My understanding is that National Grid gives priority to renewable generation and then asks the others to bid to generate, so I would fully expect it to be the highest percentage.
It wasn't the highest percentage 20 years ago - it's a question of building it out, it has to be built before it can bid. The NG bidding system is complicated but the basic problem for fossil fuels is that renewables are now cheaper than them, the drop in prices on offshore wind in particular has been truly spectacular. See this from a
government report on energy prices :
(and for comparison Hinkley Point nuclear has been promised £92.50/MWh+inflation, and they're probably going to lose money even at that price)
My point was that we a) don’t have enough capacity to ever get to 100% from renewables and b) Government strategy is to include gas fired CCGT in the mix.
18 years ago we had 0GW from offshore wind, now we have over 10GW, and
government recently upped its target from 30GW to 40GW by 2030. These things are changing rapidly.
And I wouldn't make the mistake of saying that government has a strategy, it just wobbles along. Until recently there was a host of coal plants still planned around the world, and in the last few years most of them have been cancelled - because investors can make more money on wind and solar projects. We'll see if those CCGTs actually get built, bearing in mind the chart above and the fact that gas prices are currently going crazy, we're at decade+ highs in the middle of summer, which isn't meant to happen. As you can see from the above, fuel prices account for at least half the cost of CCGT electricity.
I’ve sat sometimes for days on some sites waiting for the Plant to run so that we can test the emissions, mainly because Grid won’t accept the sites bid for its services.
...because they're bidding higher than what other forms of electricity can produce at.
Latest snapshot from Gridwatch suggests that annual demand is around 30GW and contribution (certainly across May, June and July) from French and Dutch ICTs are around 3 and 1GW respectively. I would suggest that this is more than 5%.
My figure was the 2020 average net figure from DUKES, you're looking at gross numbers. The 2020 figure was reduced thanks to Covid19, but even pre-pandemic it was typically only 8-9%.
https://assets.publishing.service.g.../DUKES_2021_Chapter_5_Electricity.pdf#page=12
I agree that yesterday’s sandwiches in a landfill are last years wheat, but the plastic wrapper they were purchased in, came originally from crude oil that was formed about 80 million years ago. Some of the landfill gas fields I’ve worked on are up to 30 years old, and still producing gas from plastic based rubbish. Just think about what you put in your dustbin, prior to get a whole set of recycle bins.
That 30yo plastic is no different to burning the oil in a car engine. Clearly it's not ideal. OTOH, a small amount of plastic may reduce CO2 in other parts of the system - for instance if it preserves sandwiches better so that a delivery is only needed every other day rather than daily. And Plastic is only around 5-6% of hydrocarbon consumption in Europe, a bit more worldwide - it's part of the problem but you have to get it in perspective.
With regards to charging electric vehicles not everyone will charge their vehicle overnight. For example I often travelled 150 miles to site to work, and an electric vehicle would need to be charged during the day, to enable me to commute home.
Sure - but you're the exception. We've talked about this kind of stuff at length over on the electric car thread and I don't want to repeat myself here, but there's a US study which looked at journeys in the real world that concluded 85% of people never travel more than 200 miles in a day, so could charge at home all the time even without a 400-mile-range Tesla. Batteries are a big part of the cost, so what you'll see is something like the approach VW have taken with the ID3, a choice of three batteries giving headline ranges from 210 to 340 miles - the people who need the range will pay the extra cost, but most people won't.
I'm a bit in the same boat - I have a regular journey of 250 miles which is pushing it on a single charge allowing for lower performance in winter etc. I'm not a good candidate for electric. But there's plenty of people for whom current technology works well - a family member was paying £200 in petrol a month on their old car (a long commute plus school run etc), so a deal of £200/month for a Leaf was a no-brainer just on financial grounds. In two years they charged away from home just twice - as much out of curiosity to see how it worked as anything.
I didn't say there would be no charging during the day, but most of it will be at night. And as I say, the Grid seems fairly relaxed about it, electricity consumption is down something like 14% in the last 20 years so there is some slack available.
I’ve looked back through my PV generation records, and the period from Late October to Late January was typically around 140kWh, ie about 1.5kWh per day. That house and my current house both have underfloor heating and 1.5kWh running a heat pump wouldn’t heat my house. I doubt it would mash the Apocalyptic brew, unless you were just making a single 500ml bottle.
It all helps though - and Scotland is hardly the ideal place for solar - wind is better. But in terms of global population, most people tend to live in sunny places - and in hot places, where peak demand happens during the day thanks to air conditioning. Yes it gets more complicated in places like the UK where winter nights are long and demand peaks in winter not summer. But we'll get there, it just means thinking in terms of a mix of different systems rather than a single supply. But that's probably more resilient in the long term anyway.
