15 ms·
New UK record for wind power set today – 21.81 GW between 0900-0930 GMT
- mytailorisrich 3y agoStorm Pia is passing over the UK today, and it is a very windy day [1] [1] https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/warnings-and-advice/uk-warnings#?date=2023-12-21 https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/warnings-and-advice/uk-...
- ttrrooppeerr 3y agoNo great loss without some gain!
- meindnoch 3y agoImagine how much windier would it be, if they didn't extract that energy with wind farms.
- CorrectHorseBat 3y agoProbably not measurable
- hunglee2 3y agoUK could obviously be a wind / wave energy super power. Despite multi-decade mismanagement by government, we can be bullish about UK prospects, especially now Scottish Independence is receding from the conversation
- secfirstmd 3y agoWhy would Scottish independence matter? Are they gonna take their wind with them?
- throwaway0665 3y agoThere are a considerable number of existing wind farms in Scottland
- s0l1dsnak3123 3y agoWell, yes, Scotland has many of the best sites for wind turbine generation in the UK. In all likelihood my country would be able to sell energy and water to the rest of the UK when Scotland finally leaves (I am still certain it will happen in my lifetime).
- martinald 3y agoNot really, most offshore is off the coast of England now, not Scotland.
- anovikov 3y agoAnd this is probably exactly because of Scottish independence concerns in the past...
- martinald 3y agoI don't think there is a huge difference in output of English vs Scottish territorial water wind output. There is a massive shortage of Scottish -> England transmission though. So it's a lot better to build them closer to where the power is needed. However, there is nearly 10GW of HVDC in the pipeline to transmit power from Scotland to England (look up national grid eastern link 1, 2, 3 and 4).
- louthy 3y agoJust to back that up: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-locations-of-constructed-or-planned-offshore-wind-farms-in-the-UK-Map-adapted-from_fig3_307661314 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-locations-of-constru...
- martinald 3y agoThat's from 2010. This is a more up to date one, but still probably outdated: https://www.windenergynetwork.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/A1-Map_Issue-57-WEB.pdf https://www.windenergynetwork.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/...
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- Anon826 3y agoUK government pays for energy projects in Scotland to help Scottish economy. Scotland makes up 7% of UK economy. Scotland claims 100% ownership after independence. Genius SNP.
- jl6 3y agoThe big wind projects aren't "owned" by the UK/Scottish governments, they are private* assets built under a government license. Most likely an independent Scotland would continue to license these wind farms and the energy trade with the rest of the UK would continue under very similar terms. * Actually, many of them are owned by non-UK governments.
- yread 3y agoIsn't it the other way around? British gov sells licenses for windparks for billions. It then guarantees electricity price to a certain degree. This would be presumably paid by the Scottish gov.
- krallja 3y agoThey would take the Scottish coast with them.
- thebruce87m 3y agoScottish independence is directly linked to energy. If Scottish independence is in the news then the amount of oil in the North Sea vanishes overnight. Luckily it all comes back when independence talk dies down.
- walthamstow 3y agoI thought I read that wave/tidal was basically not worth the investment and ecological impact for the power it generates.
- MrsPeaches 3y agoSeawater ain’t no joke. I remember reading a few papers about essentially underwater turbines in tidal estuaries. Where you have natural flow of water that you can just tap. If I recall correctly impact on local wildlife (seals iirc) was lower than expected. Main argument I could see was that water had 1000x the density of air so 1000x the amount of power for a rotor with the same swept area. Of course fluid speeds are lower so it’s not quite that easy. But much more predictable. They did some fancy optimisations in the blades and came up with decent efficiencies. It’s a great little series of papers by Batten and Bahaj et. al from 2006. I assume the art has progressed since then. But yeah, anything with moving parts in seawater is a nightmare as far as I can tell.
- riv991 3y agoTidal energy is not renewable! We'd be tidally locked to the moon in 1000 years if we used Tidal for 1% of our energy consumption. https://cs.stanford.edu/people/zjl/pdf/tide.pdf https://cs.stanford.edu/people/zjl/pdf/tide.pdf
- anovikov 3y agoThat article is based on ridiculous assumptions of future energy consumption growth, and was probably created as a joke. Which backfired since it got seriously quoted in so many places.
- midasuni 3y agoThey have a 2% increase in energy use each year for 1000 years, currently 10^12W That would mean we’d be well into the type 1 civilisation about 10^19W a year and we’ll be on the way to a type 2 civilisation.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoI had a friend that lived in the Outer Hebrides (Northwest coast of Scotland). He said it wasn't unusual to have gales in the winter, with >100Km/hr winds. Seems to be a rich local resource.
- neilkk 3y agoWind turbines have a max windspeed beyond which they stop generating, as it's too risky to let the blades spin that fast.
- throwaway2037 3y agoDespite multi-decade mismanagement by government I disagree. Exactly this post shows much much progress the UK has made. Can you share some specifics of "multi-decade mismanagement by government"? Can you compare that to other highly developed countries? especially now Scottish Independence is receding from the conversation Can you explain why this matters? I assume the UK minus Scotland has enough onshore and offshore locations to fully power itself with wind and solar.
- hunglee2 3y ago- Mismanagement UK response to GFC was amongst harshest austerity policies in Europe, leading to infrastructure neglect, local government bankruptcy, degrading of the military and lack of investment in education, healthcare and the rest. This set the scene for Brexit, a policy which increased trade friction with the country's most important trade partners whilst also _increasing_ the immigration it was supposed to reduce. - Scotland Independence Indy movement argument for economic viability was access to wind / wave energy around the cost of Scotland. Over half of UK total wind energy comes from Scotland.
- mavhc 3y agoOnly downside is it's taken loads of public transport offline
- tupac_speedrap 3y agoI'm not surprised, there are wheelie bins all over the place, it's like a warzone out there.
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- dnel 3y agothe storms only ever pass on bin day, I'm seeing the pattern
- Baldbvrhunter 3y agoevery day is bin day somewhere in your region
- scrlk 3y agoIt's a wheelie bad situation (sorry, couldn't help myself) - got woken up at 0600 when the recycling bins lined up on my street started to topple over, scattering cans and bottles everywhere.
- buggeryorkshire 3y agoNot surprised as it knocked my outdoor Christmas tree down...
- toomuchtodo 3y agoVikingLink turns up Dec 29, which will bring 800MW of clean wind energy to the UK from Denmark until transmission work in Denmark allows for the full 1.4GW link capacity to be utilized. https://www.offshore-energy.biz/viking-link-worlds-largest-interconnector-days-away-from-being-put-into-operation/ https://www.offshore-energy.biz/viking-link-worlds-largest-i... https://www.viking-link.com/ https://www.viking-link.com/
- frereubu 3y agoAnd it's going to get better: "Ørsted is to press ahead with developing the world’s largest offshore wind farm in the North Sea after the UK increased financial support for the sector in a big boost for the Danish group after a string of setbacks." https://www.ft.com/content/4d3cc6d4-f479-4607-9574-63e320af80ff https://www.ft.com/content/4d3cc6d4-f479-4607-9574-63e320af8... https://archive.is/Rm9Hi https://archive.is/Rm9Hi
- CaptainOfCoit 3y agoIt's great to see how the usage of the North Sea have shifted over time, and it still remains as useful as before. We've always fished there, and I remember my grandpa being involved with some oil/gas engineering there, he used to have some maps of the North Sea with planned stations or something, and now the wind farms getting expanded to provide cleaner energy.
- ksec 3y agoHas there been any study that if we populate the say 20-30% of North Sea with Wind Turbine, how much electricity could that provide?
- toomuchtodo 3y agoOffshore: https://windeurope.org/policy/topics/offshore-wind-energy/ https://windeurope.org/policy/topics/offshore-wind-energy/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/north-sea-countries-pledge-massive-ramp-up-wind-energy-draft-2023-04-21/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/north-sea-countries-... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484722021795 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235248472... https://www.uib.no/sites/w3.uib.no/files/attachments/presentation_cheynet_brazil.pdf https://www.uib.no/sites/w3.uib.no/files/attachments/present... Onshore, Europe has enough wind potential to power the world.
- Arbortheus 3y agoA super cheap wholesale price on a windy day like this. Past year average: £97.90/MWh Right now: £5.99/MWh. Better transmission and storage tech or better ways to scale demand at different times will be a game changer here.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoIt was once said that nuclear fission would be too cheap to meter. Turns out, that promise will be met with fusion at a distance. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924 (citations) (edit @ oezi: wind power is solar power)
- oezi 3y agoSolar alone won't cut it in the winter. We need wind as well.
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- ben_w 3y agoWhile I prefer a mix of sources to avoid correlated black swan failures, technically you could power the world just fine with distributed PV and a sufficiently fat[0] wire connecting everything. [0] 1m^2 cross section if it's aluminium
- throwup238 3y agoHopefully they'll use plasma conduits instead and all the years of binge watching Star Trek and Stargate will pay off.
- pfdietz 3y ago
- jonatron 3y agoI got paid to use electricity this morning: https://agileprices.co.uk/ https://agileprices.co.uk/
- shaoonb 3y agoDidn't know this site existed. Way better than the Octopus app.
- forinti 3y agoNice time to turn on a bitcoin miner. Is there an API to monitor prices?
- jonatron 3y agoOctopus do have an API: https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/ https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/
- itsoktocry 3y agoHow have your energy costs looked, overall, over the past 2-3 years? Getting cheaper or more expensive? I ask because I frequently see posts like this one, but then also that Europeans are paying more than ever etc. Hard to figure if we are putting a dent in anything.
- Peanuts99 3y agoI've been on Agile for about 6 months and my average energy price is around 0.22p/kWh which is significantly less than the standard tariff most people get which is around 0.36p/kWh. There's been a few weeks where prices have been higher but it balances out so far.
- passwordoops 3y agoAwesome. With increasing capacity they'll keep on breaking records. Now can we start sharing links to storage projects too? Because not every day is windy
- jonatron 3y agoOn 9 August 2019 there was a significant power cut due to lack of inertia. This duration was significantly reduced because of batteries [1]. Since then, gas turbines have been repurposed to provide inertia without generation [2]. Check out the documentary series "Guy Martin's Great British Power Trip" [3] for more national grid facts. [1] https://www.theblackoutreport.co.uk/2023/08/09/9-august-2019-blackout/ https://www.theblackoutreport.co.uk/2023/08/09/9-august-2019... [2] https://www.nationalgrideso.com/news/deeside-power-station-begins-world-first-power-system-stability-contract-national-grid-eso https://www.nationalgrideso.com/news/deeside-power-station-b... [3] https://www.channel4.com/programmes/guy-martins-great-british-power-trip https://www.channel4.com/programmes/guy-martins-great-britis...
- 4ggr0 3y agoFor everyone who doesn't know Guy Martin, I initially know him as a superbiker and first heard of him in the context of the Isle of Man TT[0][1], so I was a bit surprised to see he's now doing docuseries about power grids :D [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmNXCJt7K3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmNXCJt7K3Q [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man_TT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man_TT
- cm2187 3y agoI am not even aware that any are planned at scale. I think their plan is to keep using LNG to offset.
- martinald 3y agoThere is an absolutely enormous amount of battery storage in the pipeline. There's been major problems with transmission capacity though which National Grid is seemingly finally getting on top of - https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/11/07/uk-grid-operator-streamlines-10-gw-of-battery-storage/#:~:text=Plans%20to%20connect%20around%2010,wind%2C%20and%20battery%20storage%20projects https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/11/07/uk-grid-operator-stre....
- bufio 3y agoLovely. Can we have lower bills yet?
- maccard 3y agoIf you have a smart meter, yes. My electricity rate today is 15p/kWh.
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoNo, they are going up in the new year.
- swarnie 3y agoIts already pretty cheap right? Checking Octopus it seems to be averaging about £140 a month on my account.
- midasuni 3y agoThat’s menaingless without saying what your consumption is
- uf00lme 3y agoAs per other comments, I will likely net profit today from maxing out usage during negative pricing via octopus agile.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoOn the solstice, too, when solar production will be relatively low. It's a good anecdote in the conversation about the renewable mix.
- standeven 3y agoWind often increases when solar energy decreases and vice versa, which is why they are deployed together when possible.
- cm2187 3y agoIt's a pity it was really low when it was really cold in early Dec.
- sovande 3y agoReally cold weather doesn’t have much wind. It’s metrology. Without long term storage, wind power during the winter in the northern hemisphere is just meh. Same with any variable renewable energy source. Instead of celebrating the few times renewable energy actually produces energy when it’s needed we should celebrate every time a new Nuclear power plant comes online.
- doingtheiroming 3y agoThe constant 15% that everyone forgets. And the U.K. is still importing French nuclear energy today.
- thehappypm 3y agoGenerally speaking extreme temps don’t coexist with wind for very long. Wind, after all, convects air around, and fundamentally you’ll have the extremes mixed with non-extreme air. Like a heat dome, for example, is only possible when there’s no wind to push the dome away.
- alamsterdam 3y agoIreland is generating 75% renewable today also! https://www.eirgrid.ie/grid/real-time-system-information https://www.eirgrid.ie/grid/real-time-system-information
- mrspuratic 3y agoI understand 75% is the current "limit", I guess for grid stability: https://www.eirgrid.ie/news/eirgrid-and-soni-recognised-renewable-integration https://www.eirgrid.ie/news/eirgrid-and-soni-recognised-rene... (aiming for 95% by 2030, pending ROCOF related upgrades) The forecast is to beat the record peak 4610MW for wind today too.
- wiredfool 3y agoLooks like a peak of 4517MW from wind today, just shy of the record.
- jwhiles 3y agoI did think it was very windy today.
- louthy 3y agoI’m not surprised, it’s like Lord of the Rings outside right now!
- gandalfian 3y agoWhile impressive to be boring electricity use was about 30GW but direct heating by gas and oil consumption was another 150GW or so. Heat pumps might reduce that in theory but still quite a way to go...
- jahnu 3y agoIf I understand it correctly a heat pump would have produced the same heat with 1/3 the energy? Yeah a long way to go but considering we are only really at the beginning of the green energy revolution this is all great news. It affirms that we can do it.
- chippiewill 3y agoYes, and a heat pump tends to run at lower output for longer periods of time versus traditional fuel fired boilers so the peak power demand would be even lower still.
- time4tea 3y agoCan confirm that in my 1920s house, now with heat pump, my energy use is now a fraction of what it used to be, since replacing boiler with heat pump. Before: Jan 600kWh electricity, 3300kWh gas = 3900kWh After: Jan 1580 kWh electricity, 20kWh gas (cooking hob) So in total, 41% of previous amount, and for heating, 30%. So yes, for crappy uk houses heat pumps are totally fine. Adding in solar pv, and a time shifting battery, and the bills are maybe £2k per year lower than they would be.
- choeger 3y agoGermany today (massively rainy and windy day) had a peak of over 50GW. Surprisingly we still had 2GW solar peak even today with the worst possible weather and over 9GW just two days ago.
- TheFuzzball 3y agoYeah it's pretty windy out.
- petercooper 3y agoIt's particularly impressive to me given the stormy conditions. I remember about twenty years ago when my area got a huge wind farm and they used to "turn it off" if it got a bit too windy which always seemed amusing to me. Look further at the 'past day' stats on that page, 61% of power came from wind in the past 24 hours and 78.5% from 'zero carbon' sources overall (also including hydro and nuclear). This is fantastic progress.
- vegancap 3y agoWas lying in bed last night listening to the wind, thinking 'I wonder how much energy that's generating', checked this morning and wasn't disappointed. If we could sort renewable energy storage out, we'd be laughing energy prices wise. We're a windy little island, after all.
- standeven 3y agoYes, storage is the bottleneck that not many people talk about. The transition to renewable energy is still young and already we're seeing negative spot prices. My company is working on affordable, lithium-free storage for the grid to address this.
- vegancap 3y agoWell, I wish you and your company the very best of luck and hope you succeed! It's going to change the game completely once that problem's addressed
- superposeur 3y agoGreat Scot! 21.81 Gigawatts! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fzuO9wHrvGg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fzuO9wHrvGg
- fulafel 3y agoSee also: https://theconversation.com/britain-is-a-net-electricity-exporter-for-first-time-in-44-years-197506 https://theconversation.com/britain-is-a-net-electricity-exp... (" Britain is a net electricity exporter for first time in 44 years ") Seems the links to/from rest of europe are working out fairly well. Is there some web source that would show the "trade balance" on eg monthly basis?
- speps 3y agoYou can see a live map there: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
- youngtaff 3y agoPart of the reason we were a net export last winter was the gas pipeline’s to continental Europe were at capacity, so we were burning the LNG here and then exporting the electricity instead Since then Germany has increases it’s own LNG capability and gas storage in Europe was filled much sooner
- Angostura 3y agoThis would explain why yesterday evening and this evening Octopus Energy's electricity price is negative (I'm on their agile tariff). My olar batteries will be going on forced charge during that time and my electric water heater (usually unused - we are on gas) will automatically come on.
- Angostura 3y agoIf anyone doesn't know it - Gridwatch is fun http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk
- fulafel 3y agoInteresting that they too omit total import/export, like electricitymaps. And also total production, showing only total demand.
- zeristor 3y agoCaveat: I have gleaned bits and bobs from across the web, but I do not work in the UK power industry. I believe there might be a lot of wind power, but the UK grid doesn't yet have the capacity to transfer it, with London and the SE being a key user of power. Until then a proportion of wind power needs to be curtained, and gas power generated near the South East. A coming link from Scotland to Norway should allow power to be exported, in addition to the England Norway link. The main issue I believe is the Scotland to England link, a second interconnect, this time on the Eastern side of the British isles is being built. Batteries can only soak up only so much extra wind power, and currently there isn't much call for desalination plants in Glasgow.
- youngtaff 3y agoRobin Hawkes GB Renewables Map is great for looking at wind farms and how much energy they’re producing https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/#5/55/-3.2 https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/#5/55/-3.2