Slashdot Mirror
UK Renewable Energy Capacity Surpasses Fossil Fuels For First Time (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The capacity of renewable energy has overtaken that of fossil fuels in the UK for the first time, in a milestone that experts said would have been unthinkable a few years ago. In the past five years, the amount of renewable capacity has tripled while fossil fuels' has fallen by one-third, as power stations reached the end of their life or became uneconomic. The result is that between July and September, the capacity of wind, solar, biomass and hydropower reached 41.9 gigawatts, exceeding the 41.2GW capacity of coal, gas and oil-fired power plants.
Imperial College London, which compiled the figures, said the rate at which renewables had been built in the past few years was greater than the "dash for gas" in the 1990s. However, the amount of power from fossil fuels was still greater over the quarter, at about 40% of electricity generation compared with 28% for renewable sources. In total, 57% of electricity generation was low carbon over the period, produced either by renewables or nuclear power stations. In terms of installed capacity, wind is the biggest source of renewables at more than 20GW, followed by solar spread across nearly 1m rooftops and in fields. Biomass is third.
Imperial College London, which compiled the figures, said the rate at which renewables had been built in the past few years was greater than the "dash for gas" in the 1990s. However, the amount of power from fossil fuels was still greater over the quarter, at about 40% of electricity generation compared with 28% for renewable sources. In total, 57% of electricity generation was low carbon over the period, produced either by renewables or nuclear power stations. In terms of installed capacity, wind is the biggest source of renewables at more than 20GW, followed by solar spread across nearly 1m rooftops and in fields. Biomass is third.
Renewable capacity is not really comparable to fossil fuel power station capacity because the coal / gas ones can run 24/7...
I don't know if you've ever been offshore in the North Sea but the wind blows there about as close to 24/7 as you are likely to find. Same thing with most hydro power - dams are quite predictable and steady at large scale. Geothermal is super steady. You really are just talking about solar and to a lesser extent on-shore wind. Sure solar is variable and wind to a lesser extent but with built in battery buffers and enough capacity that can be mitigated. And that variability can be an asset in the right circumstances. Solar power is a fantastic fit for use cases like refrigeration and AC which tend to draw the most power exactly when the sun is shining the brightest. Plus once you get enough renewables installed to the grid they statistically balance out and proved effectively a baseload. The wind is pretty much always blowing somewhere and you can route the power from there to where it is needed.
It's more than possible to power most needs of a typical house with a solar roof and a large battery pack. Coal and gas have their utility and are going to be with us for a while but the whole baseload argument really is not supported by the facts unless you (wrongly) assume we aren't going to make any changes to the grid. Plus if you need a constant carbon free power source nuclear is more than capable. I wouldn't call it clean per-se and it certainly isn't renewable, but it's arguably less dangerous than fossil fuels on grid scale.
Renewables in the UK were about 30% of electric generation; natural gas, oil and coal were about 52% of generation. And for those renewables? The largest portion was bioenergy - the burning of (predominantly) imported wood pellets to power turbines. Onshore wind was second-place. So first place is still evil fossil fuels, second place is burning trees imported from abroad, and then we're down to onshore wind...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Depends on the renewable source (geothermal can easily be 24/7 for instance, not that it's currently a realistic supply generation option within the UK) and whether you are integrating any kind of energy retention system into your generator, e.g. an "Electric Mountain" or Telsa battery bank. You've also got the averages to factor in; we have a National Grid, so if it's overcast and reducing solar capacity in the South, as long as the wind is blowing in the North that might be able to make up the shortfall.
Not that traditional power plants don't have their problems. Coal and some types of gas-fired plants simply cannot be fired up quickly enough to respond to sudden spikes in demand, but since you can usually find a use for any excess are often left to at least idle 24/7, even if the energy produced is essentially being dumped. What's needed is diversification of sources, both geographically and by type, with an emphasis on deprecating the least economical and highest polluting power plants first. That's been the UK's strategy for some years now, but these things do take time, and as you say, there is still a long way to go before we can completely remove any need for fossil fuels from the system.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Climate change is a far more immediate problem than running out of fossil fuels. Coal will still be cheap to extract for millennia after Antarctica melts.
I don't think the math works with current battery tech, although there's a lot of conflicting results in studies because of the number of factors involved. Obviously you have to supply the energy to the batteries in the first place and since no system is 100% efficient that means wasteage, and wear and tear on the batteries resulting in earlier replacements to factor in - which means you need to start thinking about the energy consumed by the battery supply chain. Another major consideration is that not all locations are physically wired to allow power to flow from homes/businesses to the grid, and that's before you factor in any metering for billing credit purposes.
On top of all that, you've also got the psychological factor. People expect their car to be ready to go when required, and even with a safety net of any discharge to the grid will not take their car's battery below (say) 75% charge, that's still a 25% variance in how far the car will be able to go without requiring a top-up. While they'd presumably be able to set the threshold to ensure their morning commute, apparently that's enough ambiguity to trigger range anxiety to the point that many electric car owners would set a minimal contribution, or opt out entirely.
That's not to say a distributed battery system - using cars, powerwalls, or whatever else, won't work, or even be implemented, eventually, but I think there's a lot of infrastructure to be built, technology advances that need to happen, and consumer adoption to be encouraged before it can.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I don't know how much time you've spent offshore, but sea spray is highly corrosive and requires constant maintenance to keep things made of metal and carbon fiber and fiberglass from literally falling apart in a matter of a few years.
Got any more off topic strawmen you'd like to eviscerate? Yes they require maintenance. So what? You think coal or gas plants require no maintenance? Those boilers don't magically run without some serious upkeep. Maintenance is a cost for every form of power generation. Nuclear plants have huge maintenance costs. At the end of the day the maintenance is just one factor among many in determining the economic viability. Increased maintenance is (often more than) offset buy not having to buy any fuel stocks.
Found it:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-...
And my comment:
A GBP1bn wind-farm.
"It can generate 659 megawatts"
Current price paid on the energy markets per megawatt-hour: GBP65.36 (Source: https://www.apolloenergy.co.uk... - year ahead electricity price for 2018)
GBP1bn will therefore take 1,000,000,000 / 65.36 =
15,299,877 hours to pay back, at full generative capacity. 15,299,877 hours = 637,495 days = 1,746 years.
So... if this windfarm is able to run at full capacity, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, until the year 3764, without any further ongoing costs, then it might just pay back the amount it cost to build.
You forgot to divide by the 659 MW, which changes things to a 2.65 year payback at 100% capacity factor. At a more realistic capacity factor, the payback period is probably between 5 and 7 years. That's on par for most power plants. The maintenance will start to really hit at the 8-10 year mark though, and may make continued operation nonviable without subsidies.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
And then, to refine kerosene from oil, they had to remove the volatile, explosive components, like gasoline, which they dumped into the river, killing plants, fish, amphibians, and the animals that fed on them.