The madness of the UK's energy system is summed up in the £55m paid to wind farm operators in the last couple of months to cease generation (temporarily) because the energy interconnection (distribution) system was unable to handle the electricity transfer from generation to use; at the same time £217m was paid (mainly to gas-based generators) to make up the shortfall in renewable energy the congested network caused.
The network build-out needs to be accelerated!
#energy
h/t Observer
That's about the same situation in Germany: Compensations are paid to renewable energy producers when the power grid is not able to process their production - because the expansion of the grid was delayed for like decades.
The latest fix for this issue by our conservative government is to speed up the power grid enhancement … wait, just kidding … the planned fix is to scrap these compensations for new projects to force renewables (esp. wind) to plan around available grid capacity.
@stekopf @ChrisMayLA6 How exactly does the govt expect to plan the wind around grid demand?
Actually, there could be a solution to that, if the govt built gravity batteries in all the old abandoned mines for local power storage, avoiding the longer distance bottlenecks.
The issue here in Germany is that we had a lot of fossil/nuclear power plants in the middle and south. But now wind power comes from the North sea, Baltic sea and rural areas in the north. Because of available wind. This was predictable, but grid expansion was delayed.
Whilst making use of existing infrastructure – eg. for batteries or other energy storage types – makes sense, it does not solve the problem of a lack of capacity at new sites for electricity generation.
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
Sepia Fan
BashStKid