Cold Weather In Britain Lays Bare The 'Wind Installed Capacity' Con

What a farce this past week has been. The temperature in the UK has dropped well below zero overnight throughout much of the country and daytime temperatures have hovered in the single figures. Meanwhile, wind speeds have dropped as high pressure has moved in, bringing cold, dry, still air in from Scandinavia and the Arctic - a near perfect Dunkelflaute.

Doug Brodie, who is on holiday in warmer climes at the moment, has forwarded me this latest analysis of the energy generation mix according to Gridwatch:

Electricity demand is near maximum at almost 44GW. Wind is supplying just 2% of that demand. Solar 0%. Gas generation is fulfilling almost 60% of demand. Forget ‘biomass’ at 6% - that’s Drax burning trees imported from America, in other words a total con, not ‘carbon neutral’ and certainly not environmentally friendly. Coal is only supplying 2% after our government shut down most coal fired generating stations, so that leaves only CCGT and nuclear, with nuclear facing the axe too, in the near future.

So, Britain is heavily reliant upon natural gas (methane) at the moment and has been for the past week or so. It’s just fortunate that the weather will soon break and that we have enough supplies of gas to see us through this short period of very cold, still weather, otherwise the lights would have gone out or worse still, the gas grid might have failed if we had been unable to import enough from abroad at short notice. If Rough, our North Sea gas storage, had not been recommissioned after closing down in 2017 - albeit at a significantly reduced capacity - we would definitely have been facing a severe energy crisis:

The UK has among the lowest volumes of gas in storage in Europe, which means that consumers have been particularly hard hit by recent wholesale price rises as lower-priced gas cannot be stored for future use.

Rough was originally opened in 1985 but was closed by Centrica Storage in 2017 because of the need for costly maintenance, which the government declined to subsidise.

However, following significant engineering upgrades, it was brought back online last year, albeit with only 20 per cent of its previous capacity. This capacity was doubled this summer after further upgrades.

Chris O’Shea, Centrica’s group chief executive, said: “Customers are struggling with high energy bills, which are driven by international energy prices. Gas storage is vital to ensure the UK can manage demand effectively, keeping prices down, and Rough contributes more than 50 per cent of the UK’s total gas storage. 

“I’m proud of the actions our team has taken over the last 18 months, including our decision to bring Rough back online to underpin the UK’s energy security. However, we still have the lowest levels of energy storage of the world’s major economies, with the ability to store fewer than eight days of peak winter demand, and this leaves us susceptible to shocks in international markets.

A two week or longer Dunkelflaute would mean that Britain would be unable to generate sufficient electricity to keep the lights on, because of our insane reliance upon intermittent, weather dependent unreliables like wind and solar, with natural gas being our sole principal back up. What is even more absurd is that earlier this year, ‘clean energy’ cheerleaders like the BBC were celebrating the fact that for 3 months, for the first time ever, wind generated more electrical energy than gas:

Wind turbines have generated more electricity than gas for the first time in the UK.

In the first three months of this year a third of the country's electricity came from wind farms, research from Imperial College London has shown.

Well big deal! Really not that surprising considering that wind installed capacity, for the first time, now exceeds gas installed capacity (CCGT). So when the wind is blowing, just right, not too hard, not too little, it’s hunky dory. When it’s not, we only get a measly two percent of our electricity requirements from wind, and none at all from solar, at huge environmental and economic cost, and we still have to rely upon ‘dirty’ fossil fuels to keep the lights on.

Wind for the first time has accounted for the biggest share in the power capacity mix in the United Kingdom, after more than a century of fossil fuel dominance.

That’s according to the latest Electric Insights report for the second quarter from Drax Group plc, which said that the nation’s fleet of wind farms reached 29.7 gigawatts (GW) of capacity in June, overtaking combined cycle gas power stations for the first time and making the UK the fifth country in the world to have wind power as the leading electricity generator, joining Denmark, Spain, Ireland, and Finland.

It’s not enough, it will never be enough, even if our deluded Net Zero politicians achieve their ambition of installing thousands more bird-chopping, whale murdering offshore turbines, and hundreds of thousands of extra miles of overhead cables, pylons and substations, increasing wind capacity to 40GW by 2030 or whatever, even if they eventually get to boast about a 100% ‘clean energy grid’. Because it will only be ‘clean’ when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. By then there will be no coal, very little gas and probably even less nuclear than now. So when it’s not ‘clean’, we will be living with no heating, no lights and no transport, if all goes according to the insane Net Zero ‘clean energy transition’ plan. And guess what? It will still be cold in winter!