Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

ed110220

debitcardmayhem said:

Martyn1981 said:

This news item follows on from one a while back talking about California hitting 100% low carbon electricity at times during the day (includes nuclear and biomass). Not to be confused with providing 100% of the leccy for the whole day, but just to show that grids can run on 100% low carbon at times without failing.

The latest stats / milestones, for California is that they've averaged 100% low carbon leccy for 7hrs of each day so far this year, and reached 100% for part of the day on 9 out of every 10 days.

These figures will rise as time goes on, especially given the rapid expansion of storage, but I'd suggest that it has already proven that a 100% low carbon leccy grid is both possible and capable.

California Hits 'Historic' Energy Milestone

New data shared by the Californian government shows that the state has supplied 100 percent of its electricity demand with clean energy sources for an average of seven hours a day so far this year.

More than nine out of 10 days in 2025 saw the state's power being run on completely clean energy sources for an extended period of time in the day—representing a 750 percent increase in clean energy days since 2022.

"The notion that the world's fourth largest economy could get to this point at all—with two-thirds of our electricity coming from clean sources like solar and wind—was considered mythology even 10 years ago," he added.

The nukes give the grid inertia I would assume.

I doubt ~2 GW of nuclear does much for that when peak demand was ~35 GW yesterday. A little, but not much. These days grid forming inverters can do the same job, presumably California has plenty of those, on batteries at least. 

Martyn1981

You'll have to forgive me for this messy post. I wanted to cover the news/update, but the article in question requires premium membership to read in full. But what can be seen is enough, I think.

So it mentions that the UK pipeline of approved bttery storage schemes grew by 5GW/10GWh in July. This takes the total of approved pipeline schemes (excluding those that are actually now operational) to a massive 69GW/144GWh. Of course, most of these schemes may never be built, and I assume there is a lot of overlap between competing providers. But at least it's great to see the scale of what could be deployed.

For context, and because it can be read in full, here's an article setting out the situation in March this year, with 1.6GW/3.2GWh being added to the pipeline bringing the total to 55GW/117GWh.

UK councils approve 5GW/10GWh of BESS in July