From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
This chart from the NESO report is worth a look:
In simple terms, the gray bits represent unabated gas generation. Each season gives an illustrative seven-day cross section, ie a typical week.
In winter therefore, there will be days when we need gas to supply typically half or even more of our power. Even in spring, gas will still be needed in large amounts from time to time.
So it is quite wrong to imply, which NESO seem to, that gas will only make a small contribution.
On the contrary, it is absolutely fundamental to the grid.
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We seem to be in the middle of a dunkelflaute; there hasn’ been any wind for days…
“”Dunkelflaute’ sends wind power generation plummeting in UK and Germany
Meteorological phenomenon is highlighting the difficulties of transition to renewable energy””
…
wind farms were only able to meet 3-4pc of the UK’s electricity demand during the morning and evening peaks, with gas-fired plants instead fired up to meet around 60pc of demand.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/05/dunkelflaute-cut-wind-power-generation-germany-uk/
Misplaced optimism or sheer blind faith? “”the difficulties of transition to renewable energy“”, or the actual impossibility of it. Without gas etc we’d be in the dark just as winter is on its way.
Only a complete, total and utter lunatic… That’ll be Red Ed Miliband.
After winter sets in, Ed the Red going to learn the hard way about absolute necessity of reliable fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, unlike the ill-fated people he “governs,” he will be unlikely to personally suffer the consequences of his stupid policies.
Everywhere you go in Germany these days, the English language is on display. Shops have “sales”. Garages provide “service”. Hotels provide “wellness”, whatever that is. Germans have “festivals”. I once walked past a shop and its entire advertising board in the street was in English. So it is interesting to see that a German word (Dunkelflaute) seems to be entering the English language.
It happens from time to time, eg blitzkrieg (and blitz), schadenfreude, kaput etc oh and of course, ‘n a z i’
English is quite the lingual sponge. You have pyjamas??
I recommend the wonderful etymological you tube channels of Rob Words and Words Unravelled, for a light hearted romp through where words originally came from.
ALL of old English was originally broadly Germanic with some Norse additions, until it went French after 1066.
But te Empire gave us tins of new words to acquire and incorporate.
Algorithm from a Persian dude . ‘Bint’ a young girl, or possibly a prostitute, from Arabic…Bungalow from Hindi. Amok from Malay.
“Unravel” is one of those words adapted from common usage that is a result of ignorance. The word is ravel, which means to unweave. At one point in time a dictionary I consulted under unravel said “see ravel.”
The language is dynamic and constantly changing. How else could “wannabe” become part of the vocabulary.
Indeed. I have no problem with change beyond there needing to be at least some agreement on what words actually mean.
When I were a lad gay was flags waving in the breeze and girls laughing in a carefree manner.
It gets confusing, when I could care less means I couldn’t care less and cheap at half the price means expensive at half the price
Brother, you may buy me a beer!
I’ll give you the hyper-inflated dime in exchange.
Waldsterben also was internationalised, as was kindergarten
It is very descriptive of a phenomenon that English has no equivalent word for. So it is entirely appropriate. I’ve been using it when talking about renewables to anyone that listens.
Interesting- but I doubt that German word will catch on with “the masses”. But it does sound like it would be a good insult word. 🙂
Oh its all in the newspapers now. We are all being taught its meaning.
What’s the plural of Dunkelflaute (if it is not already plural) ?
Dunkelflauten perhaps ?
This is a very impressive Dunkelflaute. Covering most of Europe and more from Marakesh to North Cape and Limerick to Aleppo.
“The wind is always blowing somewhere”.
Except when it isnt.
The graphs seem to be about “typical” weeks. In those, gas may not be needed all that often but in the occasional week, or several consecutive weeks, when wind and solar are really low, gas will be needed a large part of the time.
So poor old NESO didn’t have the heart (or the balls) to tell deludEd the truth.
The conclusion is obvious and as for the £40bn per year – that’s a lowball figure but it happens to be the amount of money the UK government (clowns) intend to rob from tax payers in the recent budget. So 40bn a year just to keep deludEd busy is a sure fire way to finish off the UK totally.
As Strativarius has said, we’re heading into winter and the current installed capacity of unreliables is delivering a measly 4or 5% of our electricity.
Only bunch of deludEd Marxist idiots would want to extend this level of unreliability.
I’ve said it before, it would be funny if it wasn’t so depressing!
Hidden in the report is the huge amount of private investment needed, paid for by higher bills caused by the inevitable eyewatering high ‘Contract for Difference’ auction which then get passed on to the consumer.
NESO is owned by the government, in a Stalinesque move, and it reports directly to Miliband.
More than depressing. People will die from this idiocy.
Under these loony tune plans they will have to make a huge contribution but for only short periods. Who in hell is going to build a Gas plant that needs to supply a major part of the load but only for short periods. The capital cost is the same, fixed overheads are the same and the labour cost are the same, only saving is the cost of less gas. The costs will be loaded onto the electricity bills, £300 pa lower bills was a complete fabrication.
Who in hell is going to build a Gas plant that needs to supply a major part of the load but only for short periods.
Someone who realises that a low efficiency OCGT plant is very cheap to build and the fact that it uses twice as much gas doesn’t matter as long as it is selling into a very high priced electricity market, and who cares about emissions anyway.
If they want to ‘save the grid’ they WILL pay £500/MWh for the output..
O/T Taking things rather badly…
Hard Left Activists Immediately Vandalise U.S. Embassy in London in Response to Trump Win
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/11/06/hard-left-activists-immediately-vandalise-u-s-embassy-in-london-in-response-to-trump-win/
Why didn’t the cops try to stop them? I’m surprised that the embassy didn’t have a few of their own outside the building in case there was some trouble.
Why?
The Police are on the right side of history.
“”…there were images of the police staring at protesters and even chatting with them and having a cup of tea but failing to clear the slip roads.””
No more tea and chit chat!
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1493196/Extinction-Rebellion-protestors-police-Priti-Patel
It’s difficult to see why anyone would be disappointed with the presidential election.
I guess you need a post-modern indoctrination
/sarc needed
PA in red says FRACK ON!
The Green socialist scam just took a big hit in America.
It’s a Green No Deal.
From The Guardian
How the Guardian will stand up to four more years of Donald TrumpKatharine Viner
The president-elect has made his disdain for journalism clear. His second term is a risk to a free press in the United States and beyond. Help us to hold him to account
Support the Guardian’s independent journalism today
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/06/how-the-guardian-will-stand-up-to-four-more-years-of-donald-trump
The Guardian: Is it a journalistic organization or a profit making newsletter of a cadre for leftist political action?
How much real journalistm is left anywhere?
Well it doesn’t make a profit, and it does no journalism, so its probably a cadre for leftist political action…
It’s student politics and loses around £40 million each year
Thanks for the follow up. Who pays he 40 million… the cadre congregation?
A Trust fund with large pockets, the funds are held in a tax haven so they don’t have to pay for the policies and higher taxes they promote.
The Scott Trust…
The Guardian in talks to sell The Observer to former BBC News chiefPotential sale comes as newspaper reveals it burned through tens of millions of pounds in cash last year
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/17/the-guardian-accounts-sell-observer-tortoise/
Yep the leftie newspaper ran by a Trust who got their money from selling off Autotrader (well known car selling mag and website) and banking it in an offshore tax haven, hypocrisy writ large.
This was yesterday from UK wind, all 30GW of it:
Max 1.655 GW
Min 0.602
Avge 1.008
Today is pretty similar. The question for Miliband (or our own Nick Stokes) is how you are going to supply in the face of this.
Miliband will have raised peak demand from 45 GW to 50+ GW peak with heat pumps and EVs. Its 2030, 4pm on a January weekday, and there is no solar coming from the 40+ GW they plan to get installed. Miliband’s 90 GW of wind is putting out, lets say, 3-4 GW.
What are you going to do? Close down the entire country’s electricity supply? And do that every time there is a calm like this, which is several times a year? And when its worse than this, when it lasts for a week or ten days? And how are you going to start, with no spinning reserve?
Though right now its lasted almost a week of under 5 GW from the installed 30GW. In the above scenario that would be about 15 GW average, under 5GW for a couple of days.
Its hopeless. Cannot be done.
http://www.gridwatch.co.uk/wind
I also noticed the drop in “Wind” on Gridwatch, but that is only Elexon’s “Metered Wind” number.
I did my usual “add in ESO’s ‘Embedded Wind’ model estimates” and came up with the attached graph for the last eight days (plus about a third of a day, up to 8:30AM this morning).
Compare that with the “typical 6-day” graphs for autumn and winter in the ATL article …
PS : Has it been especially cloudy (/ foggy ?) along the south coast of Britain the last 5 days or so ? Even given that we’re only 6 or 7 weeks away from the winter solstice that’s a large drop in “Solar (PV)” output …
Some of the things NESO is advising
Contract as much offshore wind in the coming 1-2 years as in the last 6 years combined.
Deliver carbon capture and storage and hydrogen power first of kind
Build twice as much transmission network in the next 5 years as was built over the last decade
Reform electricity markets to secure over £40bn investment annually to 2030
Offshore wind must be the bedrock….providing over half of GB’s generation with onshore wind and solar providing another 29%
Reduce share of unabated gas from c. 33% to below 5%
Increase battery storage from 5GW to over 22GW
50GW of offshore wind by 2030 but no new dispatchable power from hydrogen or gas with carbon capture and storage or 2.7GW of such dispatchable power with 43GW of offshore wind
Deploy more offshore and onshore wind and solar each year than have ever done in a single year before
77% to 82% of generation from renewable energy by 2030, mostly offshore wind
Demand flexibility to reach 10 – 12GW by 2030 through smart charging of EVs, time shifting household demand and enabling more responsive industry demand
New nuclear plants and possibly SMRs
Apart from the last I think Fintan’s leprechauns have been given far to much free rein!
It was called the 3 day week in the 70’s and the governing party lost the next election, the useless Heath was replaced by Margert Thatcher. We can but hope for a repeat.
I assume 29 GW “nameplate capacity” for wind instead of 30, but the attached graph shows just how many “Weather-dependent” megawatts can really be produced during a foggy week in November for the island of Great Britain.
Hopeless, isn’t it? Cannot possibly run a country off this.
I think they should employ a few grid operations engineers from Nigeria.
Anyone operating that nation’s grid will have experience of dealing with gridscale blackouts.
Nationwide blackout as grid suffers 10th collapse in 2024
https://punchng.com/nationwide-blackout-as-grid-suffers-10th-collapse-in-2024/
The nut that holds the steering column on the rack of your car is very small.
It is also completely necessary.
Spin spin and spin….
Good news: UK wind is now producing 2.79GW, over twice what it was yesterday.
Bad news: the sun has gone down.
Hic… burp… sorry, what? [good hooch]
Wait until the electors are asked, not that the others take a lot of money in their hands to change their mind.
There is only one graph that needs to be shown. The graph with no wind or solar and the appropriate number of coal, gas and nuclear generators to supply us with all the energy we need when we need it.