Matthew Parris wrote an article in the Times yesterday (15th January 2020) extolling the virtues of wind energy. He pointed out that last Saturday at 7pm, 34% of the UK’s electricity was being produced by wind. He was wondering where we had all gone (windpower deniers). He also took us to task for claiming that electricity produced by wind would always be expensive. I’m not sure why he chose such a specific day and time so I decided to do something similar and look at the figures for the last month at 7pm each day from 15th December 2019 to 15th January 2020..
During that time the contribution of wind generated electricity has varied from 1.22% to 34.65% – coincidentally, this was the figure for 7pm on Saturday, 11th January 2020, the very slot chosen by Mr Parris.
On only five other days has the percentage been above 30%.
On 13 days (40% of the days) the contribution of wind has been below 20%.
The day of greatest demand at 7pm was 17th December when 45.7GW were required. Wind contributed 5.35%, gas 52.98% and coal generators were in use to provide 9.43%.
The day of least demand was at 7pm on 25th December when 30.37GW were needed and wind contributed 1.22%.
Coal fired generation was in use at 7pm on every day of the period providing between 2.15% and 9.43% of our electricity.
Paul Homewood comments on the £12.5 billion cost of ‘sustainable energy’, adding about £460 per year to our electricity bills, on his blogsite: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/01/15/matthew-paris-is-blowing-in-the-wind/
The graph below tells the story. Maximum demand during the period was 45.7 GW.
APOLOGIES: For some reason when transferring data from Gridwatch it is multiplied by 1000 and I didn’t think about converting it back before doing this article!
Thanks to gridwatch.templar.co.uk for the data.
Yr Hen Ddyn Grwgnachlyd 