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GB National Grid Status

gridwatch.templar.co.uk

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Re: GB National Grid Status

#21

Post by DrScientist »

pydry wrote: post #11
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #4

Ok, I must have missed this but ... Wind produces 16% of UK electricity, and nuclear produces 13% .... Ok wow. I assumed solar would be the thing that takes over, and In Spain that's probably true. But here it seems wind is going to be a win. Anyway I still need to work out how to spend my declining years - how to write software for renewable energy farms ... wind or solar.

Ideally you'd have a mix since they anticorrelate. If it's generally sunny when there's little wind and windy when cloudy why wouldnt you? (this is one reason why the amount of storage required for an all solar/wind grid is usually vastly overestimated).

Isn't it the sun's energy that ultimately creates the wind - through differential heating?

So whether it's anti-correlated might a local feature depending on the local factors driving the weather?

Perhaps stronger correlation would be that air movement ( wind ) is the thing that drives the weather changing. ie no wind, means slow change ( though the opposite isn't necessarily true - if you are in the centre of a cyclic weather system which isn't moving you could have wind and not much change ).

Re: GB National Grid Status

#22

Post by pjc50 »

RyanShook wrote: post #14

Is wind an efficient way to produce electricity? Would we be producing wind turbines if there were 0 subsidies?

It is now, while natural gas prices are high and the technology is mature. It did require a subsidy to get off the ground. Of course, you have to decide whether the consumption of a globally finite resource of "safe temperature" counts as a subsidy or not.

Re: GB National Grid Status

#23

Post by thomond »

pydry wrote: post #17
DrScientist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is one of the best positioned countries in the world in terms of natural wind resource. This is because large parts of the north sea are shallow/have banks that very large offshore wind farms can be built on. No terrain to get in the way, no people to object about it being close to their house. Scotland is also windy and not that populated and so has quite a few onshore farms. Eg see. https://orsted.com/en/med…

>No people to object about it I'm not sure whether this MP was in the pocket of gas, coal or nuclear interests or whatever but he successfully rounded up residents to NIMBY what would have been the biggest wind farm to date even though it would have barely have been visible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navitus_Bay_wind_farm I was bitter before. Doubly so now electricity prices are through the roof.

> Doubly so now electricity prices are through the roof.

Electricity prices would still be through the roof. The prices are all set on the international markets.

Re: GB National Grid Status

#24

Post by DrScientist »

magnetic-recoil wrote: post #16
snickmy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure the anticorrleation has ever been proved. While it seems logical, the cloudy / stormy weather that sometime we experience in UK is too harsh for wind farms

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.

It's complicated by the fact that the relationship between wind speed and power isn't linear - it's cubic - double wind speed - 8 times the power!

This only happens in the designed operating window ( too light you get nothing, too strong you need to shut down ).

So one question is what window have your tuned your farm for?

Air density matters as well - the denser the more power - ie the colder the more power.....

Re: GB National Grid Status

#25

Post by cameronh90 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #4

Ok, I must have missed this but ... Wind produces 16% of UK electricity, and nuclear produces 13% .... Ok wow. I assumed solar would be the thing that takes over, and In Spain that's probably true. But here it seems wind is going to be a win. Anyway I still need to work out how to spend my declining years - how to write software for renewable energy farms ... wind or solar.

That's actually below recent historical averages. Over the last year (https://grid.iamkate.com/) wind has been 28.5% of total energy generation.

Re: GB National Grid Status

#26

Post by DrScientist »

jl6 wrote: post #10
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #4

Ok, I must have missed this but ... Wind produces 16% of UK electricity, and nuclear produces 13% .... Ok wow. I assumed solar would be the thing that takes over, and In Spain that's probably true. But here it seems wind is going to be a win. Anyway I still need to work out how to spend my declining years - how to write software for renewable energy farms ... wind or solar.

The UK is too northerly and has too little spare land for solar to dominate (it will of course still play a large role). Wind is where it’s at. The UK has a vast and windy offshore domain.

Agreed. But note that a lot of the local solar capacity doesn't actually show up on the grid production numbers.

ie if you have a solar panel on your roof and mostly use it to reduce the power you take from the grid, all you will see in the national numbers is lower demand, not increased production.

Re: GB National Grid Status

#27

Post by cjrp »

DrScientist wrote: post #26
jl6 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is too northerly and has too little spare land for solar to dominate (it will of course still play a large role). Wind is where it’s at. The UK has a vast and windy offshore domain.

Agreed. But note that a lot of the local solar capacity doesn't actually show up on the grid production numbers. ie if you have a solar panel on your roof and mostly use it to reduce the power you take from the grid, all you will see in the national numbers is lower demand, not increased production.

Don't most domestic panels actually feed into the grid (so presumably would show up on the stats as solar generation)? Unless you've got a battery system at home.

Re: GB National Grid Status

#29

Post by ls65536 »

magnetic-recoil wrote: post #6

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

In case anyone else is wondering why the effects of being on the HN front page look small at first glance, notice the logarithmic scale being used for the y-axis.

At first I thought the increase in traffic, while noticeable, didn't look particularly impressive on those graphs, but then I noticed that those diurnal traffic patterns looked a bit strange, which is when I noticed the log scale!

Re: GB National Grid Status

#30

Post by substation13 »

thomond wrote: post #23
pydry wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No people to object about it I'm not sure whether this MP was in the pocket of gas, coal or nuclear interests or whatever but he successfully rounded up residents to NIMBY what would have been the biggest wind farm to date even though it would have barely have been visible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navitus_Bay_wind_farm I was bitter before. Doubly so now electricity prices are through the roof.

> Doubly so now electricity prices are through the roof. Electricity prices would still be through the roof. The prices are all set on the international markets.

It depends who owns the energy production. If the government keeps a stake then they can use the additional profits to shield consumers from prices.
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