more on electricity generation

[The Natural Philosopher]

It looks very much as though the 'other' dial in gridwatch is in fact two out of three biomass (wood pellet) burners that represent the 'new' Tilbury power station (the one the greens want to close IIRC).

were due to come onstream this winter and it looks like they have.

So: at this snapshot in time -

'Renewable energy' is comprised of:

Hydro 878MW Wood burning 510MW Wind 34MW PV 0MW

about 1400MW

We are exporting more than that to the continent and total demand is

56.5GW..

So less than 0.1% of demand is being met by wind power...and absolutely nothing from solar PV.

[Andy Cap]

>> They were due to come onstream this winter and it looks like they have. > >

Well it looks like there's going to be another 700MW 8 miles off Brighton beach.

fantastic !

Andy C

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , The Natural Philosopher escribió:

That's a lot of wood. Is it the stuff that gets collected in recycling centres (tips to you and me) ?

[Bob Eager]

We already have them off our coast. And more coming.

No advantage in mving back to Brighton for me, then!

[Bill Taylor]

No. That'll be trees that are imported from foreign parts.

Biomass is a decidedly non-green form of generation. The UK can't produce anything like enough material to feed them, so most of it is imported, maybe from well managed woods, maybe not. The emission quality is also rather suspect.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I dunno - its says its wood pellets so presumably sawdust recycled as briquettes or something.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Fantasy yes...

they will generate nothing but subsidy.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Bob Eager escribió:

Back feed 'em in summer. Hey presto, air con for the whole town ;-)

[The Other Mike]

One more snippet I picked up from a contact.

There is a difference between what RWE report for Tilbury and what gets reported in 'other' at bmreports. I've seen about 60MW difference, even when on steady load,

The Eon owned "Steven's Croft" at Lockerbie is Biomass, rated at

44MW and accounts for some of it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

>>> They were due to come onstream this winter and it looks like they have. >

That could be it.

Or it may be that there is a gross/net imbalance due to transmission losses etc.

[rbel]

For some years 'home-grown' biomass has been produced under the auspices of the Energy Crops Scheme and consists of miscanthus (elephant grass) or SRC (short rotation coppice). The scheme provides

50% funding of startup costs. The last report I saw indicated that just under 1000 hectares of land in England was under miscanthus and a bit over 300 ha under SRC.

-- rbel