Wind problems
On Thursday, May 11 a BBC presenter gave what I might describe as an electrified description of wind (just) overtaking gas as the UK’s main grid feed over the past year, even giving the difference to two decimal places .To me this actually revealed lack of knowledge of the subject.
In our hierarchical grid supply, renewables have preference over gas. Fine, but that means, with our present wind fleet of over 11,000 turbines having a total installed capacity of some 30 GW, we should actually expect an average annual input to the grid of more than 30 per cent total requirement, pushing out some gas in the process, rather than being excited about its one time occurrence, so what’s the problem? There are actually two main ones – intermittency and transmission – both very difficult and costly to overcome, the latter especially.
The cost of intermittency (constraint payments) now at something above £200m per annum is actually chicken feed compared with that required to provide a grid system and other measures enabling renewable energy to be fully utilised.
Renewable energy, contrary to what we are told, is actually very expensive – but that’s another story.
(Dr) A McCormick, Terregles
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