magnetic-recoil

Yes, that's right. The spot price is determined by the marginal source of electricity. That's normally gas, but is sometimes coal, imports, or pumped hydro storage. The consumer actually benefits twice - once when the wind is sold into the market, which necessarily lowers the spot price for _all_ electricity (more wind supply is the same as reducing total demand, which will reduce the market price). Then, the difference between the spot price and the CfD price is refunded, but this time only on the electricity actually generated by wind.

In general, electricity suppliers don't literally pass the spot price on to consumers. It used to be that a supplier could price electricity however they liked, including passing the spot price on. However, for the past few years, suppliers are required to buy futures, and price their supplied electricity on that basis, because of the domestic price cap. If they didn't they would run the risk of going bankrupt like Bulb. Futures bring stability, and in an efficient market with perfect information buying futures would be the same as buying spot. But the market is not efficient and with perfect information, so that assumption doesn't apply. Notwithstanding that, you were correct, the part of electricity generation attributable to wind should be taken account of at the lower price.

For most consumers, their marginal cost of electricity is identical to their average cost (ignoring the standing charge) as they are on a fixed rate tariff. It would undoubtedly be more efficient to charge consumers the actual marginal cost at the time of consumption, and then refund the CfD payments in a monthly payment later, but that's not how it's done sadly.

Wind farm operators sell their power onto the market (they can sell however they like, but the reference price is calculated according to the day-ahead spot price).

Any imbalance between the agreed price and the reference price is sent to the LCCC (Low Carbon Contracts Company, part of the government).

The LCCC then re-charges any CfD payments or surplus funds to the electricity suppliers. This should eventually work its way into an increase or reduction in household energy bills. So the end consumer should get the difference between the wholesale and CfD price, in theory. This is also taken into account when the OFGEM price cap is calculated.

To answer your question about who benefits from high electricity prices - mostly fossil fuel producers, but also fossil power stations, legacy renewable generators with direct subsidies rather than CfDs, and electricity market traders exploiting the volatility.

Offshore wind in the UK currently uses the "Contracts for Difference" payment mechanism. Operators bid to build turbines, and the best value operators get assigned areas of the sea. Then, they receive a fixed price from consumers for any electricity they generate (effectively, but there's market mechanisms in there that complicate the accounting).

Initially, this was much more expensive than fossil electricity, but the price of turbines has dropped and the price of fossil electricity has grown, so now existing wind turbines are lowering the price consumers pay for electricity.

New wind farms have achieved CfD rates of less than £0.04 per kWh, which is not a subsidy for the wind farm operators, but rather a subsidy for electricity consumers as this electricity is far cheaper than market rates.

Named storms often generate records for wind power generation. Even if a few turbines in the middle of the storm have to turn off, the rest of the country still gets lots more wind.

If you look at graphs of the wind and solar production in winter vs summer, the correlation is obvious. On a day-to-day basis, much less so, but on average low wind does tend to come along with higher sun.

You can also view the effects of a frontpage post on HN here: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/admin/

Teams is literally Skype for Business with a different skin, there's loads of traces of Skype left over where they haven't bothered to change the name.

I think this might have been a bad choice of words, I interpret the writer as intending "enjoyed" here to mean "to have had the use or benefit of" the warmest October, rather than explicitly endorsing that unseasonably warm weather is pleasurable. One does not need to be satisfied by something they "enjoy", especially in formal or legal language.

A loaf of bread is pretty conveniently 2000 calories, and costs £0.40 if you buy a cheap one. Less nutritious than a potato though!

It's called road tax because you need to pay it before you can take your vehicle on the road. You can own a car and keep it in your garage and you don't have to pay any tax on it - it's not a car tax, it's a road tax.

It's an error to assume that people call taxes by what they pay for, the common name of a tax is what makes you liable for it. Income tax is paid when you earn income, insurance tax is paid when you take out an insurance policy, road tax is charged if you want to take your vehicle on the roads.

'plenty of vehicles' is also just bicycles and carts AFAIK, any other vehicle requires registration and tax (even if the rate is £0). In any case, it doesn't matter that not all road users pay road tax, we still call income tax as such even though not all earners pay it!

As an aside, I don't own a car and in fact prefer to cycle; I simply object to a factually incorrect and nonsensical prescriptivist campaign against how normal people speak.

I am sorry but you are wrong about road tax - the name "road tax" never existed in the law, the tax that became VED was always legally called something else. Calling a fee required to drive your vehicle on the road a "road tax" is a perfectly legitimate use of the English language.

In all other regards you are correct though, there is VAT to be paid on electricity, and electric vehicles must be registered for tax even though they don't have to pay.

One subsidy, there are still big subsidies on leasing electric cars (no tax or employment tax has to be paid on this), as well as zero road tax, fuel tax and other incentives.

Electric cars are cheap enough now anyway that the subsidies don't really make sense, they've done their job establishing a market but keeping the subsidy in place now is just a distortion pushing nominal prices up.

Yep, unfortunately the network and folder loading code is really slow in Claws. There's lots of scope for improvement but no real development effort towards it - a few years ago I made some patches fixing a few low-hanging fruit but they were just left to rot and it hasn't improved since.