, which would make it the cheapest new car on the market

 

[AndrewE]

The Guardian says a lot of things...

The best time to do this was 15 years ago. The second best time is now. What else can we do?

how about not putting off the implementation another 2 years?

 

[Krokodil]

start fitting teleswitch controlled hot water cylinders......

Why do we need to use that old technology when I can control my cylinder remotely (or even trigger it automatically based on the Agile tariff) with more modern technology?

 

[HSTEd]

Why do we need to use that old technology when I can control my cylinder remotely (or even trigger it automatically based on the Agile tariff) with more modern technology?

Any demand side control has to make use of a suitably robust signalling channel. Internet based systems are fine most of the time, but in the renewable era the consequences of a failure of demand side management comms go from the grid operator having to run peaking plants to potential total system collapse.
Teleswitch/Ripple control systems are much easier to make robust and extremely reliable.


Controlled demand side loads need a very robust control/signalling channel and to be honest they probably also need frequency sensitive relays.

 

[Class 317]

Any demand side control has to make use of a suitably robust signalling channel. Internet based systems are fine most of the time, but in the renewable era the consequences of a failure of demand side management comms go from the grid operator having to run peaking plants to potential total system collapse.
Teleswitch/Ripple control systems are much easier to make robust and extremely reliable.


Controlled demand side loads need a very robust control/signalling channel and to be honest they probably also need frequency sensitive relays.

Internet based controls are fine. The reason being is a spatial one. It's incredibly unlikely that said controls will fail everywhere at the same time. If a percentage fail at once other demand side controls would pick up the slack. An internet based demand side management has massive redundancy.

 

[HSTEd]

Internet based controls are fine. The reason being is a spatial one. It's incredibly unlikely that said controls will fail everywhere at the same time. If a percentage fail at once other demand side controls would pick up the slack. An internet based demand side management has massive redundancy.

Internet outages for given endpoints for hours at a time are hardly uncommon.

Doesn't matter if you can still get to youtube or this forum if the endpoints supporting the demand side management are out.
After all, the system has a single point of failure - only the Grid Operator actually knows what the situation is and only they are realistically able to issue instructions on the required timescale.

Tariff based systems are woefully inadequate given that they only work in half hour chunks.

And once the Grid Operator comms are out, the whole system falls over and we end up with a black start situation.

And a black start in a decarbonised energy system is likely to kill substantial numbers of people if it happens at the wrong time (ie. the winter).

 

[jon0844]

I think the most important explanation is a crushing shortage of housing.

It is a sellers market and has been for decades. You either buy what is on offer or you have no housing.

Yes that's true but we still need to demand more.

The intense lobbying to delay progress on things like building regulations, as well as developers happily sitting on land and delaying construction, to drip feed supply and keep prices high, are factors too.

But I do think we have more power than we realise. Plus, new rules for landlords might also slow demand for buy to let (often purchased long before a home is built) which means more people buying who actually intend to live there themselves - and should be more demanding.

I'm also not entirely convinced the added cost of materials and labour during construction will be as high as quoted. Heat pumps are falling in price all the time (and developers would buy in the thousands) and solar panels cost bugger all. When fitted during construction of the home, the labour cost is minimal too.

 

[Class 317]

Internet outages for given endpoints for hours at a time are hardly uncommon.

Doesn't matter if you can still get to youtube or this forum if the endpoints supporting the demand side management are out.
After all, the system has a single point of failure - only the Grid Operator actually knows what the situation is and only they are realistically able to issue instructions on the required timescale.

Tariff based systems are woefully inadequate given that they only work in half hour chunks.

And once the Grid Operator comms are out, the whole system falls over and we end up with a black start situation.

And a black start in a decarbonised energy system is likely to kill substantial numbers of people if it happens at the wrong time (ie. the winter).

I think you are misunderstanding the spatial comment. It doesn't matter if individual home or business is devices lose connection for how ever long because many more devices will be connected offering an alternative demand side solution to whatever the grid operator is trying to solve.

In terms of grid control centres these are dispersed, have multiple independent internet connections and again these are unlikely to allow go down at once.

Tariffs in future will probably include the option to allow control if key demand side devices like smart car chargers or smart water tanks in return for sharing the savings of reducing grid loads when required.

A lot of new industries connecting to the grid like data centres can regulate their energy use by modulating their cooler loads. Heat pumps can do the same and many more examples.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Mar 2026 ==

Yes that's true but we still need to demand more.

The intense lobbying to delay progress on things like building regulations, as well as developers happily sitting on land and delaying construction, to drip feed supply and keep prices high, are factors too.

But I do think we have more power than we realise. Plus, new rules for landlords might also slow demand for buy to let (often purchased long before a home is built) which means more people buying who actually intend to live there themselves - and should be more demanding.

I'm also not entirely convinced the added cost of materials and labour during construction will be as high as quoted. Heat pumps are falling in price all the time (and developers would buy in the thousands) and solar panels cost bugger all. When fitted during construction of the home, the labour cost is minimal too.

Absolutely we have the technology and it saves us money to make all new homes in essence use zero energy by generating their own.

In another point, I recently had a chat with a new work colleague who made the quite valid point that in terms of emissions reductions further reduction in the emissions on the grid is likely to be more expensive than at this point electrifying industrial processes, heating and transport as even with last year's emissions levels, this would reduce overall emissions faster. It would also reduce fossil fuel dependency faster as electric options have much higher efficiency and so need less energy overall all for the same useful work.

If anyone is interested in this it's called the primary energy fallacy.

 

[HSTEd]

I think you are misunderstanding the spatial comment. It doesn't matter if individual home or business is devices lose connection for how ever long because many more devices will be connected offering an alternative demand side solution to whatever the grid operator is trying to solve.

In terms of grid control centres these are dispersed, have multiple independent internet connections and again these are unlikely to allow go down at once.

The dispersed control centres run the distribution system, but those are not the ones that really matter in terms of avoiding system collapse.

Almost all grid balancing decisions are still made at a single control centre complex in Wokingham operated by NESO.
And as noted, if Wokingham loses its internet connection(s), it doesn't matter if everyone else still has it. The system will still likely fall over because no one else has the necessary information.

In the fossil era everyone could fall back on frequency control, but thats not really an option in the renewable dominated system. We require an absolutely robust signalling channel to maintain an efficient and reliable system.

 

[quantinghome]

how about not putting off the implementation another 2 years?

Because that would affect housing schemes currently going through planning (or even on site for larger developments) and you'd crash the new build market.

 

[Class 317]

The dispersed control centres run the distribution system, but those are not the ones that really matter in terms of avoiding system collapse.

Almost all grid balancing decisions are still made at a single control centre complex in Wokingham operated by NESO.
And as noted, if Wokingham loses its internet connection(s), it doesn't matter if everyone else still has it. The system will still likely fall over because no one else has the necessary information.

In the fossil era everyone could fall back on frequency control, but thats not really an option in the renewable dominated system. We require an absolutely robust signalling channel to maintain an efficient and reliable system.

An additional control centres is under construction at Hams Hall and additionally other sites are are used as well as part of the grid stability control and can take over in the event of a massive failure.

 

[Bald Rick]

A 300MWh Battery project has just come on line at Ferrybridge. That will help store some of the wind we are having tonight!

 

[Trainbike46]

Because that would affect housing schemes currently going through planning (or even on site for larger developments) and you'd crash the new build market.

Not if you do it in a sensible manner

 

[The Ham]

I think the most important explanation is a crushing shortage of housing.

It is a sellers market and has been for decades. You either buy what is on offer or you have no housing.

As I've highlighted elsewhere, whilst there's many factors associated with this the often quoted reason (population growth) isn't the largest.

I'm not sure what is, however the fact that when you compare population growth with falling household sizes it's a ratio of 2:3 (the larger being falling household sizes) when it comes to the number of extra homes needed (i.e. for every 5 homes needed for those two reasons 3 are due to falling household sizes and 2 are due to population growth)

This is because most of the population growth is amongst those over 65 (the population of those under 16 have hardly increased at all and the working age population hasn't grown nearly as fast).

For some reason over 65 are less likely to be having children and are more likely to be widows/widowers than the national average and so typically live in smaller household sizes (whilst the former is also true of that under 16, they also tend to live in larger household sizes and so aren't causing a reduction in household sizes in the same way that over 65 are).

 

[quantinghome]

Not if you do it in a sensible manner

Which is what they're doing. How else would you bring it in other than giving a reasonable notice period to the industry?

 

[Trainbike46]

Which is what they're doing. How else would you bring it in other than giving a reasonable notice period to the industry?

They're being absurdly slow in taking 4 years since the general election, which is anything but sensible with the knowledge of what happened during both the invasion of Ukraine a few years ago, and the invasion of Iran this year.

A sensible manner would be to make it so that planning applications or building regulations (whichever of the two you put it in) applications filed after a certain date THIS YEAR , e.g. July first, would have to meet the new requirements (including no more gas, oil, or other fossil fuel heating). Any projects that applied before could continue as approved, so there would be no impact on any ongoing construction. Any projects in design that are almost done should be able to file for approval before July. If design isn't almost done, then they can (and should) change it to meet the new standard.

And while labour is of course not at fault for what happened during 2010-2024, 2028 will represent a 12 year delay, which is unacceptably long.

 

[takno]

They're being absurdly slow in taking 4 years since the general election, which is anything but sensible with the knowledge of what happened during both the invasion of Ukraine a few years ago, and the invasion of Iran this year.

A sensible manner would be to make it so that planning applications or building regulations (whichever of the two you put it in) applications filed after a certain date THIS YEAR , e.g. July first, would have to meet the new requirements (including no more gas, oil, or other fossil fuel heating). Any projects that applied before could continue as approved, so there would be no impact on any ongoing construction. Any projects in design that are almost done should be able to file for approval before July. If design isn't almost done, then they can (and should) change it to meet the new standard.

And while labour is of course not at fault for what happened during 2010-2024, 2028 will represent a 12 year delay, which is unacceptably long.

Would your choice of an earlier deadline on an earlier point in projects, against their choice of a later deadline but on project completion actually make any significant difference to numbers? People sometimes seem so driven by the politics of disappointment that they will find some way to determine that the government is failing even when they are doing good.

 

[AndrewE]

Which is what they're doing. How else would you bring it in other than giving a reasonable notice period to the industry?

I think they could do it almost instantly, apart from the actual procurement of the extra panels and inverters.

Lots of new housing developments have a mixture of panel numbers on apparently similar houses, so I imagine that it is an optional add-on governed by how much the purchaser wants - which says to me that they could put as many as will fit on every house if they were told to.

What isn't apparent is if all these systems have any battery storage, which (combined with TOU tariffs) is what really helps the grid cope with peak demands.

 

[Trainbike46]

Would your choice of an earlier deadline on an earlier point in projects, against their choice of a later deadline but on project completion actually make any significant difference to numbers? People sometimes seem so driven by the politics of disappointment that they will find some way to determine that the government is failing even when they are doing good.

I think putting the deadline earlier* in the process is fairer on everyone involved, simply because there can be delays at various stages for many different reasons, and having to change the design if that happens may be relatively costly if it happens during construction, for example.

By the way, have you been able to find specifically at which point in the process these rules apply? I have not been able to see anything that states this explicitly, but given these are changes to the building regulations, it seems to be either a deadline for building regulations application or for building regulations approval. In either case, there is absolutely no need to wait 2 more years, 3 months would be plenty if it is an application deadline, and 6 months should be sufficient if it is an approval deadline. Either would mean the rules could come into effect this year.

I do actually think DESNZ has been relatively competent so far, and I guess this is better than nothing. At least it will come into effect before the next general election, so a repeat of the 2016 fiasco isn't possible this time round. However, I would note that Scotland already banned fossil fuel heating in new-built homes two years ago (source), and if anything it would be harder in Scotland, not easier.

*Using the date of the building regulations application, as these rules are changes to the building regulations.

 

[quantinghome]

By the way, have you been able to find specifically at which point in the process these rules apply? I have not been able to see anything that states this explicitly, but given these are changes to the building regulations, it seems to be either a deadline for building regulations application or for building regulations approval. In either case, there is absolutely no need to wait 2 more years, 3 months would be plenty if it is an application deadline, and 6 months should be sufficient if it is an approval deadline. Either would mean the rules could come into effect this year.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...ngs-standards-building-circular-012026-letter

Excerpt from the above:

The Regulations come into force on the 24 March 2027, except that regulations 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 come into force for higher-risk building (HRB) work and work to an existing HRB (as both terms are defined) on 24 September 2027.

For non-HRB work (or work to an existing HRB), the changes made to the 2010 and 2024 Regulations will not apply to work on a building where a building notice, an initial notice, or an application for building control approval with full plans has been given to the relevant authority in respect of that building before 24 March 2027, provided that the building work to which the notice or application relates is commenced (as defined) on the relevant building before 24 March 2028.

So new building applications need to be compliant with the new regulations within a year (or 18 months for HRBs), and all building work started after 24 March 2028 needs to comply, even if an application for building control has already been made.

Would your choice of an earlier deadline on an earlier point in projects, against their choice of a later deadline but on project completion actually make any significant difference to numbers? People sometimes seem so driven by the politics of disappointment that they will find some way to determine that the government is failing even when they are doing good.

Exactly. Particularly when the information above is available from a simple Google enquiry. Can people not do the bare minimum of research to see if they actually have cause for complaint?

 

[Class 317]

Looking like the wind generation record could be broken today. 23.64GW as of 10 mins ago and winds forecast to rise a little in key areas over the next couple of hours.

 

[brad465]

Looking like the wind generation record could be broken today. 23.64GW as of 10 mins ago and winds forecast to rise a little in key areas over the next couple of hours.

At time of writing about 3.5-4GW of electricity is being imported from the continent into the south/southeast of the UK. I wouldn't mind betting that wind power could have been about 27-28GW right now as a result, but is not because north-south grid capacity is currently insufficient to make this possible.

 

[Pegpilot]

At time of writing about 3.5-4GW of electricity is being imported from the continent into the south/southeast of the UK. I wouldn't mind betting that wind power could have been about 27-28GW right now as a result, but is not because north-south grid capacity is currently insufficient to make this possible.

Still, throw in solar (27% of generation right now) and nuclear (12%) and that's 90% of our generation carbon free. Not bad. Different story tomorrow when the winds abate though !

 

[Bryson]

Getting very close to carbon free right now with fossil generation below 1 GW (0.94 GW at 12:55). Pumped hydro is soaking up 1.52 GW for later use, it's a shame we can't see what battery storage is absorbing.