Re:Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
by ben_w on Friday December 04, 2020 @10:27AM
(#25303290)
I guess you and pjc50 have a different idea of “a large area”. The UK is about half the size of California.
Re:Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
by thu2111 on Friday December 04, 2020 @11:38AM
(#25304333)
Balancing power over ever larger areas does run into problems with long distance inter-connectors and spare capacity in general though, so it's not like this is an easily solved problem. The UK is well connected to mainland Europe with many large interconnectors and has an enormous abundance of off shore wind power because it's an island, yet it still nearly had brown/blackouts due to low wind coinciding with normal maintenance. That suggests the UK is hitting the limits of what can be done with wind power despite having a lot of it. Even if interconnectors were upgraded, that doesn't help if other countries are already using all their wind power locally.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/blackout-alert-from-natio...
Last week, National Grid issued two electricity margin notices, the most serious security-of-supply alerts since 2016, both citing low wind farm output among the causes and urgently appealing for more power plants. To keep the lights on, Britain burnt coal in polluting old power stations that are due to close within a few years.
“Unusually low wind output coinciding with a number of generator outages means the cushion of spare capacity we operate the system with has been reduced,” it said last month, warning of “tight margins” on Britain’s power grid in the days to come.