Don’t use electricity during solar eclipse, urges Britain’s biggest energy supplier
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/solar-eclipse-electricity-octopus-energy-b3030376.htmlOpen linkView original on feddit.orgSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on feddit.orghttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/solar-eclipse-electricity-octopus-energy-b3030376.htmlOpen linkView original on feddit.org
32 replies
Oh what the absolute fuck.
If you actually go to the power company's own damn website (i.e. the primary source), it's actually some sort of (ill-advised IMO) sales promotion thing, not the dire warning implying brownouts or whatever that all the headlines are spinning it to be. British media should be fucking ashamed of itself.
Whilst not quite the daily mail or telegraph levels of egregiousness, the independent is another paper owned by an ultra wealthy.
A good amount of the wealthy's wealth is often in oil
It's in their interest to promote anti environmentalism
It's therefore in all of our interests to ignore such papers on these issues
When I searched to find the primary source I ran across articles by The Guardian etc. too. It might be a news wire service thing 'cause they're all reporting it the same.
If you're with Octopus they're running an opt-in energy saving session tomorrow from 6-8pm where they credit you if you use less electricity than you normally do at that time.
For those on their Agile tariff that tracks the real time wholesale price and alters every 30 minutes they'll no doubt whack up the rates for 6pm-8pm, possibly up to the max 99p/kWh, to try to reduce demand.
Doesn't seem plausible to me, in the winter we get less than 8 hours of daylight in the UK and it's often cloudy, it's completely dark well before the time the eclipse happens in December/January. In August when we get 15+ hours of daylight, what is an extra shadow (it's not even total in the UK) going to really do?
Guesswork: there is too little battery storage and during winter time, fossile fuels are burned as planned.
I also don't know about UK's NPPs, but other coutries plants suffer from too low and too warm rivers causing cooling issues and therefore having to reduce output drastically. Could play a role, too.
But yeah, it seems stupid to not be prepared for a predicted scenario.
In all honesty I think it's a publicity stunt, and a really bad one to be pulling at this time when clear transparent messaging about climate change is needed (Octopus Energy position themselves as a green energy provider). But if they're really not prepared for it, it reflects badly on them too since the eclipse could be predicted from thousands of years ago.
Well, its about all solar pannels producing energy in one second, and none in the next. And when the overall netload is lower, its easier to balance out these peaks.
Solar currently only generates 30% of UK grid electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Kingdom
For a region that clouds over and rains quite often, you’d think the grid could handle an hour without sunshine during an eclipse. What do they do every night when the sun goes down? Does everyone across the UK just turn everything off? 😂
I'm on Octopus Agile on a smart tariff. We got an email today inviting us to participate in an energy saving session, which is where they state a time period typically an hour where they give you credits for using less electricity than you usually use, from 6pm-8pm tomorrow during the eclipse. I'm quite happy to get paid to use less.
There’s a reservoir in Wales whose purpose is to run water through turbines when electrical demand spikes. It usually sees action during breaks in high-profile football matches, when a significant proportion of the country put their kettles on to make tea. Surely they’d be topping it up before the eclipse.
Do you have a source for this? Because that's amazing.
This is known as TV pickup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
Glorious.
It didn't used to be just big stuff like football. Because broadcast TV here was both popular and only a handful of channels, it used to be something that happened during every episode of EastEnders or Coronation Street.
Maybe Oscar and Nepo should visit any competent Grade 2 science class. It’s an eclipse not the apocalypse. The gods won’t switch off the sun for two hours. Except for <10 minutes at local maximum, it’s more akin to a very cloudy day than the End Times
But does that increase clicks?
Ah. Now I see my mistake. My bad ;>
🎶 It ain’t even slick
If it don’t get no clicks….
they need it for data centers?
This is just dumb, the (partial) eclipse starts at 18:17 London time...what amount of solar power are you even producing that late in the day? If that were a real problem, I can't imagine what large clouds can do to you at noon. https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2026-august-12?n=uk%2Flondon
It's still bright and sunny here in the UK at 6pm, sunset where I live isn't until 40 minutes after the end of the eclipse.
An eclipse of this magnitude reduces solar generation far more than clouds do.
Human perception of brightness is logarithmic, so it doesn't seem that much dimmer at 6pm than midday, but in terms of how much energy is actually arriving as light, there's a big difference.
The total eclipse in Canada two years ago was so cool. It got dark and cold quickly.
Look at the energy mix at 6pm: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/GB/live/fifteen_minutes 100% loss of solar at 6pm is comparable to loss of 20% due to clouds at peak production.
1800 is usually during peak demand though.
But residual solar production. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/GB/live/fifteen_minutes it is ludicrous to ask people to save at peak demand when it is up to the grid managers to tweak the energy mixes ahead of time.
I don't think ludicrous is the right word to describe voluntary load shedding. If it were mandatory, sure. Asking consumers to lower their usage (if they can) for one hour on one specific day is fairly reasonable.
I'll do exactly as I'm used to, because at that time our solar panels will have our battery fully charged and will last until morning.
But apart from that, the electricity spot price is actually expected to be pretty low here (Denmark) during the solar eclipse Wednesday, The spot price is projected to be 40% higher Tuesday afternoon and evening. Probably because there is more wind Wednesday.
https://stromligning.dk/elpriser?reduceret-elafgift=ja&netselskab=cerius_c&produkt=nrgi_time&omraade=DK2
I see a huge price spike at 19.45-20.15 with the solar eclipse peaking at 20.05 (DK time).
Yes the actual price changed dramatically compared to the prognosis yesterday. It's the worst prognosis I've ever seen.
I guess the British were right.
Well so much the better to be able to run off our battery.
Battery-Brothers 🤜🤛
And yes, the price hike for the time is not anything I’ve seen before like that
I agree the hike is high, but what I meant was the difference in prognoses and reality. The prognosis was about half the real price.
Luckily some of us have batteries, and we help keep peak prices lower. 😎👍 🫸🫷