Clean Energy Superpower Update: Solar Panels & Wind Turbine Erected To Make Weather Nice Again Are Wrecked By Nasty Weather
French renewables subsidy harvesters EDF are counting the cost of repairs to the UK’s largest solar farm, built just two years ago, after it was severely damaged by a totally natural and not unprecedented winter storm.
In the immortal words of one well known Welshman:
Mad Miliband is like, 'Oh no, our solar panels which we built on green fields in order to make the weather nice again have been wrecked by nasty weather! We'll have to put up more.'
Miliband’s claim that he can decarbonise the UK electricity grid by 95% by 2030 based on a massive expansion of intermittent wind and solar power is pure fantasy. For a start, he will never overcome the logistical difficulties which will impede such a massive endeavour, never mind future Darragh-type wreckages.
Even if he could eventually manage to quadruple offshore wind and hugely increase onshore wind and solar, simple logic indicates that the share of renewables in that future fuel type mix would be little different from now, namely 42% (in 2023) of UK total UK electricity demand according to the latest DUKES report (see the summary of the section on electricity): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66a7e14da3c2a28abb50d922/DUKES_2024_Chapters_1-7.pdf.
Increasing the capacity of intermittent renewables by, say, a factor of three will show the same patterns of intermittency as now but their amplitudes will be larger by a factor of three.
These renewables intermittencies and almost total losses of supply during Dunkelflaute conditions have to be balanced/backed up by dispatchable power supplies, mainly CCGT gas. The future gas supply capacity will have to be expanded pro rata with the wind and solar capacity, otherwise the country will face unacceptably frequent power cuts. There is zero possibility of that gas supply being abated using CCS by 2030. QED, 95% decarbonisation by 2030 by expansion of wind and solar is impossible.
Chapeaux!
"They don't like it up 'em"... Clive Dunn, Dad's Army.
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