The sea is a huge area without hills or mountains to reduce the wind speed, and near shore there is a daily guaranteed temperature differential nearby to generate some wind.

So, yes, it's so likely that it's practically guaranteed. Too much wind is an orders of magnitude more likely problem.

>Too much wind is an orders of magnitude more likely problem.

It's worth elaborating that too much wind is as bad as too little wind. The blades can only spin so fast before disintegrating, so wind turbines have transmissions and choose a gear appropriate to the current wind speed. Once wind speeds exceed what the highest gear can handle the turbine locks the blades to prevent damage. In that state it doesn't produce any electricity.

That's not the whole story and is somewhat misleading. Wind turbines feather the blades at high velocity to keep from spinning too fast; they rarely actually have to lock the blades and stop electricity production, and even then that'd be a very localized drop in electricity, more than compensated by increased production from surrounding areas with strong winds.

Sometimes power is actually used to keep them turning as they need strong wind to start turning. At least that was true 10 years ago or so.

No but you can put far larger turbines up at sea (much easier to transport a 100m blade at sea than taking it down windy back roads up a hill on land).

Larger turbines are more productive especially at lower wind speeds as far as I know.

> "It's really expensive to put up these offshore turbines"

They are more expensive than on-shore wind turbines, but still significantly cheaper than other forms of generation (such as nuclear).

With geographic and technological diversity, "smart grid" demand management, inter-connectors, storage tech, and a modest investment in nuclear baseload, we can get pretty close to 100% low-carbon generation in the UK over the next few decades. Even as grid demand increases with the gradual electrification of heating and transport.

You can't drop nuclear as if that's an averagely priced alternative that you're comparing to.

What options have we got for low carbon generation?

Onshore and offshore wind, Nuclear (all mentioned), solar, hydro. As far as I'm aware all the good hydro sites in Britain have been used up, so there's only solar that really should have been mentioned.

Off shore wind is probably more expensive that solar, does that really change the parents point?

I know solar doesn't actually require clear skies etc etc, but I still laugh whenever it comes up - because of the notouriously-depressing British weather...

In January I was sat in a park in Scotland eating lunch, feeling the sun on my face, and realized that global warming has probably ruined this cliche forever.

No. Wind production in the UK over the last 12 months has varied from 12,456MW (on Jan 7th at 21:00) to 142MW (May 1st 08:50)

Most of that is from the sea.

It’s about half and half onshore and offshore, not mostly offshore.

Nothings guaranteed.

Worst case scenario for Britain would be a period of little wind in the North sea, in Winter. That would be unusual, but not unheard of.

I'm not aware of any plausible scenarios where global warming would lead to less wind, but I suppose its locally possible.

Not to forget there's offshore wind on the West coast, and around Scotland too. Not so much yet, but still. The chances of no wind around the whole British Isles, encompassing Western Approaches, Irish Sea, Northern Isles and North Sea is slim. :)

Britain is connected to other countries' grids via inter-connectors, so that provides a lot of backup in the system.

Some winds are generated because of the Earth's structure.

The trade winds are pretty consistent.

My favourite bit of meteorology trivia is that the wealthier areas in British cities are almost exclusively to the west - this is because the prevailing wind is from the west and so pollution producing factories have been placed in the east of the city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_winds

You can explore the data here: https://electricinsights.co.uk

You can even split wind into onshore and offshore, although the data is patchy.

Wind varies, but from a quick look offshore hasn't gone to zero over the past year and neither has onshore.

It's not guaranteed, if you'd ever been sailing you'd know it's definitely not guaranteed!

Sailing is a different use case though. For wind turbines it doesn't matter if the wind died down in a single place, if you have them spread over a large area and in multiple sites. It's definitely not guaranteed that a single one will always work, but pretty much guaranteed that the system overall will never stop.