From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/#
Returning to that story about too much solar power, last week saw solar peak at 14.4 GW on Tuesday.
It’s not labelled, but that light blue blob arrowed is solar. Total demand was just order 35 GW at midday.Gas and biomass together were running at 1.9 GW, nuclear 5.1 GW and wind at 11.6 GW. We were also importing 4.5 GW.
So fast forward a few years, when we have triple the amount of solar and we will be looking at at least 40 GW, plus wind and nuclear.
Given that Miliband also wants to triple wind power too, we could easily have 70 GW of wind and solar chasing less than 40 GW of demand.
According to the Telegraph, we might have to pay a large power station to shut down under such circumstances. Yes, the same power stations Miliband wants to close! But the Telegraph misses the point – there will no gas or biomass power stations contracted to supply at that time of day, because there is already too much capacity projected.
You cannot switch off something that is not switched on!
That leaves us with the problem of nuclear. You cannot ramp up and down a large reactor like Hinkley, so the surplus power becomes greater still.
Kayte O’Neill of NESO rather deviously attempts to deflect attention, saying she is confident “we have the right tools to enable the safe, reliable and efficient operation of the system”.
That might be the case this summer, but her tool box certainly won’t be of much use in five years time. Unfortunately, NESO are not independent, being Government owned and directly controlled by DESNZ.
A truly independent grid operator would surely be ringing the alarm bells now over the looming catastrophe facing us.
