Something funny with Gridwatch?

There's not a breath of wind up here about 15m West of Edinburgh. I was amazed to see so many of the hundreds of wind turbines stationary as I walked the dog in the hills this lunchtime.

I'm surprised nobody commented about Ed 'fuckwitt' Milliband and his huge new offshore wind power station in The English Channel off Dover and how it will power "one million homes" (see Saturday's Times

Frequency picked up again, but now showing at 0 Hz.

Dover wind speed around 10 mph gusting to 20 mph. Should be enough to turn a turbine or two.

So a wind farm off Dover could be a reasonable proposition. The ones off Clacton and around should still be turning nicely today.

Which is why I was wondering at the display showing 0.73 GW for the whole of the country.

Something is not right on the data Gridwatch is reporting.

Cheers

Dave R

I often wonder about these claims by millibrain and the like, that such-and-such a scheme will power x-squillion homes, whether that figure has taken into account the capacity factor, or whether that's the measure when all the generators, wind and/or solar, are going full belt.

From the wiki on the English Channel: "The English Channel, also known as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Southern England from northern France. It links to the southern part of the North Sea by the Strait of Dover at its northeastern end. It is the busiest shipping area in the world."

Somehow I can't see wind turbines being placed in "the busiest shipping area in the world."

The already are. However, I mixed up Dover with Brighton. Well the area is bland and populated with soft, Southern shandy drinkers so any one town blends into the next.

You're welcome.

Probably won't put them in the deepest part of the shipping lanes. There might be a convenient mud/sand bank just off the main thoroughfare with nice shallow water, of course.

Cheers

Dave R

Frequency still showing 0, so definitely something amiss in the works.

Rampion is off the coast of West Sussex, almost 100 miles from the Strait of Dover. The channel at Rampion is over 80 miles wide, compared to 22 miles at Dover. From the ref you provided, Rampion will be take up less than 5 miles of the 80+miles of the channel width there.

There are some offshore Kent wind farms, but well away from Dover (

Apologies - that should be almost 100 miles from Dover.

Wind being low isn't too surprising, don't think many were spinning on my way home.

This site is pretty good at measuring grid frequency, it shows normal,

No wind here inland. The frequency is anomalous. Uptsream issue

-- Of what good are dead warriors? … Warriors are those who desire battle more than peace. Those who seek battle despite peace. Those who thump their spears on the ground and talk of honor. Those who leap high the battle dance and dream of glory … The good of dead warriors, Mother, is that they are dead. Sheri S Tepper: The Awakeners.

In message snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, at 16:07:29 on Tue, 8 Apr 2025, Chris Hogg snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net remarked:

There's a rule of thumb where they divide the full-power output by some surprisingly small kWh, which is apparently the long term average power consumption of households.

I used 721 kWh during Jan to Mar, so 1/3 kW sounds right, for a one-person household.

Here, base load is about 550W one person, but a bit of tech on 24/7/52

Suspect when I eventually get round to moving to the mini-PC rather than this full tower jobby it'll drop a bit.

Avpx

I was just thinking I was extravagant at average 400W for 1 person! Plus about another 160W for the car, depending on use.

nib

Its around 700W per household