By P Gosselin
Those who refuse to learn by reading will end up learning by feeling. Great Britain is finding out that going without coal power is a lot easier said than done.
Summer temperatures in the UK have boosted the demand for electricity, and so the country has “started burning coal again for electricity generation for the first time in a month and a half,” reports Blackout News here, citing the Telegraph, June 13, 2023.
Apparently in the summery weather, Britain’s solar panels have refused to cooperate. In the heat, their efficiency dropped considerably and so the country’s electricity demand could not be met without coal power.
Coal to the rescue
“On Monday 12 June, a unit at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire, owned by German energy company Uniper, went back online in the UK after a weeks-long break. Another coal-fired power station was kept on standby in case additional power demand arose in the early afternoon,” according to Blackout News. “The yield of solar energy the previous weekend was almost a third less than the weekend before. This was due to the high temperatures, which exceeded 30 degrees Celsius in many parts of the country,”
Solar’s many technical drawbacks
This represents yet another technical drawback solar energy faces. It not only works extremely poorly in the wintertime, when energy is really in high demand, but also in the summer when temperature climb in the range of 30°C. The only time solar panels seem to work is when they are not really needed.
Work only when you don’t need them
Solar panels are designed to work best when their surface temperature is 25″C. But in the summertime, their surfaces can easily reach 60 or even 70°C. According to the rule, every degree temperature over 25°C means a 0.5% loss in efficiency. That means at 65″C, the panel loses 20% of its rated efficiency.
25% less output
“Alastair Buckley, Professor of Organic Electronics at the University of Sheffield, explained that the higher temperatures have contributed to much of the decline in solar energy production. Compared to a cool, cloudy day, solar panels could be more than 25 per cent less efficient,” writes Blackout News.
In Germany, where nuclear power has been phased out, the country is coping with its energy troubles in its own brilliant way: importing nuclear power from France!
So well green energies are working here in Europe!
If one realizes that the goal is to reduce population, then the energy transition is working as planned.
What is the goal? Protecting the environment or moderating climate change ain’t it.
Kill the sparrows.
The goal is to make the politicians appear kewl and relevant, then letting them scuttle away before the bill becomes due – think of it a bit like pass the parcel with a ticking bomb!
Britain is too far north for solar power to work well. Scotland is particularly bad for solar power. However, this didn’t stop solar farms being built in Scotland with the aid of gigantic subsidies. The capacity utilisation of these white elephants in Scotland in winter is just 1%.
http://euanmearns.com/solar-pv-potential-in-scotland/
Yes, it apparently comes as a SHOCK to the average Green fool that solar power performs poorly in a country that spans 49°N to 61°N and is known for its miserable weather.
Does anyone think the green wienies will wake up and stop putting the solar panels where the sun don’t shine (and this time I don’t mean Canada).
With their heads already up there, not much space left for slaver panels.
Nope – I don’t think most greens have a flippin’ clue about how anything works. I saw a comment somewhere that said it didn’t matter how overcast a day was, pv panels worked from ambient light, not direct sunlight, so would still deliver plenty of power even on cloudy or rainy days. Not my understanding of the situation – power output appears to drop like a stone on even mildly cloudy days.
I have a solar powered decorative carriage light in front of my house. On a warm sunny day, the sun will fully charge the battery and the light will stay on all night, only turning off at sunrise. On excessively hot or very cold days or even if there is just an overcast sky the carriage light will only stay on for a few hours. Yesterday was slightly cloudy all day and the carriage light shut off around midnight.
Are you sure it’s 1%? I see on that site:
That figure is the annual utilisation percentage. If you look at the monthly graphs, you can see that the utilisation rate falls to 1% in winter months.
Interesting- probably somewhat better here in Woke-achusetts, but not much. I’ll need to find out- in the battle to stop our crazy nut zero state government.
“Coal To the Rescue in Britain as Solar Panels Also Work Too Poorly in The Summertime“
Again, no-one seems interested in the data. Here are the two weeks 6-19 June. Solar, in orange, is doing just fine. Apparently someone decided something extra was needed because of the uptick in demand at about 13 June. Coal is the tiny brown layer you can see for a few days, just under the huge orange area. It is not coming to the rescue. Compared to solar, its contribution is barely visible.
If coal wasn’t ‘coming to the rescue’ why was it called for? It’s actually the red line and it is clear that on 17June it was needed because of the collapse of wind rather than solar.
“it is clear that on 17June it was needed because of the collapse of wind rather than solar”
Well, that is another story in contradiction to this article. But it was first fired up on 13 June.
If Coal weren’t needed, it wouldn’t be mentioned in the mix of grid supply.
Since the grid operates at Balance between supply and demand (load) AND both Solar and Wind are not useable as load balancing generation sources, coal was needed to balance the load to meet demand.
Wind to the rescue? Naught
Solar to the rescue? Naught
COAL to the rescue!!!
BTW, what happened on June 8th?
Ended this with an excellent question! What did happen on June 8th?
That looks like a chart of a two-week window. How often has something similar happened in the past? How likely will it happen again? How soon can we expect another June 8th? How reliable is a system if June 8th’s can occur?
Would anyone fly if overall flight reliability tanked like June 8th every couple weeks, seemingly at random?
“What did happen on June 8th?”
The data feed to the monitor failed. The power was fine. It happens quite often with this app.
What happened June 8? If you follow the EIA hourly grid monitor you will notice occasional breaks in the data that look exactly the same around here. I suspect the data feed has failed for some reason.
But basically, one can infer from the same chart that nuclear base load, natural gas generation and “imports” are keeping the system from daily evening brownouts and blackouts.
They are all part of total generation. You need generation to prevent blackouts. But that doesn’t say anything in support of the claim here that solar is failing and coal is coming to the rescue.
If you can for just a moment Nick, suppress your virtuous green ideology, and put on your rationality cap, and ask yourself why any sentient human being would for one minute entertain the notion that a modern electric power utility grid could successfully sustain 24x7x365 uninterrupted service using only intermittent, unreliable wind and solar sources.
But, but… batteries!
For all the flashlights needed in every household for windless nights, and there’s no 110 / 240 AC electricity from the grid?
And cemeteries. Lots and lots and lots of cemeteries!
Here are the figures from https://grid.iamkate.com at 5.26pm 24th June
Past day Fossil Fuels 30% Unreliables 37% Other 22.6%
Past week Fossil Fuels 47.8% Unreliables 26.6% Other 18.4%
Past year Fossil fuels 41.4% Unreliables 35.1% Other 20.5%
That’s a valid nitpick Nick. Solar did about as miserably as it usually does despite some of the longest days of the year. It was gas that came to the rescue as usual.
So nice try with the deflection and distraction.
Nick has actually told us why they needed to re-start the coalies.
“You need generation to prevent blackouts.”
“You need generation to prevent blackouts.”
Which is exactly why they are having to re-start the coal fired power stations.
!
Wind and solar never fail. Nobody expects solar to work in the dark and wind to work when the wind isn’t blowing.
It’s always the fault of those dastardly FF plants that fail to pick up the slack when they are needed. /sarc
What you’re saying (with a straight face apparently) is that in the three weeks leading up to the summer solstice, ruinable sources taken together (wind, solar, and biomass) supplied 30% of demand, and that counts as ‘doing just fine’. Odd that you didn’t contrast that with the three weeks leading up to the winter solstice.
In other words, during the first half of the 6 most favorable weeks of the year for solar power, slightly less than 10% of demand was supplied by solar power.
Brilliant! Now just reduce the population from 67 million to 6.7 million and it works ‘fine’ — in a midsummer night’s dream.
The curve for coal (red line) is just about perfectly atop wind and therefore invisible. So perfectly that I am a little suspicious of the data (why have coal produce equally to all those little wiggles in the wind power? I think it may be that the coal plant was curtailed most of the day and just called upon for the late afternoon peak.), but what is really needed to interpret this is the curve for total demand. In fact, since the balancing is all done with the objective of supplying least expensive wholesale power under an unknown number of constraints, even total demand won’t always explain why each source produces the contribution it does. I’d say Peta of Newark below shows at least some missing parts of the story.
I think you are right on the details of coal. It is being used as a peaker, which is odd. The top of the curves shows total demand.
Here it is on a week scale, which gives better resolution
Nick, your supplied data shows that the peak solar production happens significantly earlier than peak demand. To make maters worse, the demand does not start declining until after solar production ends. Bottom line is that solar does not reduce reduce requirements for fossil fuel generation without massive amounts of energy storage.
BTW, I remember PG&E’s operations chief stating in 1976 that the problem with solar was the large demand that continues after the sun sets.
“ Bottom line is that solar does not reduce reduce requirements for fossil fuel generation”
Of course it reduces use of fuel. That orange area shows gas that you didn’t need to burn.
But you still have to build and maintain the gas and coal plants since solar and wind are not reliable. So at best, you invest a lot more in infrastructure and all the energy that goes into building power plants and windmills that rarely produce more than 30% of nameplate. No company run for profit would do this unless forced to or incentivized to by the government taking money from taxpayers and giving it to people who do not deserve it.
“But you still have to build and maintain the gas and coal plants since solar and wind are not reliable.”
Much said here, but never quantified. How much do you have to maintain? What does it actually cost?
And then set that against the real, ever-rising cost of fuel.
The one who has to do the quantification is you. Despite having this asked for several times, you’ve never either shown that fuel savings more than pay for the addition of wind and solar, or pointed to someone who has.
What you have to do is this. It would fit on one A4 spreadsheet.
Write down the total costs of a pure gas powered system. Capital, maintenance, fuel. Over its life.
Then do the same for a combined system, gas + wind and solar.
Take account when doing the fuel costs of the difference in efficiency between CCGT and SCGT. You will need to provide the latter to deal with wind intermittency.
Then discount for the time value of money, and lets see the answer.
You won’t do it, and no advocate of wind and solar will do it either, because the answer is so obvious. You incur the costs of a whole duplicate system which then requires you to use your gas in less fuel efficient systems. And you will incur heavy transmission costs to get the intermittent wind power to where its needed. And you’ll have higher maintenance costs, especially for offshore.
But if you really believe this, put up some numbers. Lets see what the fuel savings are, and lets see them side by side with the extra costs.
If you really believe you have a case, make it. You won’t, and this is why I keep calling you out for intellectual dishonesty. Because you know better..
Nick, are you really this desperate to please your pay masters?
Obviously, you have to build enough FF power plants to supply all the power needed for those times when the sun isn’t shinning and the wind isn’t blowing.
In other words you have to build at least two complete and independent power systems, for those times when unreliable wind and solar fail completely.
Not necessarily. If using solar requires using aero-derived gas turbines for rapid start-up as opposed to combined cycle gas turbines with slower start up and shut down times, there may not be any significant savings in fuel.
Starting and stopping an aero-derived turbine has costs as well, the hot sections of the turbine have a limit on cycles before the turbine requires an overhaul.
Yes. Its nonsense. And Nick’s idea that someone who is skeptical about this nonsense has to make the case and do the quantification is even greater nonsense.
All Nick has to do to persuade is produce some numbers himself or link to someone who has. He doesn’t, because if you do a proper study of this it will be shown to be hare-brained.
Fuel savings is the last refuge of the last ditch defenders of intermittent generation. Fine take off all the subsidies and regulations and lets see how much wind and solar the utility companies put in, when no-one is either paying them to or forcing them to buy it.
And I don’t believe it even reduces CO2 emissions, either.
With the advent of mandatory EV sales and mandatory ICE vehicle sales curtailment along with mandated Gas heater and stove replacements with Electric, when the people get home in the evenings and start cooking and heating and plugging in their EVs to recharge overnight, the evening peak will shift much later and become significantly higher
One possible solution for that is to make sure that a charging cord per parking spot is provided wherever spots are normally occupied during daylight hours. The objective is to capture as much excess solar electricity as possible and use the EV batteries as one of the energy storage options. The only problem is that most of the EV and solar proponents have not bothered to consider all of the details involved with a “green energy” future.
The downside of using EV in this manner is adding extra wear on the batteries.
That opens yet another can of worms…
So you go to work and plug in to recharge during the Solar availability time and suddenly extra power is siphoned off of your EV batteries from Wind Shortfall. So when you leave work and get into your $60,000 EV, your battery is nearly depleted and you can’t get home.
Nice system!
On the contrary, I often look at the (BM Reports + ESO, 30-minute) data for the GB electricity grid.
An alternative view of the data for the month of June (so far).
Coal was clearly being used for several “evening meal peaks” from the 12th onwards as solar falls to zero (as it does every 24 hours …) and a couple of “pre-dawn” shortfalls (on the 13th and the 16th).
In addition coal was used to help compensate for low wind conditions during the day on the 12th, 16th and 22nd.
Yes, using this coal generator as a peaker, which is not usual.
Here is a version of the plot which makes solar more visible
Wow…
So GB solar capacity is 14.9 GW
and GB Wind capacity is 27 GW
So, basically they get an average of 50% Solar capacity for the 4 hours it produces and an average of Zero Capacity for almost 20 hours a day.
Wind on the other hand produced less than 50% on its best day and had a number of days where it produced less than 14% capacity and averaged just over 22% capacity. Sounds like a whole lot of wasted capacity that had unfavorable weather and couldn’t generate
Using coal as a peaker.
I’m really surprised that you were able to say that with a straight face.
Using plants that take hours to ramp up to full power as a peaker?
I said it is surprising. But look at Mark BLR’s graph. That is what they are doing.
Nick is correct on this specific point.
With the closure of West Burton A, and the conversion of the last 2 coal units at Drax now underway, the GB grid only has the 2 GW of capacity of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant in the “Coal” column.
Look at the way “Blackout News” phrased it in the ATL article :
The GB grid operators did their job and “projected” that there was the possibility of a shortfall in generation from the 12th of June onwards due to the vagaries of the weather (and the impossibility of predicting precisely how “Demand” will change minute-by-minute), so they asked the operators of Ratcliffe-on-Soar to “spin up” two (of the four available) units “just in case”.
With daily “Demand” peaking around 30-35 GW for the island of GB in June, in the vast majority of cases any “source” with only 2 GW of capacity can only be used as a “peaker”.
– – – – –
PS : My brain is wired to more easily interpret “separate line” graphs than the “stacked line (/ area)” graphs that NIck appears to prefer.
My OP was more of a negative reaction to his assertion that “no-one” else has sufficient curiosity to be “interested in the data” than to Nick’s interpretation of that data — — “Solar, in orange, is doing just fine” — — which (for me, at least) is not just difficult to see in his “stacked lines” graph, it completely ignores the abysmal performance of the “Total Wind” column for the month of June 2023, with 27 (or maybe 28 by now ???) GW of “nominal / nameplate capacity” dipping below 2 GW of actual electricity production three times in ~12 days.
I’m puzzled. Why does anyone pay attention to Stokes? IT is so obviously a troll for the wind/solar lobby. It could so easily be a mere bot, of no more importance than a Bing chat program.
You’re wrong on that, Nick Stokes is a pinata and everybody else likes to swing a bat, once in a while….
Griff stopped posting because he didn’t want to register to sign in, so Nick is taking up the slack.
I suggest Nick peruses the generation graphs on gridwatch – wind & solar are dreadful, daily, weekly, monthly, annually, ad infinitum
If not for gas, nuclear and occasional coal generation, the UK would spend hours, every day, without power
Biomass is worse than burning coal, cutting down trees then transporting thousands of miles, to then burn to produce steam to drive turbines is not green in any sense – nature has already produced coal from trees over millennia, right under our feet
The renewables con is quickly crumbling, the masses won’t put up with the deceit forever
Gotta get reliable electricity from somewhere.
Sure not going to be wind or solar, is it. !
Coal is being brought back on line, because they KNOW that wind and solar are NOT CAPABLE OF DELIVERING when needed. !
The idea that solar PV does work poorly in hot weather is bonkers. Who would believe that? Where is the evidence? Solar works fine in warmer Spanish summers and even warmer places like Saudi Arabia or Morocco.
Actually the performance does drop off with hot weather. My good-quality panels in Western Australia reduce their output by at least 5% when the temperature climbs over 30C. They work best in spring and autumn, when I use less power.
To improve the performance of solar photovoltaic devices one should mitigate the three types of losses: optical, electrical and thermal.
Reality is not bonkers.
You seem to think that as long as production doesn’t stop completely, it is still working.
The evidence is basic physics, something that can easily be measured in any lab.
Check the data sheets for solar cells they will include derating curves for warm weather.
Something is wrong with your graph – says capacity for solar is 2.7 GW yet the graph shows it with a knife-edge peak of roughly 10GW on the best days. Doesn’t make sense. Useless power production anyway.
28 June, coal almost a GW.
right now, sunny, interconnectors almost 7GW.
what an absolute farce.
its worse than i thought. we are importing 24% of our electricity at the moment.
with installed wind of 28GW capaacity we are producing less than 7GW.
with installed solar of 14.4 we are producing less than 2.5GW
and its cool and sunny. and windy.com shows winds over 10kts.
Let’s try and be fair here…
Attached is a composite of 4 screenshots from 4 different weatherstations across souther England on June 13th
(Bristol, Luton, Newark and Kings Lynn)
The black line is barometric pressure and the yellow line is solar radiation
As seen: Solar fell off a cliff as pressure suddenly started ramping up
iow. A front came through
Patently somebody saw it coming and is why the coal stations were asked to be ready
Not seen on my pic but on the stations themselves, as might be expected with The Front, the wind went haywire, dropped to nothing then struck up in completely the opposite direction.
That was across Southern England. 200 miles away and back up in Cumbria, (my old stomping) the wind was rock solid from the east at 25km/h and the solar graph is a perfect sinusoidal hump
It is a text-book example of British Weather and why unreliable are exactly that = unreliable
PS. Less of the technological nonsense. Solar panels do not ‘Work Best’ at 25°C
They are calibrated or rated at that temperature just as they are calibrated/rated for solar input of 1,000Watts/m²
Thorium Power baby….spread the word.
What’s the word again? ‘Baby’ was it?
Must be, thorium as a viable generation source still doesn’t exist beyond the Lab, much like Fusion
Thorium liquid salts cooled reactors are a fission process….the obstacle to thorium is gubments….first thorium reactor at Oak Ridge was over 60 years ago…past time to get going – GO THORIUM! SPREAD THE WORD! BAY-BEE!
Sorry, it’s not ready and not yet needed. There is no reason to restrict fossil fuel use. Eventually they’ll become too expensive to extract. In the meantime drill baby drill!
Now if we could put an end to bird shredders and slaver panels in a deal to pour all that wasted money into Thorium MSR development, I would certainly prefer that. At least we’d have dispatchable power and who knows, it might even be economical. But let’s try to live in reality.
You are unaware… https://www.copenhagenatomics.com
Is that right? So how many are in service? How many are contracted to go into service in the next five years?
You’re forgetting that GA’s HTGR design also used a thorium cycle, with the prototype Peach Bottom plant operational in the 1960’s. With the use of helium as the primary coolant, there was very little problem with corrosion.
The problem with the thorium cycle is in getting a starting inventory of 233U, at which point is makes more sense to use a plutonium cycle where the long life trans-uranics get turned into short life trans-uranics by neutrons.
I suggest you contact Kirk Sorensen.
The thorium reactor at Oak Ridge was a lab model. Come back when they finally solve all the problems required to get a production model working.
Probably not. People are too attached to beliefs and have far too many tactics for denial.
It should be obvious that there are two times of year when people need large amounts of power — very cold winter and very warm/humid summer. Also, the very hottest of summer can occur anywhere between May and September and the coldest of winter can occur November to March. You will eventually have to depend on great amounts of power over a mere ten months. Then solar and wind can be highly correlated with one another — don’t count on wind balancing solar.
People learn by starving, freezing and sitting in the dark. Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” describes it eloquently.
“Alastair Buckley, Professor of Organic Electronics at the University of Sheffield, explained that the higher temperatures have contributed to much of the decline in solar energy production. Compared to a cool, cloudy day, solar panels could be more than 25 per cent less efficient,”
And all these learned Professors never once opened their beaks to peep that summer temps FREQUENTLY exceed that mysterious 25-degree sweet spot? How can a government barge ahead to depend on solar panels, when that fact has never been concealed – except, apparently, in the “planning” stages of all the wonderful ‘renewable power sources’ which are to replace fossil fuels?
I’m curious if any solar advocates are aware of the service life of solar panels? Are they aware the output diminishes each year? Do they know you just don’t buy a solar panel and you’re set for life?
I doubt it. Service life was proudly announced as 30+ years, although it’s realistically about 15-25, before they stop working. However, taking into account how little they produce in the northerly part of the UK at least and how much it’s reduced annually, output is going to drop to a trickle long before that. Effective service life will be much shorter than the actual service life.
As an add on to your comment, it should be added that the output of solar panels starts to drop from the first day that they are put into service. Several percent per year, depending on how hot they get.
An interesting substory here is provided by the graph that Nick supplied. I realized that the top curve is deman — I hate these graphs where the difference between curves is the generation per source. Every place on earth has its own particular daily demand curve. This graph shows a big peak at mid-day. In the Northwestern U.S. we have two daily peaks. A small one in the morning and a larger one in the late afternoon. Also, this graph shows that total demand around 30GW at peak for what, 67million people? is only about 60% of the demand for power in the Northwestern U.S. which involves around half as many people.
Hmmm . . . what’s that old proverb: “A piece of coal in the hand is worth two solar panels in the heat”? Something like that.
Let’s see how they all do with this recurring “problem” from the component suppliers of tax credit miners.
story tip
wsj
Clean Energy’s Latest Problem Is Creaky Wind TurbinesShares in Siemens Energy plunged by a third after it said turbine components are degrading faster than expectedClean Energy’s Latest Problem Is Creaky Wind Turbines – WSJ
That is a reminder of all the other fully invested mistakes like Crescent Dunes, Solyndra, and Ivanpah.
NV Energy sends termination notice to massive Tonopah solar project, developer accuses Energy Department of taking over – The Nevada Independent
How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’ | California | The Guardian
Solyndra: Its technology and why it failed – EDN
Who will be next? I’ll bet NY, MA, and RI knowingly plow ahead with flawed wind tech offshore for the federal spending, tax credits, and ignorant enviro pride framing.
The Siemens Gamesa wind turbine problem is inherent and insoluble for most of its installed base, especially since about 2010 when onshore wind blade length maxed out because of ground transportation constraints. As turbines got bigger, the differential vertical blade loading got bigger. (Wind speed is higher aloft.) This creates a wobble in the main axial bearings/race supporting the rotating three blades on one drive axle. That wobble induces bearing cracking, then failure. Cannot be fixed in the field. Blades off, turbine dismounted and back to the factory for repair/replacement. Else useful life is shortened well below warranty (usually 20 years).
Will not end well.
Solar panels require the sun to operate, but not too much sun.
Industrial wind turbines require wind to operate, but not too much wind.
I think I see a pattern here. 🙄
Goldilocks engineering?
Does anyone know why biomass has dropped off so much in the last month or two in the UK? Note attached graphic. Seems to me they should be using this instead of coal. It seems to me that this might be the real reason why coal had to be used. Most biomass has been taken offline. Maintenance?
Maybe. Summer would seem to be the best time to shut down for maintenance in the UK.
Biomass is idiotic. Much better to burn coal.
Doesn’t anyone notice that one can BURN wood a great deal faster that wood can be GROWN?!
IT’S THE VERY DEFINITION OF “UNSUSTAINABLE.”
You only have to look at the generation graphs on gridwatch to see how useless wind & solar are, daily, monthly, annually, ad infinitum
Even a politician if shown these graphs would be hard pressed to remain in favour of them, unless there’s money in it of course, which there is for the chosen few
I don’t buy this. In Spain, we have lots of solar energy. One of the best countries for solar in Europe, and in summertime temperatures are regularly in the 30sºC and quite often in the 40sºC. And highest solar production is in May, June, and July, as it should.
Two compensating effects are at work: lower efficiency vs better angle of the sun. Just because you have higher production in the summer does not mean that the panels are not less efficient. Production is a function of cloudiness, temperature, season (better or worse angle), etc.
Thermal degradation of silicon solar cells is a real phenomena. Read the book before commenting.
Having lots of solar panels is not evidence that solar panels get less efficient when hot.
All you have to do is to look for yourself.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/08/heatwaves-can-hamper-solar-panels/
Build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators and remove all wind and solar from the grid.
What is the bother about solar working above 30C ambients?
Here is some Australian heatwave data.
The corcled numbers are the degrees C for the averge Tmax over many decades for the hottest 5-day heatwave each year.
These cites house more than 70% of our population, so it is just taken on the chin.
BTW, these heatwaves are not getting hotter over the decades. Like, Melbourne 5-dayers were just as hot in the 1860s as now in the 2020s.
Calm down..
Geoff S
If the sun heats up the solar panels, making them less efficient, Then the answer is simple. Keep them in the shade
My son in London has sent me a notice from his energy supplier.
Electricity has dropped from 34.68p/kWh to 31.191p/kWh and gas from 10.316p/kWh to 7.511p/kWh from 1Jul23 Direct govt subsidy to the consumer? Natural market forces? He doesn’t take much of an interest as to why, just pays the bills.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration has a comprehensive listing of production relative to capacity for every form of electricity generation. Solar is at the bottom of the list, generating about 25% of nameplate capacity. Wind and hydro are next from the bottom, at about 37%.
Hydro is obvious: seasonality due to their dependence on snowmelt. Wind is much more seasonal than most people think. Some methods are as low as they are — I am guessing — because they are used primarily for peak demand periods. Nuclear is by far the highest on the list, which makes sense given how those reactors work.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_6_07_a
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_6_07_b