How Britain Can Avert An Energy Prices Crisis

Subtle reforms make big improvements

Aug 10, 2022

Here are The Daily Beagle’s suggestions for how the UK government can avert a crisis with the energy prices:

Urgently Fix The Storage Shortfall

According to BusinessWire, the UK wasted a whopping 1,300 GWh (gigawatt hours; a giga is a thousand mega, a mega is a thousand kilo, a kilo is a thousand) in wind generation since September 2021 due to the lack of storage. Enough power for half a million homes.

To put that in contrast, Sizewell B nuclear reactor produces a “mere” 1198 megawatts (1.1 gigawatts). It is like taking an entire nuclear reactor plant offline.

The UK must urgently expand their national grid power storage - using such things as pumped hydro storage (you would likely need at least 5 major installations if they are roughly 360 MW - consult with your electrical and mechanical engineers). Flywheels, and even radical new storage methods should also be considered.

Lithium ion batteries are not ideal as in high temperatures, as they run the risk of catching on fire, which given it is a lithium fire, is extremely difficult to put out, given not only is lithium highly reactive, but they are often electrically charged with high voltages, so using water to put out the fires is an electrocution hazard (read: national security risk).

Although in 2016, 90% of lithium imports were from Argentina and Chile, that is the raw chemical and not the batteries, which are typically manufactured in China, with it accounting for over 77.5% of lithium ion batteries imported into the US, something China were happy to try to weaponise in protest over Taiwan

For Residential Solar Installs, Drop Batteries And Grid Tie

You can reduce the cost of solar panel installations by dropping the use of batteries and grid tie. Most energy grid providers don’t pay that much for resold solar energy, and batteries are currently one of the more expensive components in a solar setup

Waive Planning Permission For Rooftop Installations

For residential rooftop solar installations, completely waive planning permission requirements, with the exception for historical buildings or where modifications are detrimental.

Planning permission costs money and delays installation of the panels.

Planning permission might be waived for business rooftop installation, although it depends on the size and scope. Councils should have the freedom to waive planning permission for rooftop installations.

Don’t Give One-Off Handouts

Paying money towards bills is like giving a fish, rather than teaching people how to fish. Invest the money into buying solar panel installations for the most vulnerable, such as those on dialysis machines that require electricity in order for a person to live. It will keep paying for itself for 20 years. Multiply that investment!

Buy Second Hand Solar Panels Cheap

Either buy domestically, or import second hand solar panels cheap, refurbish them, and use it to lower the costs of installation. Some generation capacity is better than none at all.

Form Solar Panel Installation Building Societies

A building society is where a group of people pool their money together to build something, for each person in turn. As each person’s project gets built, the money they save from the construction they pay back into the building society.

Offer A Variety Of Financing Schemes

The government can offer lend-lease, where they pay for the solar installation and over time, the person pays back the money using what they’ve saved, a bit like a ‘solar mortgage’. Or the government can offer to split the difference to make it more affordable for homes.

Encourage Landlords And Social Housing To Add Rooftop Solar For Free

Landlords and Social Housing can help ensure tenants are able to pay future rent by reducing their outgoing energy costs with solar panel installations, freeing up their finances to continue paying rent.

Hook Up The Orkney Islands With Expanded Capacity

As reported in the Tom Scott video (below), the Orkney Islands have extra capacity due to the heavy adoption of wind turbines. Currently the hookup is of limited capacity, and the UK government have discussed expanding it, but haven’t gone ahead because they’ve invented a catch-22 where Orkney needs to expand generation before the government does hookup.

The government should do hookup anyway, as Orkney cannot expand generation without the means to export the otherwise damaging excess grid power. Currently Orkney has already maximised all it can export on the 40MW lines.

The extra hookup from the Orkney Islands would allow them to both expand their wind turbine developments, and increase UK national grid capacity, lowering costs.

Have Government Researchers Develop Commercial-Of-The-Shelf (COTS) And 3D Printed Open-Source Designs For Power Generation

One of the heavily under-utilised domains for microgeneration (<50kW) is 3D printing, which hasn’t had as much serious investigation as it could have from government.

The government could produce CAD designs for gears, sprockets and similarly, coupled with COTS parts (such as dynamos) to build a variety of microgeneration tools.

Design Residential Biogeneration Reactors That Use Fallen Tree Leaves And Food Waste To Produce Methane

There’s many different variations of designs of biogenerator reactors on YouTube - although The Daily Beagle does not endorse any particular designs as most of them look hastily put together with no safety mechanisms. We won’t link to any examples as, if the gas is ignited improperly, it could cause a flashback and an explosion.

Often, the designs make use of food waste as part of the generation source for methane - the methane, once generated over several days, can then be burned for both heat and cooking. However other designs use decaying and fallen tree leaves, which would make them ideal for producing heating in homes during the autumn on the cheap given the abundance of fallen leaves during autumn.

However, a cheap, safe, standardised, mass producible design would need to be made that is safe for the public to use.

These are just a few of the ideas off the top of our heads. Readers can submit their own suggestions in the comments. Also, feel free to highlight any flaws in our plans.

The Daily Beagle