Deluded Over Wind and Solar Security–Euan Mearns
By Paul Homewood
More from Euan!
UK climate crisis and electricity grid status Saturday 2nd December 2023
Sir, I imagine many P&J readers will be wearing woolly hats and jumpers, huddled around a candle trying to keep warm. It is very cold, calm and dark outside. Ideal conditions for excess winter deaths.
On Saturday 2 December I made a couple of spot checks on UK electricity supply and demand at 13:30 and 16:50. At 13:30 demand was 40 GW. The UK has 29 GW of installed wind capacity and 15 GW of installed solar PV giving a total for variable renewable energy of 44 GW, enough to cover all demand when it is windy and sunny. At 13:30 on Saturday, combined wind and solar were providing only 9.4% of demand and by 16:50 that had dropped to 3.8% of demand.
At 16:50, gas provided 56.1%, nuclear 11.4% and imports 14.3%. Those who claim wind and solar provide energy security are clearly deluded.
Euan Mearns PhD
(Dinosaur)
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Figures figures figures, …. just figures, eyes rolling, yawning, … that’s the trouble with this generation of control freaks – they HAVE NO IDEA – or simply DON’T WANT TO ….. Just being in control is good enough for them… their Opposition is just as useless ( one-party states ). So quoting all this falls on deaf ears. Listen to what this man has to say: https://youtu.be/oe-ReEb0NxE?t=76
Simple maths behind this issue: N times zero = zero.
Simple maths behind the COVID inquiry farce:
* Probability of getting COVID today with business as usual: 1/N
* Average time to get COVID: N days
* Probability of getting COVID today with so-called lockdowns/masks/etc: 1/M
* Average time to get COVID: M days
Was it worth trashing the economy to go from (say) N = 100 days, to M = 200 days?
It’s good he’s getting these letters published
A very good example of a concise case against nonsense ‘energy security’. But what’s P&J??
And the also publish on t’internet the “Energy Voice” which is an excellent source of information.
Press & Journal. A newspaper in the NE of Scotland.
The Press and Journal. N. Scottish newspaper.
A shame we dont have more newspapers prepared to publish revealing letters like Euan’s. All credit to P & J. I’ve given up writing to Telegraph and Times. Neither will publish climate reality letters. Also given up on writing to MP. Just get the cut n paste central o0ffice reply repeating eco lies. They are all sticking their fingers in their ears, with eyes closed and mouths babbling.
Many of us have been saying this for years, as have a few in the media (such as at the Telegraph and the Spectator). But it always falls on deaf ears and is ignored. Civil servants and politicians (perhaps in hoc to the WEF and UN) are determined to destroy the economy.
No, they are just never wrong. It is simply impossible for them to even think they might be. Its the “oh but Socialism has never been tried properly” school of thought.
Which is why I keep saying (‘though can’t claim authorship) that the Department for Energy Security and Nett Zero should have the ‘and’ changed to ‘or’. It would be more truthful.
” Those who claim wind and solar provide energy security are clearly deluded.”
Concise, accurate and to the point. Thank you Euan and Paul H.
Mickey R :
They’re not deluded. CAGW and Net Zero has absolutely nothing to do with anthropogenic CO2 emissions. It is simply a scare story run by the 5th column communists to destroy Western economies and democracies.
All so true that those in power who have their minds made up cannot change even if their beliefs prove fantasies. They cannot bide the loss of face and prestige that would accrue. Sadly, unlike the Romans in similar positions, they would refuse to die on their swords.
Our society, western society, has become supine over the past decades as threats to its or their existence (unlike in the past two World Wars and the Cold War) are perceived as low. Therefore something as a replacement has to come and justify itself to plug the gap. That which became the fixation emerged from the meteorologist camp, aided by others who, likewise, wanted to move from a lowly position in the scientific order to a higher, more influential one. Academia was much to the fore as whatever that something was would attract huge sums of largesse from the public purse paid for by taxpayers.
The increasingly scientific and technological ignorance of those elected to the echelons of power were natural prey for those who had the voice. They had not the education or gumption, bar a very few, to challenge and examine the claims of the vociferous minority of self-seeking entities. Internationalism was an additional pressure on the national politicians, and the rise of the aspirations of the United Nations to world government through its various arms reflects that. Environmentalism and such ideals lend itself to motivation in the young, for the most part focused on fashion and peer positioning regardless of the real word’s workings.
Even now the risk of revolution and civil disobedience is not considered a major threat. Those that occur generally involve small groups of activists with their supporters. Notwithstanding, nations have established police forces that have been militarised to protect those in power and their establishments, from a fear, a perception, of civil war. Control of the population is paramount. Welcome 1984, and the rest.
Read an interesting piece in The Spectator about France last week. Polls show Le Pen will sweep the EU elections and would win the presidency. Fewer and fewer people think she’s unelectable. Yet the Elites carry on as if its not true and will never happen. As we saw with the EU’s (and Gordon Brown’s) lies about the Masstricht Treaty, after France and Germany rejected it, the Elites simply carry on regardless, firm in their belief they are right and the public stupid. These people are never wrong so can never change course.
Or rather, as communists, they believe that the ends always justifies the means.
Your analysis would have been good 20 years ago, Phoenix. Now, they know they are going to win, because they will CHEAT.
See: Joe Biden. There is NFW Biden got 81 million votes.
Some states have reigned in their loose voting practices, but what is clear is that the Leftists are willing to cheat. [Which means that they actually don’t like democracy.]
Democracy works perfectly…when it produces the correct result.
Also worth noting that AfD are right on the heels of CDU for the EU elections in Germany. It would be a very profound shock if they emerged as the biggest party.
Your analysis is so right. Israel will probably win out because of its existential pressure. I don’t think the Anglosphere and continental Europe, with the possible exception of Poland and Hungary will be able to defend against the onslaught.
The impression created by this article and the comments is that Brits don’t know that wind/solar are intermittent, so must be told so, else they won’t know it.
Even the industry, politicians and all those pushing renewables (COP28 greenies), pretend to not know it’s intermittent, otherwise they would never quote boilerplate capacity for new wind and solar (aka: subsidy) farms, but actual output having applied the production factor, e.g. 20-25% for wind. Even then, that’s not sufficient, as without backup or storage, wind and solar are useless.
From what I read, they don’t quote the boilerplate but rather the nonsense stat that these stupid things can ‘power up to n,000 homes’.
The proposed giant solar farm W/NW of Oxford, known as Botley West was drawn to my attention, so I investigated. The overall sites add to some 2,470 acres for 840MWp of panels – about 3MWp/acre, and the cost is projected at £900m. Their FAQ claims that annual output would be ~1.23TWh, which if you work it out is a very implausible 16.7% capacity factor, or 140MW of output on average. In reality, output is likely to average around 100MW – the capacity of the OCGT plant at Didcot which occupies just 3.5 acres. Of course, that is not designed to run continuously, but Didcot B CCGT is `1.47GW of capacity and occupies ~50 acres. It probably runs at a lower capacity factor than some, because it is partly there to power fusion experiments at Culham which are only intermittent. You used to be able to tell when experiments were being run if all 6 cooling towers had plumes of condensed steam above them in the days of Didcot A coal. The solar park is going to be useless to Culham in the winter, or after dark… so Didcot B will have to provide the flex generation no doubt.
I realise this is a snapshot but you could make two albums of snapshots. Summer and Winter when production and demand do not (inconveniently) balance out. On this current snapshot what is the breakdown of the import figure of 14.30%. Some will be renewables/hydro/nuclear but what is the gas and coal percentage. Can we find out?
Import from France is almost all nuclear, mainly from the large complex at Gravelines that feeds IFA1 and Eleclink. IFA2 output is also mainly nuclear. BritNed is directly connected to MPP3 at Maasvlakte (the offshore replacement for Kingsnorth D coal that Zac prevented being built), and when that is running it is co-fired coal and biomass. In summer on sunny days there are now large solar surpluses in South Holland, so sometimes the coal is shut. NEMO to Belgium is a much more mixed: with nuclear running that contributes, plus wind if available and gas otherwise. Norway is mainly hydro. Ireland will be mainly wind if we are importing from there.
Ron,
I’m sure the data is out there but it would be extremely complex calculations to get an accurate figure? Also remember that interconnectors can and do flow both ways. Currently the U.K. is feeding into all of our interconnectors (08:20 13th December), i.e. exporting.
I’m even more confused now Iain. I’m in North London. Outside is drizzly with NO wind. I realise this doesn’t cover the (for instance) North Sea but what is powering the electricity we’re currently exporting or is that difficult to pin down?
Gas is doing most of the work. To get a view of what is doing what, this website gives a very good current and historical overview:- https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Incidentally we are still (just) exporting power. In practice it is propably gas that is being exported as that is the main source of grid supply and demand balance, i.e. what goes out must match what comes in. If you look at the Gridwatch Templar website you’ll see that gas broadly follows the demand (Load) curve. Wind and solar distort the CCGT graph but the correlation beteween demand and gas variation is apparent.
Well done Euan-from Bob, Turriff
Who is surprised? This whole farrago has no scientific therefore no empirical basis. Time and time again vague platitudes replace real numbers. Clearly the work was never done before the first wind project was put in place because this was and still is all about virtue signalling which is Arts Graduate speak for science. There is no problem but they imagine one so they come up with expensive and imaginary ways to deal with it. Who needs numbers when you are virtue signalling? They only get in the way of your pious behaviour, anyway you mean well because you want to “thave the pwannet” and nothing is more virtuous than that. Because there are no real numbers anywhere this gives the propagandists and those rent seekers exploiting the situation an inroad to give totally fictitious numbers about costs of the nonsense “lifeboats” they can provide.
We are being told daily that weeeeenewabuwles make energy cheaper while we watch our bills which are increasingly based on renewables go up and up. I just got an electricity bill for £375 which a couple of ears ago would have been just under £100 for the same period and the liars still tell us renewables are making our bills cheaper. There is pulling numbers out of the sky when someone askes for one and then there are the premeditated liars. I will let you choose. As the whole climate scam is based on lies, why is anyone surprised to see how many liars are make a living from it?
I have forwarded this letter to my MP, a ‘climate alarmist’, with the basic question “Without hydrocarbon fuels, what will we do?”. I wonder what his (minion’s) reply will be? Probably the same drivel I always get, parroting net zero policy.
Clyde South Windfarm results for y/e31/3/23.
Its a 522MW asset and delivered a load factor of 29% but could have been more but 175GWh (13% of output) were constrained off by the ESO. Nett outcome they made a profit after tax of 156M. The company dished out 169m dividend to its owners. On the revenue line its average price was £225/MWh delivered as of course it handsomely exploited the price of gas going up last year.
So much for cheap cost of windpower