National Grid ESO's 2024 Future Energy Scenarios are out, spotlighting pathways to a net-zero Britain. Gridcog delves into the insights and what they mean for the future of renewable energy and grid innovation.
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Following my trip to the UK earlier this month I was struck by a couple of things related to solar PV investment. One was the weather; London turned on the sunshine big time. The other was the current trend in the UK energy market to dumb down price signals to energy consumers relating to their interaction with the energy system, courtesy of tariff reform.
Whilst Australian markets (WEM and NEM) tend to provide a rich array of price signals to energy users, particularly for C&I/I&C folks on unbundled tariffs, the UK seems to be trending towards fixed or simple volume-based time-of-use signals to recover network and market costs.
In a future with less firm thermal generation and more renewable energy that seems a bit daft. You want the demand side of the market supporting the system in any way it can. But this shift in price signal impacts different DER asset types in different ways. In particular, any move away from more cost-reflective demand-based charges towards simpler volume-based charges will tend to improve the business case for roof top solar.
Given that, we thought it would be interesting to model the physical and commercial performance of two identical businesses, one based in Sydney and one in London, each with 400kW solar systems plus the option of including a BESS. The specific commercial focus is on the impact to distribution network costs as they’ve directly comparable concepts in both markets.
We can then build a simple model in the Gridcog platform to reflect those modelling assumptions and run a simulation.
The small print:
National Grid ESO's 2024 Future Energy Scenarios are out, spotlighting pathways to a net-zero Britain. Gridcog delves into the insights and what they mean for the future of renewable energy and grid innovation.
Taking a deeper dive into Germany's ambitious solar PV deployment goals and the financial analysis of modelling different commercial options.
Take a look at the different wholesale energy markets that make up the GB electricity market.