UK wind record

[Tarrel]

This is basically what we get. This image grabbed off the screen just now:



Now back up and running!

[Snail]

That's interesting. Thanks very much tarrel.

[PS_RalphW]

Important milestone reached last monday.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... ic-minutes

[adam2]

Important milestone reached last monday.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... ic-minutes

Even better now ! nuclear only just over 4GW, whilst wind is well over 5GW.
The wind power figure is above average though not remarkable, but nuclear production is at a record low with over half of the reactors not generating due to a mixture of planned and unplanned outages.

[adam2]

Wind power is not only exceeding nuclear production, but has done so for over 24 hours !

[biffvernon]

Why has nuclear dropped so much? 4.37GW. It had been about 7GW for quite a while after a couple of reactors shut down a couple of months ago. Looks like we lost another on12th October and another on Friday.

http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php

[adam2]

Cracks were found in the boiler of one nuclear reactor and two others of similar design were shut down for examination.
The reactor with the boiler crack and another similar one had planned maintenance outages but these have been extended.
That accounts for 4 out.

Another reactor has an unplanned outage due a feed water pump fault, and another has a planned outage that is being extended by investigation of excessive vibration in the turbine bearings.

IIRC there are also a couple of planned outages for refuelling or other routine reasons.

[PS_RalphW]

Wind is once again outstripping nuclear production, for most of the last 3 days.

Overnight, wind was second only to coal in percentage share (5GW verses 8GW).

[emordnilap]

Denmark set a world record for wind generation of electricity in 2014.

the country has set a new world record for wind production by getting 39.1 percent of its overall electricity from wind in 2014. This puts the Northern European nation well on track to meet its 2020 goal of getting 50 percent of its power from renewables.

[biffvernon]

Wind now 6.1GW or 15%, not counting all the small turbines that don't record on the National Grid figure. And the 1GW coming from the Dutch inter-connector will be their surplus wind generation.
http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php

[biffvernon]

2015 was, unsurprisingly, a record year for wind generation.
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/24 ... ds-in-2015

[johnhemming2]

I suppose the additional wind from climate change helps to increase wind generation.

[adam2]

Electricity from wind is at present over twice that from coal, and overnight wind power reached over four times that produced from coal.
Admittedly, this is primarily due to the run down in coal burning capacity, rather than being any exceptional performance from wind power.

Such a situation would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

Electricity from wind is not of course the complete answer, but could play a larger part than at present.
I seems to me that the UK grid system could accommodate several GW more wind power than is used at present.
CCGT plant contributes a minimum of about 5GW at present, and imports contribute about another 2GW. Half of that could be replaced by wind, thereby saving gas and foreign currency for future use.

Another merit of wind power is that despite the inherent long term variability, in the near term (a few seconds up to an hour or two) it is probably the most reliable large scale source of electricity known !
Consider a say 1GW nuke instead. It might well trip or fail and the national grid must keep an operating reserve of part loaded plant able to instantly make up for the sudden loss or the largest generating unit in use. This costs a lot of money.

Now consider 1GW of wind turbine capacity. I cannot think of any foreseeable single event that would lead to the sudden and unexpected loss of that GW.
The wind might drop of course, but that takes tens of minutes and can be forecast very accurately indeed in the short term. A drop in wind speed gives plenty of time to start CCGT plant. Any individual wind turbine might suffer sudden total failure of course, but that is a very small loss compared to the tripping of a large nuke.

[adam2]

Power from wind is at present SIX times that from coal !, though yet again this is due to the run down in coal capacity rather than anything remarkable from wind.

Coal 0.49GW Wind 3.2GW.

[woodburner]

In the limit, when there is no more coal burning power generation, then 1kW of wind power will be infinitely more than coal, but not much good at that level.