Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.

[culzean]

Check out gridwatch site,  wind 4.8%, solar 0% coal 6%. 
Biomass flat out ( does that mean gas supplies getting low again )


I'll be kind to solar and say it may be snow on the panels

Snowing hard in Shropshire ( the snow is falling straight down, not a breath of wind )
and sticking, temperature -2C where we are...

Oh dear.. the lights and computer still working OK.

[Jocko]

Bright sunshine, no snow and a steady wind here in Fife.

[John Ratsey]

I'll be kind to solar and say it may be snow on the panels

My panels are covered in snow and producing zero power (the roof slope is too flat to encourage the snow to slide off).

The good news, which you can see on Gridwatch, is that the 2nd interconnector with France is now operational and now importing just under 1GW.

[John Ratsey]

Hinkley Point C delayed and more expensive https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-55823575 .

[sparky Paul]

Australia making even bigger forays into batteries

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/05/worlds-biggest-battery-with-1200mw-capacity-set-to-be-built-in-nsw-hunter-valley-australia

[John Ratsey]

Australia making even bigger forays into batteries

There's the usual gap in the specification "power capacity of up to 1,200 megawatts" but no mention of the megawatt-hours. Nonetheless, a step in the right direction. The UK has a few pumped-storage sites which could be developed if the finances look good (which they don't at the moment due to insufficient incentives to provide storage) but batteries might work in England where they can be close to demand centres but tied in to solar or wind generation. Something like this https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/18882539.work-set-start-huge-battery-plant-mannington/ is a tiddler compared to the Australian proposal.

[Jocko]

This may help:
It’s important to note the phrasing “up to 1,200MW”, meaning the final design and size of the scheme is still in development and the company has not given an indication yet of the planned capacity or discharge duration of the project. Nevertheless, CEP. Energy’s battery storage system would be “up to” four times larger in rated output than the 300MW / 1,200MWh Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California, recently inaugurated and currently the world’s biggest battery energy storage system (BESS).

It appears that the Moss Landing has a capacity to supply 300MW for 4 hours so we may be in a position to assume Hunter Valley will be likewise, ergo 4800 MWh

[Jocko]

In the local news today that a commercial company has applied for planning permission to build a solar farm and battery storage/6 inverter stations/substation, on112 acres of land, to the north of Dunfermline.
The farm will be 29.9MW, able to supply 10,000 homes at peak power. The battery storage will be in the form of 20 containers. There will be 82,500 solar panels.
The land was previously an open cast mine, returned to farmland.

[embee]

Simple solution ..................... fewer people.

Oops, sorry, that's another thread.

[culzean]

Simple solution ..................... fewer people.

Oops, sorry, that's another thread.

This thread is already well populated 

Agree, population is always the Elephant in the room, the sad part is that because of our population that soon there will be no elephants left to put in the room. No good preserving animals in zoos if there is nowhere for them to live in the wild.

[culzean]

. There will be 82,500 solar panels.

Solar in UK is a waste of time, see gridwatch and UK solar rarely gets above 1%,  more often 0%. short daylight hours in winter and more sun in summer when power demand is low.   I found out why government is banning new gas boilers,  they need all the gas they can get to gas to power electricity generation because renewables are so unreliable. They will not mind that electricity will have to be used for heating homes instead of gas, but at a lower efficiency, they will have ticked another carbon box  - and prices will rise ( oh they already have).  At present electricity prices you need a heat pump with recovery at least 5:1 to break even on running costs compared to gas, and that is without the large upfront coast of heatpump installation, with a payback period longer than the average human life expectancy in UK.

[Jocko]

Solar in UK is a waste of time,

The company that is going to the trouble to build the solar farm I referred to obviously doesn't think so.

[culzean]

European power grid almost collapsed in January, blamed on 'too much reliance on volatile renewables' - Germany has warned about this before.

https://www.thegwpf.com/8-january-2021-europe-just-skirted-blackout-disaster/

[John Ratsey]

European power grid almost collapsed in January, blamed on 'too much reliance on volatile renewables' - Germany has warned about this before.

https://www.thegwpf.com/8-january-2021-europe-just-skirted-blackout-disaster/

Thanks for that link. It's interesting that EDF have been encouraging French consumers to minimise their electricity usage in the mornings, presumably to help address a generating shortfall further east. I had noticed from Gridwatch https://gridwatch.co.uk/Demand that there has been a regular reduction in power imported from France to UK between about 7 and 9am but checking yesterday's graph I see there was the rare event of UK exporting to France.

[John Ratsey]

Interesting power flow on Gridwatch earlier today: UK was burning coal overnight to help export a lot of electricity to Europe (-ve power on the interconnectors = export).