Where is all the Wind Power

Posted by: Mike-B on 11 September 2017

UK news this morning reports energy from offshore wind will be cheaper than from new nuclear power for the first time. Its apparently caught even its most optimistic supporters by surprise as the price of offshore wind energy has now halved in less than five years.

It does however make me wonder why we don't use more of what we have available: Wiki shows 3rd Qtr 2016 the UK had 15031-MW on-line capacity of on+offshore power available (I expect in Sept 2017, its now higher) But looking at today's country wide steady to strong winds & the power demand/output on 'www/gridwatch' the output for Wind is showing at 7.457-MW. OK that makes 23.6% of the total demand & its nicely balanced with the other principle generator types Nuclear is 25.2% & CCGT is 35.1%. I just wonder why we don't use more of the wind power that we have. I suspect its a logical answer, but does anyone know ???

Posted on: 22 October 2017 by Mike-B

Re supplying/receiving from the cross channel links, During last weeks work days when UK demand was a tad over 40GW we were pushing 2GW into France. Now today with the UK demand at <30GW, logic says we have spare capacity but we are still receiving from all these links. Must have a look into that sometime to see how it works

Posted on: 22 October 2017 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Perhaps it’s cheaper to import off peak energy rather than fire up a carbon fuel power station?

Posted on: 22 October 2017 by Mike-B

Re co2 ........ At the moment we are pushing out just over 4200 tons/hr. We peaked during last week at 16600 tons/hr