By Paul Homewood
https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/#
Saturday, the 28th June, was, you may recall, both sunny and windy.
Solar power peaked at 10.9GW at 1.00pm, while wind power was running at 12.4GW. Total electricity at that time was 32.3GW, including 2.51 GW, 0.90GW and 4.79GW from gas, bio and nuclear respectively.
All well and good, you might say!
But here is the rub. Ed Miliband is planning to triple offshore wind, double onshore wind and triple solar power capacity by 2030.
On a similarly sunny and windy day in June 2030 then, we can expect to see solar power hitting 33GW, and wind around 31GW. Even allowing for a small increase in demand, we will have twice the amount of electricity we need. Moreover, our nuclear plants will have to be switched off.
Currently NESO pay a handful of remote wind farms to switch off when bottlenecks in the grid cannot cope. But in 2030, this will be a nationwide problem.
A particular problem is that all of this solar power and much of the onshore wind will be embedded in the regional distribution network. It will, in technical terms, be invisible to NESO, simply showing up as reduced demand. NESO will not have the ability to constrain these generators.
Interconnectors might take away a small part of this surplus, but Europe will be in the same boat, with excess solar power of their own. Meanwhile using the surplus to charge batteries might help for an hour or two, but the surplus will be building up for hours. Batteries are also likely to be already fully charged on days like this.
NESO admit that many days will feature 100% wind and solar – indeed even during autumn and spring as well. Their chart below has no y-axis, but their database shows weather dependent generation hitting nearly 60GW on most days.
Nowhere does their plan state how they will deal with these surpluses in practice.
NESO Clean Power 2030
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Author: Paul Homewood
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