By Paul Homewood
During the past week, wind power has contributed just 2.0 GW to Britain’s grid, 6% of demand. Solar power needless to say has been irrelevant.
As usual gas power has done the heavy lifting, with a contribution of 1.1 GW from coal as well.
The grid has also been heavily reliant on imported electricity, with the interconnectors supplying 4.5 GW, clearly an extremely unsatisfactory and worrying situation.
About a quarter of wind power is embedded in the distribution network, so does not appear in the above figures, instead reflecting in lower demand. This would push total wind power up to about 2.8 GW, meaning it is running at 11% of capacity.
The weather last week was not unusual, not especially cold or windless. Indeed it is exactly the sort of weather we see regularly here.
There is currently about 25 GW of wind capacity, and the government plans to raise this to at least 55 GW by 2030. But double nothing is still nothing!
Even with 55 GW, we would still only have got about 7 GW last week. A higher proportion of offshore wind might raise this figure slightly, but equally demand will also be higher in 2030.
It should be obvious now that Britain still needs reliable, dispatchable power to cover most of its demand, regardless of how unreliable wind and solar farms we build.
As Tucker Carlson described them, they are no more than silly fashion accessories.
Interestingly, The Australian newspaper has picked up on Britain’s problems last week, with an article by Terry McCrann. It is behind a paywall, but can be seen here.
He closes by saying:
If the future is renewables, it is a literally powerless future.
I still have a dream. That one day we will wake up from this insane, emperor-has-no-clothes nightmare and start tearing down those useless other than for slaughtering birds monstrosities, and shattering their equally useless bird-frying siblings.
If we want electricity, as Britain has shown so emphatically this last week, it has to come, it can only come, from coal, from gas and from nuclear.
All else is childish, destructive — Rudd-Turnbull-style — fantasy.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
March 8, 2021 at 05:30AM