If you live in the UK you will have noticed that for most of the last week there was very little wind:
From Sunday through to Friday, wind power was only running at an average of below 2 GW, which is around 7% of demand and, coincidentally, also 7% of its potential capacity:
The National Energy System Operator's (NESO) 'Winter Outlook', which assesses energy security, is built around the assumption that there will always be at least 4,020 MW of wind power available, double what we have had this week:
But the position is much worse than that, because even that 2 GW this week was highly variable and therefore not reliable. There were two long spells when wind output dipped much lower still. In reality, we should not rely on wind power at all as a reserve.
Even though autumn demand is much lower than in mid-winter, the grid still needed 6 GW of imported electricity at times, in addition to gas power running virtually at full blast:
Meanwhile Germany was also short of wind power. On Monday, for instance, wind power sank to supplying just 3% of Germany’s electricity. Germany relied on coal and gas for two thirds of its power that day. This was the same day UK wind power collapsed:
It was not only Germany – Denmark saw its wind power collapse mid-week, as did the smaller producers, such as the Netherlands, France and Belgium:
France still produces plenty of nuclear
Discussion
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Hear hear. I’ve been saying for years now we need a new fleet of CCGT plants short term and a new fleet of nukes long term. Siemens did the former in Egypt not so long ago and it only took them three years.
Well said.
https://press.siemens.com/global/en/feature/completion-worlds-largest-combined-cycle-power-plants-record-time
It is fine to say we should get on with building new gas plants but Paul has already stated that the manufacturers already have full order books until beyond 2030. There is also the matter of a steep rise in gas turbine prices as demand soars from AI centres and Vietnam which does not help the economics for building gas plant. Germany cannot find anyone to invest in new plant and the EU has blocked the state from building them. Nobody in the UK will build them either. Our only hope is to preserve Ratcliffe on Soar so it can be brought back into use and to make Drax reopen the other half of the plant that is still coal fired.
Milibands answer will be to build more wind turbines and solar arrays, so more of them will be doing nothing at all in these conditions, it’s progress.
If it is not already in progress any new windmills offshore will not be connected to the grid until after 2030 as all the cable laying ships are booked up.
Yes but if we had big batteries….
…like really, really, really big, we might get a whole hour of backup power. 🔋…🪫
Imagine if one of them went into thermal runaway.
Milibrain must be feeling a bit better today, with 40% wind, solar and HEP generation but that still doesn’t get away from one of the big lies in the statistics produced. We are apparently importing 24% of our demands from low carbon sources, including France, Holland, Belgium and Denmark. How do we know that these are low carbon imports, when continental Europe depends so heavily on hydrocarbon production, or are the interconnectors clever enough to reject ‘high carbon ‘ electricity and only accept nice clean wind and solar electricity from Europe?
There is a coal plant at the end of the Dutch link. We should know by now, especially with this government, that everything said in support of Net Zero is a lie.
Net zero started off as a vanity project for politicians and business leaders, keen to carve out their place in history. Business seems to be waking up to the impracticality and unaffordability of the whole scheme, but our politicians are too pig-headed to admit they’ve been taken in by the green ideology. Only when the good ship UK hits the iceberg of power blackouts will they be forced to admit culpability. Given the loss of social cohesion in this country, I dread to think how we’ll cope.
Why did Britain’s PM cave in on lockdowns?
Because France threatened sanctions including cutting off energy supplies to Britain from its nuclear power supply.
We are no longer an independent nation and we will not regain our sovereignty until we are energy independent. Without major advances in energy storage tech, green energy will only erode our national independence further.
The impotence of Merkel’s Germany, dependent on Russia for gas, perfectly illustrates our predicament. The idea that intertwined economies guarantee peace and security (always a profoundly dim and dangerous proposition) has been tested to destruction with war, once again, on Continental Europe.
That is why Reform will form the next government of the United Kingdom.
The great British Public, entitled to be incandescent, are angry, have had enough.
Windless and overcast as well, with a high pressure and a lot of cloud on top. Low output from solar panels last week. However, looking on the bright side, if we had a high with no cloud last week, we’d have had a cold snap with spiky demand for heating!
Net zero/global warming scam.
Vaccine mandates/destruction of health systems.
Unhealthy foods.
Identity cards & CBDC.
Child indoctrination.
Demographic collapse.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Genau!
Nothing will change until the basic concept of net zero is challenged successfully. Behind every pronouncement by even, on the surface, sceptics, there’s the underlying assumption that we have to get there; it’s just how and when.
What’s really in it for the billionaire philanthropists, pretending to save the planet when the stuff they promote is directly causing irreparable damage?
“Cheap energy is social justice. Abundant energy is fairness. Cheap and abundant energy makes the world a better place.”
Not for nothing was the industrial revolution kick-started three centuries ago by exploitation of reliable, high-density, high-gradient, 24/365 energy from nature’s bounty of coal, that superseded unreliable, low-density, low-gradient, intermittent energy from windmills, water-wheels and treadmills.
Ah – Treadmills! Now there’s a thought. There are many thousands of idle feet going spare at the moment. Perhaps the answer to the energy ‘problem’ is to start up a new, eco-friendly, healthy alternative branch of electricity generation sector? This would give all those idle feet a worthy opportunity to help save our struggling, planet in return for all the social freebies their owners receive as a reward for bunking off work or hazarding their lives travelling in small boats to reach this environmental haven?
“Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”
The British Establishment is either completely mad … or it wants to destroy the UK.
They don’t care. ‘Exactly as we predicted, and as our models have already proven‘. ‘We’ saved Gaia. ‘We’ need more bird choppers, dead fowl, more eco-destruction, more blighting of the landscape and offshore waters. They simply triple down on the stupid.
At the root of this scam lies money laundering, ignorance, evil.
Maybe the children in our government could be forced to play a little sim city? It could teach them the basics of how to run anything with infrastructure..
Maybe our schools could have a dummy run by switching off the power for hours and conduct lessons with a candle or torch. Once the kids feel the cold and the boredom of not having their phones, they might actually realise that net zero is exactly what is says, nothing at all.
Don’t joke, they’ve already been doing that. Making them sit in classrooms in mid-winter freezing in their coats being lectured about ‘sustainability’ and net zero. Ergo child abuse.