In my previous post on variations in green energy production in the UK, I referred to a wonderful website collecting energy production data including "embedded sources", i.e. individual production. Wise planning of the country-wide electricity supply must include the scattering of green energy production for various time periods - from hours (energy production based on hydro-resources and natural gas can be changed within a few hours, but nuclear energy is less flexible) to years. Meanwhile, one has to match sudden drops in renewables over days and weeks. The figure below is borrowed from the aforementioned website and demonstrates that wind production is less than 3% of the total during the previous three days. Natural gas is the current answer to this challenge: all renewables, including those in imported electricity from Norway and biomass (whatever it is) during the last 48 hours made only 15.5% of the total. Planning of the energy supply has to include such low-wind (anti-cyclons) periods and also low insolation ( cyclons) periods to come. The available electricity production facilities based on natural gas have to be ready to replace green energy. The figure below shows that the fossil sources have essentially to cover the whole energy balance.
As a result, the current plan to replace fossils with renewables implies that the UK will have to duplicate electricity sources. The fossil-based sources have to be able to fully cover the absence of green energy (nuclear energy is a specific issue but it was not considered green before). Climate change may produce more anti-cyclons in the future and also increase electricity demand during extremely hot days in summer - there were several days last year with temperatures close to +40C. around. Interesting.
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