Brutkey

Emeritus Prof Christopher May
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us

The UK's energy severe transmission problem is best highlighted by the payment to Scottish wind farms in the last six months not to produce energy for nearly two fifths of their potential generation;

that's being paid to switch of the wind turbines because for just under 40% of the time they could be generating there was no capacity in the transmission system to move that energy to where it was needed;

and you wonder why energy costs remain persistently high?

#energy #politics

h/t FT

ForrestGrump
@MichaelimOdenwald@hessen.social

@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us Just Turn off all fossil generated energy.

Fionor
@fionor@mas.to

@MichaelimOdenwald@hessen.social @ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us let's not be dumb!

Main problem with electricity from wind is unpredictability - and for the whole system, that's a big problem.
Most fossil fuel based sources are stable, predictable and unfortunately can't be easily switched on or off on a whim.

So... for wind to work, you need plenty of fast sources to balance it out to prevent blackouts.
Water is one possible but imperfect solution.

Fossil fuel lobbying is a problem, but there are practical problems too.

Emeritus Prof Christopher May
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us

@fionor@mas.to @MichaelimOdenwald@hessen.social

There's also the storage issue - more, better storage would be part of the answer; if only battery research had the budget (or a larger proportion of the budget) allocated to nuclear!

RealGene ☣️
@RealGene@hachyderm.io

@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us @fionor@mas.to @MichaelimOdenwald@hessen.social
Even old battery technology is fine for storage; why does it have to be compact?

Just repurpose old coal-fired power plants as battery houses. Full it with wet cells, who cares?