Currently, the country’s electricity grid is only permitted to have a maximum of 75 per cent renewables in its energy mix. That meant that some of the energy was exported to Britain and Ireland had to meet the rest of the demand using fossil fuels.
This limit has gone up over the years from 50 to 75 per cent since 2011 and is set to increase further to 95 per cent by 2030. It is in place because using entirely renewable power means changes have to be made to the country’s electricity grid.
The UK sometimes has an excess of green energy as well.
I’m on a limited trial where I sometimes get completely free electricity for a couple of hours on specific days (my provider emails the day before to let me know and opt in).
I can charge my car, my solar batteries (they can charge from the grid if instructed), run the dishwasher, washing machine. And it costs nothing.
And then during the peak usage times, I’m using less power as I’ve done the stuff I would have done in those peak hours.
They don’t do this from the goodness of their heart: there is an excess of energy available and they want it used instead of turning off production. Hopefully this rolls out to more areas soon.
I used to be on an “agile” tariff where the price changes every 30 minutes. Sometimes the price would go negative and I’d get paid to use energy. A good opportunity to turn on some fan heaters and warm the garden. Those flowers look a little chilly.
Base load generators cant adjust their output quickly enough to match the daily demand curve. Your options are to keep them online at a fixed level 24/7, or cut them entirely. If you don’t have enough renewable production to meet overnight demand, you have to meet that demand with base load generators, which means you have to keep those generators online. If you have to keep them online, and wind is providing more power than is being demanded, you have to cut the wind production to match demand.
To get those (usually coal-fired) generators offline, you need to drop your overnight consumption, add storage, switch to non-fossil baseload generators (nuclear), use less efficient “peaker” plants (usually gas turbine generators fired by natural gas or oil), or some combination thereof.
You’re right, it is “fucking stupid”, but it is due to the functional limitations of the equipment they currently have available. With those limitations, the best option is to export your excess wind production to someone who needs it, and improve your own grid to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
Renewables suffer from intermittency … production depends on whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining … and they can’t be ramped up quickly to cope with increased demand. So you need a baseline source to take care of that and the only options we have are fossil fuel or nuclear.
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Currently, the country’s electricity grid is only permitted to have a maximum of 75 per cent renewables in its energy mix. That meant that some of the energy was exported to Britain and Ireland had to meet the rest of the demand using fossil fuels.
This limit has gone up over the years from 50 to 75 per cent since 2011 and is set to increase further to 95 per cent by 2030. It is in place because using entirely renewable power means changes have to be made to the country’s electricity grid.
I suppose at least if it was exported to the UK, it was hopefully still displacing some fossil fuel usage
The UK sometimes has an excess of green energy as well.
I’m on a limited trial where I sometimes get completely free electricity for a couple of hours on specific days (my provider emails the day before to let me know and opt in).
I can charge my car, my solar batteries (they can charge from the grid if instructed), run the dishwasher, washing machine. And it costs nothing.
And then during the peak usage times, I’m using less power as I’ve done the stuff I would have done in those peak hours.
They don’t do this from the goodness of their heart: there is an excess of energy available and they want it used instead of turning off production. Hopefully this rolls out to more areas soon.
I used to be on an “agile” tariff where the price changes every 30 minutes. Sometimes the price would go negative and I’d get paid to use energy. A good opportunity to turn on some fan heaters and warm the garden. Those flowers look a little chilly.
Why do they have to burn fossil fuels? That’s fucking stupid
Base load generators cant adjust their output quickly enough to match the daily demand curve. Your options are to keep them online at a fixed level 24/7, or cut them entirely. If you don’t have enough renewable production to meet overnight demand, you have to meet that demand with base load generators, which means you have to keep those generators online. If you have to keep them online, and wind is providing more power than is being demanded, you have to cut the wind production to match demand.
To get those (usually coal-fired) generators offline, you need to drop your overnight consumption, add storage, switch to non-fossil baseload generators (nuclear), use less efficient “peaker” plants (usually gas turbine generators fired by natural gas or oil), or some combination thereof.
You’re right, it is “fucking stupid”, but it is due to the functional limitations of the equipment they currently have available. With those limitations, the best option is to export your excess wind production to someone who needs it, and improve your own grid to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
Makes more sense now 👌
Renewables suffer from intermittency … production depends on whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining … and they can’t be ramped up quickly to cope with increased demand. So you need a baseline source to take care of that and the only options we have are fossil fuel or nuclear.
Ireland outlawed nuclear in 1999. Not a NATO member quite famously too
It is in place because using entirely renewable power means changes have to be made to the country’s electricity grid.