Make electricity cheaper to boost heat pumps

[adam2]

New government states. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c51y0y7yvlko
I agree, at present there is little point in a heat pump as it costs more to run than gas heating, and costs a lot more in capital expense.

With an increasing proportion of UK electricity coming from cheap renewables, linking the price to the cost of gas is harder to justify.

I suspect that expensive electricity is one reason for the decline in manufacturing in the UK

[BritDownUnder]

I think it is a market problem. As far as I understand it the electricity market structure consists of a series of bids for 30 minute slots of power generation. Some types of generation that are always on such as coal and nuclear will bid low positive prices and renewables will bid negative when they are running but gas being a relatively variable and dispatchable form of generation will bid high to reflect the cost of their fuel and high marginal costs and if they are the last megawatt of generation the price paid to all generators will be the high gas price.

Hence power prices are linked to gas, even in Australia at times although gas is the least used form of generation - about 5% of total generation here is gas.

In my mind there should be a type of system like they have in Texas where the cost of power to the household can be negative at certain times like after 9-00pm. Or storage heaters or district heating with storage could be used but that would bring big capital costs especially for the latter.