Found another link to a spreadsheet that has both capacity and generation by year
which confirms the 75 GWh and 214 TWh figures I'd arrived at for 2020.
2021 was lower generation with higher installed capacity
I think it dropped to 29% in 2021 (due more to reduced output than increased capacity).
sorry - I just posted a link to that before getting and reading this later post
Then what do you do? :-)
The whole idea is laughable, were it not so ridiculous.
Which shows offshore capacity factors of 36% in 2021 and 45% in 2020. My claim of high 30s being if anything an underestimate.
I quoted offshore, because a viable wind solution would need to be offshore, we don't have enough onshore locations to power the whole country.
It is complicated, but the modern world is complicated.
I have been supporting nuclear from the 80s, and disagreed with government's failure to bring new reactors online since the early 90s. It is possible nuclear might be cheaper. However, we currently have the problem it takes a long time to roll out. Given our wonderful politicians have followed a strategy of pushing up gas prices, we now have a pressing immediate need. It is also better to try and not have our eggs all in one basket.
Well, the proof of that is in the pudding. Current offshore wind strike prices are quite low compared to nuclear, even if you double them for backup infrastructure required to support them.
You have gas backup generators.
If you follow up with the idea we need massive overcapacity for hydrogen generation, the gaps get smaller.
In the end, it comes down to a matter of cost. There isn't an obviously right choice, if there were, I suspect our politicians would have already made it. Even accepting irrational public resistance to nuclear.
The UK doesnt have enough offshort locations to power the whole country, most obviously when the wind isnt blowing much anywhere in western europe.
It is certain that it is when you consider what alternatives are needed for when the wind isnt blowing enough to matter in the whole of western europe and the much higher maintenance cost of wind turbines. In spades with the offshore wind turbines.
Trivially fixed post brexit.
But have nuke that were turned off which can be turned on again while new nukes are built quickly.
Bullshit with nuke which have proven to be viable for well over 50 years now.
That is a stupid way to decide which is more viable.
Bullshit.
Yes.
Yes there is, nukes.
Even sillier than you usually manage and that's saying something.
How odd that it worked for France, Japan, China etc.
If you treble them and add the subsidy on you are getting close to the holistic cost, and no-one expects them to stick to the contracts unless they have to.
You can bleat all you like about 'strike price' - the reality is on your electricity bill.
And is so politically damaging that the government can no longer afford to plunge trillions into 'renewable energy'
I see that Jacob Rees Moog - our new minister in charge of this f*ck up, is already being denounce as a 'climate denier' by the guardian.
That gives me great hope.
a little, but nothing like enough. All of the little onshore windmills are 'embedded' No one knows how much they generate, only what they charge in subsidies.
I wouldn't. I looked at how it is calculated.
They take the installed capacity and multiply it by the *estimated* capacity factor. In short they start with 35% in order that you get the answer of 35%. Look at the fine print. I *suspect* the estimation is from measured wind speeds applied to the turbine capacity. And simply does not include turbines that are not working, which every time I drive past a wind farm, appears to be around 30% usually
Gridwatch is the nearest thing to a fact available. If you take the big windfarms that are metered, there's prolly about 22GW of those.
There are certainly not enough unmetered ones to explain the discrepancy. And this discrepancy has always existed. And has always been hand waved away.
Remember the 'renewable obligation' means having high published figures for 'renewable energy' or the EU will take your balls off.
As Jean Claude Juncker said 'when things get difficult, you just have to lie' and the renewable energy lobby have been lying for years.
The problem is these figures are false. Unbelievable but true
Look at how they arrive at them
Look at how Gridwatch arrives at its data. Actual meters on transmission lines, not estimates from wind speeds that ignore broken windmills
All public data on what windmills there actually are, disappeared from renewable energy web sites around 2014.
The same time BMreports stopped saying what wind farms its data actually was from.
Its now almost impossible to ascertain what is really going on.
Neither do we have enough offshore locations.
There is an obviously right choice for consumers. It is nuclear, There is an obviously right choice to rape consumers and support German industry, and that is renewables.
Guess which one the EU picked
I thought that Elexon had never, ever had data for all the wind power because it only deals with what goes into the balancing mechanism leaving what used to be about a third of the total capacity outside it. That third may be more or less now. But I don't see why it should be ignored.
No, it never had all the wind power because embedded wind farms simply did not show up on the national grid meters except as a variation in demand. They might have represented a third of the capacity once, but not any more. Wind is dominated by super large offshore farms, not a couple of turbines on a scottish hill farm
Tis what it is. I freely admit the variability of wind delivery means we need to consider the cost of additional balancing infrastructure and generation capacity. If that is 2 or 3 times, or maybe more, I don't know. Offshore Wind strike price is currently less than half nuclear strike price.
In no way am I claiming wind is better than nuclear. I'm just claiming that the answer isn't obvious to me. Given that wind can be brought online quicker than nuclear, I would think it, reasonable to go with it, for the moment. As GB says, it will save some Natural gas, which we will be able to use later on.
I don't know how gridwatch gets its data. I presumed, a public api. It is often the case that a metered quantity is not the entire amount. So an adjustment needs to be made. Apart for that, I can't say much more. Without wishing to be rude, I'm not going to accept your word alone as evidence that the official sites are wrong.
Well yes, we do. If we have floating wind farms.
Don't you have to add the true cost of 100% backup to that price for when the wind doesn't blow? When you have built 3 or 4 times as many wind turbines (possibly a lot more for when we all have electric central heating and all drive EVs) a whole infrastructure of alternative backup supplies will have to be maintained. It's not as simple as just claiming wind is cheaper on a good day - you also have to factor in the extra costs when it doesn't perform.
If I believed the figures you quote, I would agree with you, but having done the research and the sums, it appears that no matter how it does it, a big windfarm needs to clear at least £150/MWh, to service and repay even a massively generous green loan, and the cost of adding gas to it used to be around £30-£50, when gas was half the price it is now, putting the true cost of wind made reliable at something like £210-£240.MWh
Which is why we are paying £0.30p a unit, plus.
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