National Grid Share Discussion Threads

[bargainsniper] 10/3/2024 18:19

Good point.Debt is forecast to double between 2019 and 2026. Will it keep increasing forever?Then what about increased spend required to repair/update ageing network?

[viscount1] 10/3/2024 12:52

Net debt looks high but interest is easily manageable given the cashflows.

[bargainsniper] 10/3/2024 12:45

I have two bear points, any thoughts on this?

1) Debt (6.5× leverage)

Debt increased from 26.5bn in 2019 to 40.9bn in 2023.

Current debt is roughly equal to Capitalization

Forecast is for 54bn debt by 2026

My question is how much debt is too much debt?

2) Cost to repair/upgrade network?

[1carus] 07/3/2024 16:53

PO, I bought in at about 8.40 something back in 2014 based on what you have just said. It was a very reliable return like a gov bond / gilt etc. But not anymore. I'm expecting a drop to below 10.00 before it heads north of 11.00 again. Seems better to look for that than just hang on for the divi. We shall see. I just think it gets a hard time and is worth more than it trades at.

[pierre oreilly] 07/3/2024 12:21

1c, Not sure how you can see no value here. If it has roughly 11bn unregulated in the us (or maybe regulated in part by us authorities, or at least told what to do by them), and 11bn regulated in the uk - then that seems value to me. Part of the uk regulators job is to ensure ng. makes a decent return on its (uk) assets - money for old rope if you ask me, and pretty much zero or extremely low risk making that cash. (No chasing bad bill payers, no sales teams etc etc - it's different to all other businesses imv). With 'one off' costs (like the splitting of the cegb in the past and likely great extra work 'upgrading' the grid for renewables, the regulator will allow ng. to pass on the extra costs, eventually to consumers, via an uplift in the err uplift). Hence the rapidly rising electricity bills (and beyond the smoke and mirrors, the coming very small cut in rates/kWh will be offset by yet another high rise in the standing charge). Well, someone has to pay for 'grid upgrades' to handle intermittent generation.

Treat ng. like a gilt - safe profits, safe rising divi, but will never be spectacular (although I'm very happy with the performance since privatisation). Not so happy about the electricity bill rises though, which many can now no longer afford.

[viscount1] 07/3/2024 11:34

Roughly 50/50 UK/US, although different types of business.

[1carus] 07/3/2024 11:23

I sold out of this a few months back as I could not really see any value. It seems regulated to death atm. Anyone here know what the the split is between UK and overseas operations. In some ways it would be good if labour got in and nationalised the UK part of it so that the rest of it could relist in the USA and get on with it. Sub £10 and I might consider getting back in .

[skinny] 05/3/2024 17:31

I always thought the term was aimed at lawyers of dubious ethics.

[mirandaj] 05/3/2024 16:59

For interest:

[anhar] 23/2/2024 11:55

I thought it was only the US market that was "manipulated by Shysters" so I'm shocked to learn from you that the UK has them too. 😱

[colsmith] 20/2/2024 10:00

lippy - nuclear may be way but that depends on Uranium and a major source is Russia, which also supplies the US - 2nd link below. Maybe the UK leadership need to limit rhetoric on Russia as Obama said of Brexit UK will be last in the queue. Other stuff also in the ground over there is important to renewables - we don't have much over here so maybe plans need to be carefully and practically thought out. Food another issue - loads of land over there and UK building on farmland (brownfield is defined if greenfield not used to grow crops for 2 yeas) to reduce food production - some 50% imported believe - its all about numbers these days and I'm not sure bigness is understood by the leaders.






Yet, like many of its European counterparts that support Ukraine’s resistance, the United States remains heavily dependent on enriched uranium from Russia. Last year — as in decades before — Russia was the United States’ number one supplier of enriched uranium supplies, sending almost a quarter of the nuclear fuel used in the America’s commercial reactor fleet, Department of Energy date show.

[pierre oreilly] 19/2/2024 13:51

Viscount, the situation is much more complex than you envisage. And there's no UK grid, but one for Scotland, one for England and Wales and one for Ireland. There are so many interconnectors these days that e&w imports and exports all the year round, sometimes at the same time.As to wind being cheap - we'll where is all this cheap electricity? Bills have risen massively the more windmills connected to the grid. And that will continue. The intermittency causes extremely expensive measures to be taken to stop the grid collapsing under so much intermittency ( our grid is power matching, so at any instance, the demand has to be matched by generation. Try matching your demand to the generation from your solar and see how difficult it is.I wish people would realise that wind connected to the grid is very expensive (and even causes old coal fired stations to be spinning ready to generate on winters' evenings at the peak, but I won't go there).

[viscount1] 19/2/2024 13:12

Yes, the UK exports electricity in summer (surplus from solar and low heating demand) and imports in winter (minimal solar and high heating).

[lippy4] 19/2/2024 12:55

marktime

are you sure you are not a politician as your reply is just like one,covering good agriculture fields with solar panels is not good and the wind farms production of electricity is so infrequent as if you look at the numbers of electricity produced by these you will see we need to cover the whole of uk to supply enough even when the wind is blowing.

the answer is to store electricity but that requires massive units to do this and the cost enormous,who wants to be near a wind farm,the noise is irritating beyond belief.

no the true way to produce power is by nuclear and the idea of regional power stations is the answer where they will not have to transmit over huge areas needing massive pylons to take it from the sea to homes.ng has not got the money to do this any way as the cost is prohibitive,there is a better way than wind..

[marktime1231] 19/2/2024 12:40

lippy really! Have you been looking the other way while all the massive cheap renewables programmes were announced, the planned expansion in offshore wind generation capacity and the ongoing addition of onshore solar and wind?

Additional future programmes will likely be at higher prices, but those now in the pipeline and on their way to being delivered in the next 5 years were secured very cheaply. Almost too cheap, some have been cancelled because they aren't viable.

Population growth is not the problem not even with the rise of EVs, total demand in the UK has been destroyed steadily through domestic efficiencies and the decline of industry. We have even flattened the peak demand problem through flexible demand and supply measures.

We do increasingly import at times of high demand, we also export. It makes me uncomfortable too, it is no substitute for our own resilient generation like nuclear, but apparently it keeps the cost spikes of wholesale down, and it reduces the amount of gas we need to burn.

The real problem of the future is we will often have so much surplus renewable generation capacity that we can't use or export it all. We don't have the industry to demand it, or the storage capacity to save it for later. Even now so much of the generation is in the wrong place the grid can't handle it, we waste loads of free wind power. NG have been woefully slow to upgrade links from Scotland especially and are partly to blame.

[lippy4] 19/2/2024 10:35

i still cannot see where all the electricity generation is going to come from as the population increase is going through the roof,we import so much power now from europe and out own generation is falling behind as power stations are being shut and not replaced..

when ever will green power electricity be cheap,never....

[colsmith] 19/2/2024 10:17

Maybe H2O will slowly rise and Li, for ev's, wilt. Of course a new battery tech may make batteries a long term product, who knows. H2O interesting because its similar to diesel charging time, can be used on trucks with ICE and ev's and can use the current petrol/diesel real estate and overcome those cables across the pavement and fire risk and the discussed need for 65Kw or whatever goes away as discussed.

[pierre oreilly] 16/2/2024 14:10

I manage quite well with a 2.2kW charger on just 4h per night. If that's not enough I charge in the day. If you have a 7kW charger, that's over 100 miles - and not many people travel that everyday. With 14 h charging, that's about 350 miles travel each day. There must be very few people who need more than that. Home charging isn't like on a motor way where you need 300kW so it fully charged while you have a coffee ( IF you find an empty slot and if it's working and if your ev can take 300, and if it actually charges at 300kW).As to grid balancing using your ev, well that is nice in theory but probably 20years away. Current v2g chargers are around 7k£ if you want to buy one (after a trial for example).I'd say there are some very basic things money should be spent on to improve EV ownership before thinking of spending zillions giving everyone a 3 phase supply ( very high cost, pretty much zero benefit afaics)

[viscount1] 16/2/2024 13:43

I don't think a lot of numbers are required when even a single 11kW charger needs three-phase, and in the future you want at least that in order to recharge quickly at high renewable, low load times.

[marktime1231] 16/2/2024 11:58

Are you asking us to choose between being gassed, blown up or electrocuted?

Gas heating and cooking is only a third the price of electric, and will remain so while it remains abundant and while the cost of renewables is so high. Self-sufficiency is a tiny fraction of all properties, and next gen cheaper renewables are still years away. I am delighted to have a gas hob and rare use of a gas fire, even with a solar + battery system installed. And don't get me started on the relative swizz between standing charges, the electric one seems to want to punish folks with a green appetite especially efficient low energy consumers.

The need to switch to three-phase is because we will be demanding faster recharge and discharge at home, for EVs and to help balance grid demand. You can't do it on single-phase at about 100 amps. Incidentally when you have a massive EV battery on the drive with an intelligent hook up you won't need a big domestic battery so much.

[pierre oreilly] 16/2/2024 11:50

Could you put some numbers to your thoughts viscount? Words are easy and really mean little - Let's see numbers like the power required, battery size, max power into and out of the battery, and windless periods of 3 weeks say, for example. Why 65kW instead of the current 23kW, quantitatively?

[viscount1] 16/2/2024 10:52

Well, a future home with some form of powerwall and electric vehicle chargers will take some powering because they will charge during peak renewable generation and then buffer supply during lower generation (or peak demand) periods.

Much better than shipping explosive gases around.

[pierre oreilly] 16/2/2024 10:13

How much electricity do they think people wll use in the future? Single phase gives about 23kW - that (just) enough for me with a big bunch of storage heaters - and there aren't many with my high usage these days. 3 phase would enable 65ish kW (i assume) - who the hell needs that? I thought the idea of hps is that they use less energy than other forms of heating. To get the same heat as a 28kW gas boiler, you need a 10kW heatpump (according to the latest green theories), and I know of no domestic hp that size (hence why they have to be kept on all the time).

I think the author knows fa about 3 phase - he seems to imply to get it you just put in a bigger fuse (do others think that's what he's implying?).

And again, if homes are projected to need a 65kW supply, where's the electricity coming from when the wind's not blowing on a winter's evening? It teeters atm, fun to see what happens if homes use 3x as much in the future.

[philanderer] 15/2/2024 19:40

Octopus and National Grid join forces to upgrade homes to three-phase electric as part of heat pump and EV charger rollout