8 ms·
Britain passes one week without coal power for first time since 1882
- andyjohnson0 8y agoThere's a real-time view of what is powering the UK national grid at [1]. Currently gas (~40%), wind (~22%), and nuclear (~18%), plus various interconnectors (who may be using coal?) [1] https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
- jonatron 8y agoDo you know where the night demand comes from? I expected to see a bigger drop at night
- robhawkes 8y agoI can't find firm material on exactly what explains the night usage — I'm sure the National Grid have details on this somewhere. Even so, the price of electricity reduces at night and so industry uses it a lot during that time. A lot of people leave appliances on overnight too, like washing machines.
- philjohn 8y agoAnd people on economy 7 tariffs heating storage heaters, although in the summer months that wouldn't be usual.
- saalweachter 8y agoI expect that if solar becomes a dominant source of electricity, time-insensitive industrial uses (eg, aluminum smelting) will happily become daylight operations.
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoAluminium cells can only be powered down for 4-5 hours before they become very expensive bricks. They can be (and they already are) used to smooth out grid fluctuations, but not on the scale of day to night.
- DoctorOetker 8y agoIn theory, could the cells reside in a high temperature resistant vacuum flask (Dewar flask)? Made from quartz perhaps? It might need supports between the inner and outer walls, causing heat to leak, and hence multiple layers of vacuum with supports to be required for containing the heat...
- mhandley 8y agoIn some part, what you're seeing on the demand side is underestimated during the day, due to solar not being centrally metered, and offsetting some of the true demand. As the mouseover on the solar gauge says, you can see this in the demand drop around noon.
- philjohn 8y agoUK has some tariffs with a cheaper electric charge at night called Economy 7. This is used to heat storage heaters for properties without gas central heating. Industrial load will also play a factor, as will lighting homes during the dark hours.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoThe biggest industrial users - those on half hourly metering - also get discounts to move usage offpeak, and there's some tariff options that turn off or restrict those highest users during peaks. Partly so the grid don't have to keep waking up Dinorwig. :)
- ljf 8y agoTo save others googling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station - cheers for the interesting read!
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoWow. When notified in advance, Dinorwig can go from 0MW to 1800 MW power delivery in 16 seconds. Unprepared, looks like it takes a couple of minutes.
- 24gttghh 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Angostura 8y agoDon't forget to mouse over the dials for a handy explanation of the data.
- belorn 8y agoAn interesting relation in the production of wind vs burning gas. You can easily see how gas is used to fill in when the wind is not blowing.
- theBobBob 8y agoGas is often used for load balancing, even before renewables became more widespread. Some types of gas generator plants can be spun up to full capacity in a matter of minutes. Nuclear on the other hand is the opposite. It takes considerable time to spin up or down but is great at providing a very high, very steady baseload.
- mrpopo 8y ago> Nuclear on the other hand is the opposite. It takes considerable time to spin up or down but is great at providing a very high, very steady baseload. Not correct. Nuclear power is pilotable, even if not as much. It's used as a base load because it's more profitable.
- i_am_proteus 8y agoAlso, that's nuclear as built. Pilotable nuclear reactors can be built, otherwise nuclear-powered ships couldn't accelerate.
- theBobBob 8y agoJust read up a little bit and didn't know how controllable the output of a reactor is. I guess I was thinking more about spinning up from zero.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- imtringued 8y agoIt is possible but since the fuel costs are insignificant compared to the construction cost of the plant there are no savings to be gained by shutting the plant down. Generating less electricity means slower amortization.
- phillc73 8y agoThat's a very useful site! Clicking the little France icon top left switches to the French equivalent. At the moment ~92% nuclear and ~11% hydro! What really depresses me is looking at the Australian electricity generation mix: https://www.energymatters.com.au/energy-efficiency/australian-electricity-statistics/ https://www.energymatters.com.au/energy-efficiency/australia... There is a ridiculously high amount of black and brown coal here.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoCheck out https://www.electricitymap.org https://www.electricitymap.org to see a real time electrical generation/consumption mix map of the world, including past 24 hour historical data per grid operator. Great Britain: https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=GB https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem... No affiliation, just a huge fan of the folks at Tomorrow who put it together. If you don't see your local geography supported, contributing a scraper is possible via their Github repo [1]. [1] https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib#adding-a-new-country https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib#adding-a-n...
- hunta2097 8y agoWow that really is depressing. Why doesn't Australia use the massive potential of Solar? They must have million square miles to spare which has year-round (very strong) sunlight? Even at relatively low yields, it would be huge. Edit: just realised it's 0200 there and it's a live graph! It looks like solar made up almost 10% in 2018 - most of this is small-scale rooftop systems.
- gen220 8y agoIt's probably related to the fact that they're the top exporter and a top-5 producer of coal. The "Market" means you use what's cheap, and coal must be very cheap to purchase (and burn) there. Further, setting up solar panel infrastructure is high up-front capital expense, and the Australian banks that might finance such expenditures are notoriously risk averse, and likely have plenty of assets tied up in the coal industry, so they'd have no interest in disrupting it. Toss in the idea that cheap coal probably equals cheap electricity, whereas solar would be relatively expensive (most countries get with now-mature solar industries circumvent this by subsidizing nascent solar generators). That's a killer recipe for maintaining the status quo.
- kleim 8y ago(who may be using coal?) Australia and Germany?
- jsingleton 8y agoThere are loads of great resources that display this data. https://www.electricitymap.org/ https://www.electricitymap.org/ provides a global map view. https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/alex.rogers/gridcarbon/ https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/alex.rogers/gridcarbon/ has apps that calculate the carbon intensity. https://carbonintensity.org.uk/ https://carbonintensity.org.uk/ is my current favourite. It's an API that provides GB data broken down regionally and with a forecast powered by ML. I wrote more here: https://unop.uk/your-planet-needs-you/ https://unop.uk/your-planet-needs-you/ If you want to get involved start here: https://climateaction.tech/ https://climateaction.tech/
- aembleton 8y agoIf you look at Electricity Map [1], you can see a real time view, as well as the inter-connectors. As I write this, the UK is importing 3% from Belgium, 4% from France and 3% from the Netherlands. Belgium and France aren't burning coal, but I think the Netherlands is. 1% of Belgium's electricity is also imported from the Netherlands. 1. https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=GB https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...
- hjek 8y agoNot surprised by the 40% gas figure. Fracking sites are popping up all over the country here. It's sad. But I wonder where Drax, the largest CO2 emitter in the UK fit in there? As far as I'm aware, they burn coal and wood only.
- poooogles 8y agoThey still burn peat AFAIK as well.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dannyw 8y agoThis is an amazing milestone. Imagine what renewable energy can do for us in 5 years.
- MR4D 8y agoThe other side of this is that Britain reduces is coal imports by more than 80% in less than 5 years! The UK wins twice - first, by cleaner air, second by a more favorable balance of payments. https://ourworldindata.org/death-uk-coal https://ourworldindata.org/death-uk-coal
- flavius29663 8y agowell, they are burning wood pellets instead, so they are still importing millions of shitons of organic material. https://www.carbonbrief.org/uk-now-burning-33-of-worlds-wood-pellet-imports https://www.carbonbrief.org/uk-now-burning-33-of-worlds-wood... http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/13866/uk-wood-pellet-imports-expected-to-reach-new-record-in-2016 http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/13866/uk-wood-pellet-imp... Is it better or worse than coal?
- hjek 8y agoBanks Mining recently started a new opencast coal mine in Pont Valley in the North[0], and Druridge Bay is still at risk of being mined[1]. Also worth keeping in mind that a many coal power plants have just switched over to burning "biomass", which is a lovely sounding euphemism for burning wood, but is "green energy" and thus eligible for massive subsidies. Drax, the largest CO2 emitter in the UK, burns more wood than the UK produces, so a lot of it comes from forests being chopped down in the US.[2] [0]: https://www.coalaction.org.uk/2018/03/protection-camp https://www.coalaction.org.uk/2018/03/protection-camp [1]: https://friendsoftheearth.uk/climate-change/saving-druridge-bay-opencast-coal-mining https://friendsoftheearth.uk/climate-change/saving-druridge-... [2]: https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/axedrax-campaign/ https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/axedrax-campaign/
- ArnoVW 8y agoThat is not as crazy as it sounds. The problem with CO2 is the fact that we're burning oil that was previously safely sequestered deep below the surface, thus increasing dramatically the overal amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The carbon from trees is part of the short term cycle, it was 'already in the environment'. The idea being of course that you burn biomass that is produced on purpose, or the byproduct of industrial activities, instead of massively cutting down trees in wild forrests. In this case, yes you're stil releasing carbon into the atmosphere, but the thing you're burning absorbed the carbon before so it's neutral. Good filters are of course needed to prevent soot and particulates from polluting the air. http://www.carbonneutralcommons.com/glossary/short-long-term-carbon-cycle/ http://www.carbonneutralcommons.com/glossary/short-long-term...
- tialaramex 8y agoIt /is/ as crazy as it sounds. To make Drax seem "carbon neutral" you have to pretend that it's fine if the Carbon spends time in the form of CO2 the atmosphere, causing global warming, rather than in a bunch of mature trees because hey, it's the same carbon. But that's exactly the thing we were trying to prevent, we're not worried about running out of carbon, we're worried we're heating the planet up.
- basetop 8y agoI love these fake feel good stories. In other words, britain offloaded energy intensive manufacturing and its coal burning to china, india, etc. Just like how ireland "recycles" most of its plastic by shipping them to china. https://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-plastic-waste-3786393-Jan2018/ https://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-plastic-waste-3786393-Jan2... And of course how norway is doing wonders by buying electric cars and investing in "clean" energy using the money they got by selling oil. I just can't stand the self-aggrandizing bullshit from northern european countries.