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Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

bbc.com

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Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#41

Post by megaman821 »

martinald wrote: post #11

Really misleading article IMO. What this actually means is Scotland sometimes generated 200-300%+ of its demand from wind (and "exported" the rest), and sometimes low %age points and used other sources/imports. It makes it sound like Scotland is wind powered 97% of the time (only 3% more to go!), which is very different. There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices (typically when it is sunn…

There are other useful things you could do with excess energy and seawater. Either a desalination plant or a hydrogen plant. If the energy price is 0 those could operate economically.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#42

Post by VBprogrammer »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #20
aclelland wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid storage is such an interesting topic to me. We are all used to energy storage at a small scale (phone batteries, even electric cars) but the challenges of needing to store such vast amounts of energy seems like an almost impossible task, even the large Tesla battery in AU only seems to be used to help smooth the grid supply. It seems that the Scottish landscape might lend itself to more Hydro but that'll be an u…

Electric cars are perfect for this. Connect them to the grid and the internet, and they’ll charge but also feed back as needed.

IMO recycling batteries after use in cars is a more interesting idea. A 20% reduction in a cars range is significant but not an issue in actual power storage.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#43

Post by ClumsyPilot »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #2

How much do they pay? I've heard electricity is quite expensive in the UK so surviving a winter can be hard.

"surviving a winter"

Yeah many are just growing a layer of fat and hybernating. Hence the obecity rates

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#44

Post by lightgreen »

eldaisfish wrote: post #30
IAmEveryone wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric cars are perfect for this. Connect them to the grid and the internet, and they’ll charge but also feed back as needed.

Have you heard of Tesla's batter in south Australia? It was recently expanded to 193 MWh. Care to guess how long it'll run at full power? Around 60-100 minutes. At its rated power of 100 MW, it can power around 25% of South Australia's lowest demand. That's it. At peak demand, the fraction is lower still. Cars have a fraction of the energy storage capacity of a single battery site and not all cars are connected to th…

For the comparison, average nuclear power plant produces 1000MW around the clock.

The goal of Australia batteries was to normalize short production/consumption fluctuations, not as general universal battery storage to deal with renewable uneven production.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#45

Post by pydry »

martinald wrote: post #11

Really misleading article IMO. What this actually means is Scotland sometimes generated 200-300%+ of its demand from wind (and "exported" the rest), and sometimes low %age points and used other sources/imports. It makes it sound like Scotland is wind powered 97% of the time (only 3% more to go!), which is very different. There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices (typically when it is sunn…

>There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices

It seems like an opportunity more than a crisis to me.

There are tons of potential applications for "free" electricity.

* Storage heating/cooling that's basically free

* Manufacturing carbon neutral jet fuel

* Cheaper aluminium production

It could also lead to onshoring of certain industries which previously moved to locales with access to cheap electricity. This would make supply chains more robust.

Some people are gonna get rich off this - partly because more people view it as a threat than an opportunity.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#46

Post by martinald »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #26
martinald wrote: post #11

Really misleading article IMO. What this actually means is Scotland sometimes generated 200-300%+ of its demand from wind (and "exported" the rest), and sometimes low %age points and used other sources/imports. It makes it sound like Scotland is wind powered 97% of the time (only 3% more to go!), which is very different. There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices (typically when it is sunn…

What’s with the quotes around “exported”? Excess power is exported, which happens to be one way to manage it, reducing the need for storage.

Because Scotland isn't its own grid, it's on the UK national grid, it was to differentiate that from HVDC export.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#47

Post by martinald »

pojzon wrote: post #37
martinald wrote: post #11

Really misleading article IMO. What this actually means is Scotland sometimes generated 200-300%+ of its demand from wind (and "exported" the rest), and sometimes low %age points and used other sources/imports. It makes it sound like Scotland is wind powered 97% of the time (only 3% more to go!), which is very different. There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices (typically when it is sunn…

Serious question, why not simply stop generating energy by wind istead of stopping nuclear stallar ? You „can” stop generating power using wind. Get up to 30% from nuclear and rest from automated wind farms.

Of course, but the government has commited prices (>£100/MWh) for wind. You have to pay them at least that to compensate, otherwise they won't stop producing. Which is going to get extremely expensive quickly.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#48

Post by ClumsyPilot »

martinald wrote: post #11

Really misleading article IMO. What this actually means is Scotland sometimes generated 200-300%+ of its demand from wind (and "exported" the rest), and sometimes low %age points and used other sources/imports. It makes it sound like Scotland is wind powered 97% of the time (only 3% more to go!), which is very different. There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices (typically when it is sunn…

The difference in price, and negative prices, can make things like generating hydrogen or other energy storage more economic.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#49

Post by edent »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #2

How much do they pay? I've heard electricity is quite expensive in the UK so surviving a winter can be hard.

I'm the UK. I pay 14.97p/kWh (which includes tax).

The average UK household uses about 3,800 kWh per year.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#50

Post by rory »

piokoch wrote: post #35
sandworm101 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Once this comes online, wind generation will often be over 100% of demand UK wide Which is exactly what I would expect from island nations. The UK has lots of coast, which means lots of wind. That is a resource to export. The cornerstone of free trade is that some things are worth more in some places and less in others. UK has lots of wind. Maybe they can trade that for imports of luxury goods from elsewhere. If o…

Yes, the point with selling electricity is that you need to guarantee that you will deliver some fixed amount of electricity. If you depend on wind power plants how this guarantee can be given? What if wind stops. Maybe it would make sense to build huge bitcoin mining data centers and mine bitcoins in case of surplus. Hardly useful, but given current coins rush could be profitable. Better than paying producers for no…

> Yes, the point with selling electricity is that you need to guarantee that you will deliver some fixed amount of electricity

Surely this can change, no? You'd just have to sell it at a cheaper rate to make up for the fact that the other side has to ramp up/down other sources to accomodate your changes in volume.

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