Found an old utility bill.

thevilla

So, I found an old utility bill from 2014.  Wow.  We'll never be able to cope without coal

Screwdriva

While I’m glad we’ve transitioned away from coal to gas, this hasn’t been a very good week for renewables. Snapshot of today below (it resembles the past few days somewhat)

tetrarch

Screwdriva said:

While I’m glad we’ve transitioned away from coal to gas, this hasn’t been a very good week for renewables. Snapshot of today below (it resembles the past few days somewhat)

Screwdriva said:

While I’m glad we’ve transitioned away from coal to gas, this hasn’t been a very good week for renewables. Snapshot of today below (it resembles the past few days somewhat)

Do you have a link for this data?

Regards

Tet

thevilla

Here you go

https://grid.iamkate.com/

thevilla

Screwdriva said:

While I’m glad we’ve transitioned away from coal to gas, this hasn’t been a very good week for renewables. Snapshot of today below (it resembles the past few days somewhat)

True.  Not the best week to highlight the difference 😃

Additional storage and interconnects make a difference now compared to 10 years ago though.  Pity I didn't look up the weather reports from November 2014.

Martyn1981

Screwdriva said:

While I’m glad we’ve transitioned away from coal to gas, this hasn’t been a very good week for renewables. Snapshot of today below (it resembles the past few days somewhat)

That's not really fair. Over the last year gas provided ~ 27% of generation, or ~28% FF (incl coal), so with gas in that 2014 snapshot showing 27.7%, we haven't actually transitioned from coal to gas, we've transitioned from coal to RE, with RE rising to 38%. [But sadly/contentiously another 7% comes from bio-mass.]

RE has been rising from ~5% at the start of the last decade, pushing the coal and gas mix steadily downward.

charles_b_2

The big gotcha (and likely to become a big issue very soon) is that although we have transitioned from Coal to Renewables, we have over the last few years started to incinerate rubbish rather than landfill it.  Some is generating electricity (like the new on on the Slough Estate, next to the 'Wood Pellet' power station that was commissioned earlier this year).
There is NO carbon capture, let alone all the other noxious gases and particles these will emit during their lifetime.
They are as dirty, if not dirtier than Coal power stations, yet are flying well under the radar currently.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp3wxgje5pwo

Heedtheadvice

True but it highlights the intermittency problem with much of renewable generation given the relative small geographic area the UK is in weather terms.

We still need large geographic areas and much higher levels of storage to cope with the variability especially with periods like we are currently having.

On a person basis my solar has not even  been covering baseload let alone battery storage for the last two weeks and the country is not faring any better.

All we can hope for at present is an increase in the percentage generated from renewable over annual periods and use fossil fuels when we must. Clean Hydrogen generation from excess generation periods seems a possible good way to power gas stations but development in that area is slow.

Exiled_Tyke

charles_b_2 said:

The big gotcha (and likely to become a big issue very soon) is that although we have transitioned from Coal to Renewables, we have over the last few years started to incinerate rubbish rather than landfill it.  Some is generating electricity (like the new on on the Slough Estate, next to the 'Wood Pellet' power station that was commissioned earlier this year).
There is NO carbon capture, let alone all the other noxious gases and particles these will emit during their lifetime.
They are as dirty, if not dirtier than Coal power stations, yet are flying well under the radar currently.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp3wxgje5pwo

I'd like to get to the bottom of this issue.   Veolia argue that they perform strongly on noxious stuff capture. (Although to be fair to the BBC their article makes no claims about anything other than greenhouse gasses) 

https://www.leeds.veolia.co.uk/our-facility/leeds-recycling-energy-recovery-facility-rerf-works

Is this the truth or is it just PR hogwash?  

michaels

charles_b_2 said:

The big gotcha (and likely to become a big issue very soon) is that although we have transitioned from Coal to Renewables, we have over the last few years started to incinerate rubbish rather than landfill it.  Some is generating electricity (like the new on on the Slough Estate, next to the 'Wood Pellet' power station that was commissioned earlier this year).
There is NO carbon capture, let alone all the other noxious gases and particles these will emit during their lifetime.
They are as dirty, if not dirtier than Coal power stations, yet are flying well under the radar currently.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp3wxgje5pwo

1) Is it a 'big' gotcha or actually a rounding error in terms of UK global warming emissions?
2) Is it despite these emissions probably the cleanest way of disposing of this waste with burial actually leading to much higher methane emissions plus leaching of all sorts of nasties into the environment?

michaels

Screwdriva said:

While I’m glad we’ve transitioned away from coal to gas, this hasn’t been a very good week for renewables. Snapshot of today below (it resembles the past few days somewhat)

I thought the whole point of the 'net' in 'net zero' was that there will be times where we use fossil fuels because that is the cheapest/most secure way of meeting 100% of demand but we will use CCS and/or export of green energy so that our net emissions are zero. 

Sadly this seems to be too difficult a message for the general public to understand who simply see: 'cloudy windless day needs fossil fuels so net zero is impossible (so we shouldn't try)'