Energy shake-up saving consumers money

Stuart Wright

Electricity shake-up could save consumers 'up to £40bn' - BBC News

                                                                        Consumers in the UK could save billions of pounds thanks to major changes in the way electricity is made, used and stored, the government has said.                                Click to expand...       

As a solar installation owner this is intriguing. The BBC news item is not accurate, though

                                                                        Among the first to gain from the rule changes will be people with solar panels and battery storage. At the moment they are charged tariffs when they import electricity into their home or export it back to the grid.                                Click to expand...       

In fact we are paid a ('feed in') tariff for supplying electricity and charged for using electricity at the normal rate.
So I'm not sure if the author of this piece really knows what they are talking about.

Cocksure

From the way I heard it the BBC report is almost correct.

The government wants us to have batteries that store the excess power the grid produces and then feeds it back to the grid when the demand is high. So people would be paying to charge at the moment.

Why anyone would currently have battery storage with no means to self charge at the moment is another matter. Frequent power cuts is the only reason I can think of

The government has no interest in people producing their own power, it's all about making use of wind farms etc where the power is often not needed at the time of production.

It's not a bad idea, but how they would make it work is another question

DOBLY

I'm far from being an evangelical Tesla worshipper, but Elon Musk's joined up thinking of solar roof tiles, Powerwall (battery storage) & cars does make sense (for those that can afford it), and should be encouraged for all new builds.

DOBLY

I have just done the calculation - "£17bn to £40bn" by 2050 -
so, thats:
~22 years
~26 million households (source Wikipedia)


Minimum £30 a year
Maximum £70 a year

assuming that all "consumers" are households

£40bn doesn't go very far these days...