3 ms·

If wind will be enough, why build solar in UK at all?

• ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Well it's cheaper than gas, even before you add a carbon price, which makes it much, much cheaper, so that's a good reason to build it in parallel. Price is roughly equal with wind, maybe a little more expensive than onshore wind and a little less than offshore. And the outgoing Conservative party has effectively banned onshore wind in England. But eventually as deployment grows you'll hit seasonality constraints that solar doesn't hit closer to the equator. Wind correlates with demand better in this region.
  • badpun 2y ago
    If, for achieving zero emissions, all capacity needs to eventually covered by wind anyway, then building out all that solar seems pointless. That money would be better spent on wind.
    • wdh505 2y ago
      Step 1: get summer to zero as cheaply as possible. Step 2: evaluate the combo of sources to get winter to zero. Step 2 will likely involve insulation, potential energy storage (pumping water uphill to turn a turbine later), high thermal mass "heat batteries", solar that got us to 0 during the summer, wind, and water and maybe even nuclear.
    • itishappy 2y ago
      > If, for achieving zero emissions, all capacity needs to eventually covered by wind anyway... This is wrong. Solar is zero emissions too, even if the economics are slightly less advantageous. Both are intermittent sources, so building 100% of either increases risk and requires additional storage. Plus, some areas are more amenable to solar than wind.
• energy123 2y ago
  Wind is weaker in summer