‘Net Zero’ Means When The Wind Don’t Blow, Electricity Won’t Flow
You will have noticed that for most of the last week there was very little wind across the UK
From Sunday through to Friday, wind power was only running at an average of below two GW, around seven percent of demand and capacity:
Source: https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-by-fuel-type
NESO’s Winter Outlook, which assesses energy security, is built around the assumption that there will always be at least four GW of wind power available, double what we have had this week:
But the position is much worse than that, because even that 2 GW this week was highly variable and therefore not reliable:
There were two long spells when wind output dipped much lower still. Even though autumn demand is much lower than in mid-winter, the grid still needed six GW of imported electricity at times, in addition to gas power running virtually at full capacity:
Meanwhile Germany was also short of wind power. On Monday, for instance, wind power sank to supplying just three percent of Germany’s electricity. Germany relied on coal and gas for two thirds of its power that day.
This was the same day British wind power collapsed:
Source: https://www.energymonitor.ai/power/live-eu-electricity-generation-map/?cf-view&cf-closed
It was not only Germany – Denmark saw its wind power collapse mid-week, as did the smaller producers, such as the Netherlands, France and Belgium:
France still produces plenty of nuclear power, but Belgium and Netherlands rely heavily on coal and gas, the same as Germany does.
We are now totally dependent on importing electricity at times of stress. Without these imports there would have been blackouts last week. This is hardly the “energy security” that Ed Miliband continually warbles on about.
The question, of course, is what will happen when the EU start to phase out coal power, as they plan. Energy officials in Germany are already warning of a deficit of 21 GW as early as 2030.
Plans to build more gas power plants to take the strain are likely to be thwarted by global demand on turbine manufacturers, who are already fully booked for years ahead.
In theory, power flows around the EU to where the price is highest, which means if we want some, we will have to pay through the nose for it. But it is becoming increasingly likely that countries will shut down exports and keep whatever power they have for themselves.
There is already opposition in Norway to exporting their cheap hydro power to Denmark, Germany and the UK, as this pushes up their electricity prices. It is something politicians there can no longer ignore.
While France will still have plenty of nuclear power to sell, there will be huge demand for it from Germany and the Low countries. We certainly cannot rely in future on importing coal and gas power from Belgium and the Netherlands, which we did last week.
We were even exporting over one GW to Ireland last week, which is hardly sustainable in the long run. Meanwhile our old and creaking gas power plants will soon start closing down for good. And in their place, we will have more wind and solar farms.
But plans to triple offshore wind capacity will make little difference when the wind does not blow. Three times nothing is still nothing!
As for covering the countryside with Chinese made solar panels, they will not be of much help in winter, when demand for electricity is highest.
Thanks to short days and inclement weather, solar farms only produce at about three percent of their capacity in winter, and then only for a few hours a day.
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