Re:California to open five natural gas plants to avoid black...
by ben_w on Thursday September 02, 2021 @12:17PM
(#28393925)
Fair quibble, though going from just under 1% to just over 3.5% of the UK makes very little difference to my core argument here, as this was an illustration of “we don’t need to tile Algeria with PV”. :)
I see that you use 35GW - presumably the electricity use in the UK. However, with transport and heating, the total power use in the UK is about 190GW on average, and probably about twice that average in the middle of winter when everyone has their gas heaters on.
If you propose to replace fossil fuels, you need to account for electric heat pumps replacing gas heater, and electric cars replacing ICEs - which means an electricity consumption of 100-150GW, which means 4% of the UK area rather than 1%. (Assuming electricity storage is lossless which it isn't obviously.)