Which is more important - Gas or Electricity ?

MouldyOldDough

The BBC is telling us that there may be a gas shortage this winter - meaning that some gas fired power stations may have to be turned off - to save gas for domestc use

This surely would mean electricity being limited and blackouts ?

This is without the extra requirement of electricity for charging millions of EV's - as will be the case in 10 years time

Which is more important - gas or electricity in UK today ?

[Deleted User]

Surely, no.

Possibly, yes.

matelodave

At this moment in time, some 53% of our leccy is being produced by gas, Wind is around 16% and Nuclear just under 13%, the rest comes from other sources or other countries (lots of wood pellets from Canada  to keep Drax going if you believe the news *1- and it takes quite some time to grow another tree so we can burn it in the future).

Therefore, renewables aren't going to solve it for some time so even if most of us converted to leccy for heating, cooking and transports we'll still be dependent on gas or some other fossil fuel to keep us going when the wind doesn't blow, the sun doesn't shine or trees dont grow fast enough.

Even if we went eyeballs out to build nuclear, it would take 10-15 years to cover all our requirements in the future

*1 plus twice as much from the USA - look here to see just how much "biomass" gets transported across the Atlantic to be burned to make leccy https://www.drax.com/sustainable-bioenergy/5-incredible-numbers-worlds-largest-biomass-port/. Not everso eco friendly is it.

ariarnia

MouldyOldDough said:

The BBC is telling us that there may be a gas shortage this winter - meaning that some gas fired power stations may have to be turned off - to save gas for domestc use

This surely would mean electricity being limited and blackouts ?

This is without the extra requirement of electricity for charging millions of EV's - as will be the case in 10 years time

Which is more important - gas or electricity in UK today ?

i would say that depends on how cold winter is. as sparky grad has pointed out several times before. industry uses a lot more electric than domestic users so would be the first to be asked to cut back on their usage if there wasn't enough for everyone.

which is more important domestic users having heating and electric over winter or businesses being able to maximise productivity in the uk today?

theoretica

Also, I understand turning the electricity on after a power cut is much simpler than turning gas back on. Less need to check for any appliances which might have been left on.