Too Much Wind and Too Much Sun

By Paul Homewood

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/06/11/stop-building-wind-farms-edf-boss-urges-miliband

Just returning to the EDF boss’ appeal to stop building wind farms because the country has too much electricity, yesterday’s generation mix shows exactly why he is right.

https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/#

There were times during the day when wind, solar and nuclear were supplying nearly all of the demand. (The gap between demand, the blue line, and generation is made up of imported electricity).

But fast forward to 2030, by when Miliband plans to have three times as much wind and solar capacity, and it does not take a genius to work out that the grid will be swamped with surplus power.

At peak generation around midday, we would have more than 70 GW of wind, solar and nuclear power, none of which we can simply switch on and off. Demand meanwhile would be 30 GW.

You could of course store some of that surplus, though we have nowhere near enough battery storage to do so currently. But that would not be of much help either, because at night demand drops to around 20 GW, while wind and nuclear were still producing 40 GW.

We are taking unprecedented risks with our electricity system, because those in charge of energy policy have no conception of how it works.

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21 Comments

Steve Case

June 14, 2026 6:08 am

The money quote:

“We are taking unprecedented risks with our electricity system,
because those in charge of energy policy have no conception
of how it works.”

Tom Halla

June 14, 2026 6:24 am

I think they are discovering wind and solar remain unreliable no matter the overcapacity.

Neil Pryke

June 14, 2026 6:25 am

Damnable Miliband…entirely wrapped up in the irrational dogma mind-virus…

Curious George

Reply to Neil Pryke

June 14, 2026 7:06 am

Vote Labour!

-2

varg

Reply to Curious George

June 14, 2026 8:39 am

same stupidity as going bungee cord jumping in Brazil…

strativarius

Reply to varg

June 14, 2026 9:48 am

Look mum, no rope….

Bryan A

June 14, 2026 7:12 am

Someone will look at that chart and say “Just look how much Wind and Solar can provide” (yeah on THAT particular day but many days not so much). However, I look at that chart and notice “How much that country is dependent upon availability of energy from other countries” for which it likely pays a premium!
The Nuclear line appears steady at 3GW…if they doubled that to 6GW their energy import costs would decline 80% and they, on that particular day, would have had an extra 3GW/H (from 4:30 to 6:30) to be exported or used to fill storage.

Petey Bird

Reply to Bryan A

June 14, 2026 7:59 am

From my observations in Canada, I would guess that that large solar bump will be missing or tiny six to eight months of the year. I suppose there are never rainy days in the UK.

varg

Reply to Petey Bird

June 14, 2026 8:46 am

Look here in southern Spain, sunny throughout the entire day and we just had a thunderstorm with thick clouds slashing PV output by 80% within minutes. Clouds remain, output is roughly back to 50%…at least that’s what my system tells me.

Fine by me (100% grid independent) and my fairly fat battery but not recommendable on a larger scale.

Mark BLR

Reply to Bryan A

June 14, 2026 8:13 am

The Nuclear line appears steady at 3GW…if they doubled that to 6GW …

The current “projections” by Miliband et al for nuclear on the island of Great Britain.

kommando828

June 14, 2026 7:31 am

Except on windless cold nights when there is not enough.

strativarius

June 14, 2026 8:34 am

Miliband says: jog on, we’re going to do this. RCP8.5 is not dead yet

Millions of Homes at Risk from Climate Change, Claims British Geological Survey in New Report Relying on Discredited Modelling
https://dailysceptic.org/2026/06/14/millions-of-homes-at-risk-from-climate-change-claims-british-geological-survey-in-new-report-relying-on-discredited-modelling/

Fear the green reaper.

Kevin Kilty

June 14, 2026 8:39 am

There is almost nothing I can say about the “renewable” power systems that doesn’t present a problem for the grid. Even something as simple as substituting solar power for wind power during the summer when capacity of wind power plants is low but that of solar is high, implies duplicate power systems — both solar and wind have to be overbuilt which is the point of this essay.

Then, the so-called solution to intermittent power generation being “storage” is difficult for people to comprehend. I have a document someplace in my file system that came from DOE where they discuss the need to lower the cost of energy delivered from storage to $0.05 per kWhr, which as it turns out is a 90% decline from the present situation. Stored energy is expensive to deliver. Batteries introduce new problems of their own, and there aren’t many opportunities for pumped hydro on the scale that is required, not to mention that hydro is also weather dependent (see current problems with dams on the Colorado River watershed for proof).

Yet, one of our PSC Commissioners asked me seriously if wind and solar both vanished as a resource together. It’s a concern.

George V

June 14, 2026 8:49 am

I’m not a fan of renewable power, but I thought that wind turbines could feather their blades (turn them into the wind) to stop rotation and thus stop power generation if the grid was overloaded. Also, they could vary the blade pitch to avoid rotating too fast in high wind conditions. Am I wrong about this?

MCourtney

Reply to George V

June 14, 2026 10:20 am

You are right. It takes up to 10 seconds to feather the blades. And they are powered by a UPS system in case the whole network goes down.
To my knowledge (that may be out of date) these decision are made by human controllers. however, this will surely become more responsive when AI takes over, if it has not already.

The problem isn’t really about grid instability. It’s about excess supply making the process of running windfarms uneconomic. The suppliers won’t make a profit if they have excess competition.

And, of course, there will still be times when the problem is too little wind (at night), not too much. Buying the backup is always more expensive than just using the reliable source all the time.
That’s why the UK and Germany have the most expensive electricity in the world, while also having the highest proportion of our electricity generated by wind and solar.

Mark BLR

June 14, 2026 8:58 am

… yesterday’s generation mix shows ….

I believe this particular fallacy is called “recency bias”, and is all too often used by climate alarmists and their media amplifiers.

“You know that [ insert ‘Bad Thing’ here ] that just happened ? Well, because of (human-caused) climate change it will happen again ‘soon’ … but worserer ! ! !”

Just because “they” use this tactic — with some “success” historically, from “their” point of view — doesn’t mean that “we” should do so as well.

Other posters have already noted that it isn’t just “excess” production that can destabilise a country’s electricity grid, lack of production can cause more obvious problems at other times.

I have posted the following illustration of wild swings between “feast and famine” due to weather dependency on weekly timescales before (for the GB grid from the end of September to mid-October last year).

Notes

– Compare the “Solar (PV)” output for the 3rd of October with the 6th (+ the 29th and 30th of September)

– The “Wind” contribution varied from “less than 1 GW” to “just over 22 GW” and back again over a period of “only” 14 days or so

– The drop in “Wind” below 5 GW continuously from the 11th to the 18th of October only counts as a “wind drought”, which can occur at any time of year. A full-blown “dunkelflaute” — AKA 5 to 15 days of “dark doldrums” — is (usually ?) limited to the period around the winter solstice (let’s say +/- 3 weeks, i.e. December plus the first half of January)

– The “nominal / nameplate” capacity of the total fleet of GB wind turbines was roughly 31.5 GW last autumn but it only managed to get up to an “under almost ideal conditions” value of 22 GW (~70%) of actual output, which compares very unfavourably to nuclear (and coal, and CCGT, and hydro, and …) power stations

Bryan A

Reply to Mark BLR

June 14, 2026 2:06 pm

Solar Capacity being Nameplate, solar NEVER manages to reach capacity does it. Sounds like Overcapacity is a requirement.

mleskovarsocalrrcom

June 14, 2026 9:16 am

“…because those in charge of energy policy have no conception of how it works.” That’s because they are making political decisions instead of technical decisions and that’s all they are capable of. They know that, the problem is who they rely on for information to make those decisions. The “deep state” runs very deep.

ResourceGuy

June 14, 2026 9:19 am

I think a good way to look at the problem is to make it personal, as in trying to go off grid with an RV with high cooling demand in summers. To do something like that one needs a lot of solar components, very large battery system, and timed use of appliances to avoid overloading the system. Even that huge expense in the end would not match expectations for cooling needs overnight off batteries. Of course your green neighbor could tell you to just pay out even more for batteries and cut back on lifestyle.

Most people would do the research up front before paying out all that money, but governments will take the plunge at your expense while getting rewarded by advocates and green lobbyists.

Kenneth Peterson

June 14, 2026 2:29 pm

God article. One issue, maybe a typo. Near the end the article says this: “…at night demand drops to around 20 GW, while wind and nuclear were still producing 40 GW.” From the graph it appears to me that Wind and Nuclear combined during the period was never more than 20GW and sometimes less than 15GW. In fact, the entire combination of resources did not produce 40GW at any time shown in the graph. The highest combintaion was about 30GW.