Although the wind always blows somewhere, it isn't always the right wind in the right place at the right time.
With demand at 1030 of ~33GW, wind is producing only 9GW, but all the interconnectors are on 'import' (a total of about 4.5 GW), hydro and pumped hydro are contributing 1.3 GW and OCGT is on 0.7GW.
Solar is, as expected, 0 GW.
So much for Harry's prediction that we'll be exporting power when the storm hits us. But I'm surprised both coal and OCGTs are up when CCGT's don't seem to be flat out.
Yes: those are probably 'emergency standby' generation being run up. To make sure it can be.
Can't speak for anywhere else, but our use of heating is affected by wind over outside temperature. I guess it's the cooling effect of air moving underneath the floorboards and through the roof space ?
That said we're gas heated :)
Just spent 30 mins replacing poly-carb panels in the greenhouse. Time to replace, methinks, as many of the quarter-round strips that hold them in place are split or borderline perished from 10 years of UV.
the boundary layer round a house is insulation, too. Wind strips that away.
Yeah, I did wonder. I can see on a cold still day, the air acting like a "shell" around the house so the heating seems more efficient. As soon as the wind moves that around you need more heat to achieve the same internal temperature.
My biggest irritation at the moment is that being a bungalow, there's a large (3C) temperature gradient between one side of the house and the other. It can be 15C one side while 18C the other.
Yes I expected that as I said here earlier in the week, somebody needs to find a way to make electricity out of the gusty chaotic winds we tend to get a lot of in this part of the world. Brian
It's actually been nice and sunny here.
Unless your solar panels have blown off the roof, of course.
Owain
Lucky then we don't have the winds and cold weather at the same time.
I'm beginning to wonder if maybe we should be all living underground. Brian
We'll be getting that next week according to the various weather bulletins.
You wouldn't want to be liv> Lucky then we don't have the winds and cold weather at the same time. >
If you have no insulation under your floorboards and the crawl space is well ventilated then you lose a significant amount of heat downwards. A good quality 80/20 wool carpet and underlay is quite effective as insulation, but fitting rockwool on suspended netting between the floor joists is even better.
A house with solid ground floors loses most of its ground-floor heat loss, through the metre-wide strip of floor all around the perimeter.
Building regs part L docs have lots of tables to allow you to calculate the heat lost through that route. A house built on land that slopes down towards the North, where the ground floor of the north facing rooms is/are significantly above ground level will suffer badly when there is cold north wind.
We have a well ventilated crawl space :(
Would underlay on top of the floorboards not do the same job as insulation under ? We don't get draughts blowing through the carpets ...
Sunny here too this morning, but Solar is providing only half as much electricity as the French interconnector, according to gridwatch.
There are several CCGT generation operators who also own wind generation. If they are located in the same zone then the cost of operating the wind generation directly saves fuel and incurs no extra transmission network costs.
Both coal and OCGT will be there for stability reasons in the case of a system split with a transmission disruption and to a lesser extent to cater for wind output variation with the relatively high speed of passage of weather fronts, something that challenges the prediction model immensely.
In the case of the coal generation it will be loaded to somewhere in the range of 70-80% where dropping to 50% load or increasing to 100% load is relatively fast and without much drama.
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