Renewables provide more than half UK electricity for first time

[najaB]

News story on BBC website:

Renewables provide more than half UK electricity for first time

Renewable sources of energy have generated more electricity than coal and gas in the UK for the first time.
National Grid reported that, on Wednesday lunchtime, power from wind, solar, hydro and wood pellet burning supplied 50.7% of UK energy.
Add in nuclear. and by 2pm low carbon sources were producing 72.1% of electricity in the UK.
Wednesday lunchtime was perfect for renewables - sunny and windy at the same time.
Records for wind power are being set across Northern Europe.
The National Grid, the body that owns and manages the power supply around the UK, said in a tweet: "For the first time ever this lunchtime wind, nuclear and solar were all generating more than both gas and coal combined."

Admittedly, this was a summer afternoon but it is still a major accomplishment for the renewable energy sector.

 

[D365]

How many coal power plants are still online? We've had a few days recently where we were generating electricity without the use of coal.

 

[BanburyBlue]

How green are wood pellets?

 

[AlterEgo]

How green are wood pellets?

Well, they're renewable.

 

[furnessvale]

How green are wood pellets?

In the sense that carbon released by burning them can be recaptured by new growth in a few years, yes they are green.

Burning oil or coal means releasing a carbon store that has been buried for 100,000s or even millions of years.

 

[BanburyBlue]

But aren't you still burning something carbon based? Is it that coal etc is so concentrated hence have more carbon inside?

It's like all these wood burning stoves - the wood has to come from somewhere?

 

[BanburyBlue]

Thanks Furnessvale - our posts crossed over in the ether.

But aren't you still burning something carbon based? Is it that coal etc is so concentrated hence have more carbon inside?

It's like all these wood burning stoves - the wood has to come from somewhere?

 

[NSEFAN]

But aren't you still burning something carbon based? Is it that coal etc is so concentrated hence have more carbon inside?

It's like all these wood burning stoves - the wood has to come from somewhere?

That's not really an issue as the wood has taken carbon out of the air, so burning it is merely putting it back. Provided you grow more fuel for burning at the rate at which it is cosumed, it can be considered to be renewable.

 

[AM9]

That's not really an issue as the wood has taken carbon out of the air, so burning it is merely putting it back. Provided you grow more fuel for burning at the rate at which it is cosumed, it can be considered to be renewable.

Less of course the fossil fuels burnt when transferring it from source, (forest) to processing factory and there to power station. Then there is the energy required to shred the trees into pellets.
Oh, and by the way, much of the wood pellets consumed here come from the interior of the US.

 

[furnessvale]

Less of course the fossil fuels burnt when transferring it from source, (forest) to processing factory and there to power station. Then there is the energy required to shred the trees into pellets.
Oh, and by the way, much of the wood pellets consumed here come from the interior of the US.

Naturally, total carbon has to be factored in, but every form of power has more carbon use in construction etc than the basic burn.

Nuclear has a high disposal cost. Wind is best used to generate quite some distance from the point of use of the electricity etc.

 

[najaB]

Less of course the fossil fuels burnt when transferring it from source, (forest) to processing factory and there to power station. Then there is the energy required to shred the trees into pellets.

Which applies to coal as well - there is energy required to move it from where it is (underground) to where it's needed.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

We had no worries whatsoever in changing our utility supplier over from British Gas to Good Energy when the opportunity to do so first arose some years ago.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Which applies to coal as well - there is energy required to move it from where it is (underground) to where it's needed.

Unless it is sourced from the opencast mining industry.

 

[Jonny]

News story on BBC website:

Renewables provide more than half UK electricity for first time
Admittedly, this was a summer afternoon but it is still a major accomplishment for the renewable energy sector.

But what happens on a windless, cold, dark and cloudy winter's day?

 

[Jonny]

How green are wood pellets?

I could make a deliberately over-literal remark about them being brown

 

[AM9]

But what happens on a windless, cold, dark and cloudy winter's day?

We do what we had to do every day. Now at least some of such pollution and energy waste is spared when the sun is out and/or the wind blows.

 

[mac]

The fuel I don't understand is gas from digesters, you have farmers with big diesel tractors growing crops for gas. They plough, work land, sow, spray, harvest, cart it miles along the road with tractors then take what's left back all on subsidised fuel and subsidised land and it's seen as a clean cheap fuel.

 

[najaB]

Unless it is sourced from the opencast mining industry.

It still started life underground, just not as deep.

 

[HSTEd]

In other words, this was achieved at one of the lowest demand time of day (midday), at the lowest demand time of year (early-mid summer).

Such impressive... not really.
Wind bounces all over the place whilst nuclear just keeps plugging along at a nice constant 7-8GWe.

 

[A Challenge]

What is GWe?

 

[HSTEd]

What is GWe?

Gigawatts-electric.
This is important in nuclear power as another measure of a stations power is Gigawatts-thermal which is a measure of the raw heat produced by the reactor

 

[najaB]

In other words, this was achieved at one of the lowest demand time of day (midday), at the lowest demand time of year (early-mid summer).

Such impressive... not really.

You really are a glass half-empty person, aren't you? Given that just a few years ago renewables would have accounted for less than 10% at the lowest demand time of day, at the lowest demand time of year it is impressive. It's not the instantaneous value that is important, it is the trend - it is worth making a little bit of a deal about the first time it's happened. I'm sure it's not the last.

Wind bounces all over the place whilst nuclear just keeps plugging along at a nice constant 7-8GWe.

Which they noted in the article - nuclear and storage both have roles to play in a carbon-neutral energy grid. Hence the new generation of nuclear plants under construction/in planning.

 

[HSTEd]

You really are a glass half-empty person, aren't you? Given that just a few years ago renewables would have accounted for less than 10% at the lowest demand time of day, at the lowest demand time of year it is impressive. It's not the instantaneous value that is important, it is the trend - it is worth making a little bit of a deal about the first time it's happened. I'm sure it's not the last.

Considering current-wind plant alone has had over a hundred billion pounds of real-terms public capital expended upon it [guaranteed over £4bn in subsidies for 25 years] it is not really that impressive at all.
Judging by prices for PWRs at Barakah (built by expat labour in the UAE) it is likely the state could have paid for a gigawatt every year for the next quarter century with that money, even if the electricity was effectively given away.

Which would have put us in a far stronger position than the one we are currently in, 28GWe instead of ~5. And the subsidy bill for wind and solar continues to increase.

Which they noted in the article - nuclear and storage both have roles to play in a carbon-neutral energy grid. Hence the new generation of nuclear plants under construction/in planning.

The role of wind and storage in a carbon-neutral energy grid is to guzzle subsidy money for the most part.
There is little reason to build wind when its price per average-kilowatt actually manages to be higher than sensible nuclear, rather than the idiotically financed idiotically designed debacle at Hinkley Point.