Thursday 10 August 2017

How Fast are our Consumption and Generation Patterns Changing?


Oh dear, another set of graphs!

The good news is I only want to look at the right hand side one - you can see how since 2013, coal has plummeted, and gas has more modestly increased. Nuclear has stayed more or less constant, solar and wind have increased but are still a very small part of the total.
Here's another perspective - the modest decline in overall demand is accentuated in total fossil consumption - i.e. coal and gas together have declined faster than consumption, because renewables, nuclear and interconnectors have all increased.

For the green renewable line to go up further and faster we will need much more demand side response - so get time-shifting and tell your friends!

Monday 7 August 2017

Solar Share of Generation in Europe is Plateauing


The share of electricity generation in countries known for their keen pursuit of it in the past, notably Germany, has plateaued.

In Germany's case, at 6% of generation. Sunny Greece and Italy are marginally better at around 8%.
Germany has a moratorium on nuclear power, but this has not caused an increase in solar electricity generation.

There are technical as well as political reasons for this.

It gets progressively harder to increase solar's share of generation, particularly in countries where the supply and demand are substantially out of sync with each other, as is the case in Northern Europe.

The answer? More time-shifting of domestic demand of course!


Thursday 3 August 2017

Hi , I'm Tom Langdon-Davies from a farm near Exeter in sunny Devon, South West England. I have worked all over the world for energy companies, renewable and conventional. Now it's time for me to see what I can do to raise awareness of the easy things we can do to make our energy more sustainable. Thanks for reading. Please help me by commenting!


After a brief spell seismic surveying around Europe and Africa, I ran the Natural Energy Centre in London - that was back in 1977, and we did it all. Wind, solar, heat pumps, biomass. After that I did a stint at the Electricity Council in Millbank , encouraging night-time battery charging, back when the UK electricity supply industry was still nationalised.
We moved to Devon in 1984, installed solar PV, wood-burning stoves, and I got a grant to put in a biomass supply system at Occombe Farm in Torbay.
Devon and Cornwall are now blessed with more wind and solar electricity than they can use - unless we start to seriously shift when we use it, from times of peak demand to times of trough demand, and also into times when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing.
Please take a look at the blogs I have written over the last two years - and comment on them or publicise them. Let me know if I can do the same for you!
Thanks

Wednesday 2 August 2017

Regen SW Remind us of Falling Peak UK Electricity Demand


As I pointed out several months ago, and Regen SW remind us, peak winter electricity demand in UK is falling.


However, the shape of the demand curve remains much the same - in 2016/17 the winter peak at around 5:30 PM was still 7GW higher than the daytime plateau - domestic DSR is still under 10% of the way up the adoption curve.
This is what can make a big difference if we continue to engage with each other. Let's raise the awareness of the issue beyond the 3 million or so consumers who seem to be doing something about it.

The crunch will come as electric vehicles start to push demand back up again - then we will need to flatten the curve to avoid another 2 or 3 large nuclear power stations at a cost of over £50 billion.