UK Wind Record

[GarethC]

There's the ESO National grid app too. Wonder if any particular series is official in any sense.

Anyway yes take your point. 200 is an important threshold in my head, as below that electricity is cleaner for heating than even a high efficiency gas boiler.

[Mart]

There's the ESO National grid app too. Wonder if any particular series is official in any sense.

Anyway yes take your point. 200 is an important threshold in my head, as below that electricity is cleaner for heating than even a high efficiency gas boiler.

Hi. That's a very interesting and important milestone. Do I assume correctly you mean resistive leccy heating?

So let's say the leccy came from gas, and was 50% efficient, then that's 2kWh of gas for 1kWh of leccy, and 1kWh(t), v's say 1.8kWh(t) from a gas boiler at 90% efficiency from 2kWh of gas. So with gas/FF less than 50% of the grid gen now, then leccy beats gas for space heating, as you say ....... I think.

For HP's, 1kWh of gas, at 50% efficiency gives us 0.5kWh of leccy, then ~1.5kWh(t) of heating, v's 0.9kWh(t) from 1kWh of gas via a boiler. And with FF's now less than 50% of gen, I suppose for CO2 comparisons, the leccy via a HP, must be 2 (or more) times better again, so 3kWh(t) v's 0.9kWh(t).

Already doubting any of that makes sense, but hopefully I'm in the ballpark.

[Yuff]

[GarethC]

Hi. That's a very interesting and important milestone. Do I assume correctly you mean resistive leccy heating?

Iirc the carbon intensity of gas heating is about 185gCO2/kWh. Allow for some inefficiency and you get my 200 ballpark true intensity.

I understand that direct resistive heating isn't a great way to use electricity, but increasingly overnight electricity is low carbon and, thanks to increasing curtailment, a bit "use it or lose it".

So if average UK electricity is circa 200gCO2/kWh, overnight electricity is definitely substantially below that (and in Scotland extremely low).

So storage heaters and batteries must be ever better propositions.

[dan_b]

Wind doing very well again today
21.1GW and rising

[Mart]

Hi. That's a very interesting and important milestone. Do I assume correctly you mean resistive leccy heating?

Iirc the carbon intensity of gas heating is about 185gCO2/kWh. Allow for some inefficiency and you get my 200 ballpark true intensity.

I understand that direct resistive heating isn't a great way to use electricity, but increasingly overnight electricity is low carbon and, thanks to increasing curtailment, a bit "use it or lose it".

So if average UK electricity is circa 200gCO2/kWh, overnight electricity is definitely substantially below that (and in Scotland extremely low).

So storage heaters and batteries must be ever better propositions.

Yep, I'm totally with you. A nice little milestone along the transition route to low carbon leccy.

[nowty]

Storm Isha is coming Sunday with potentially another named storm on Tuesday. There is usually not enough energy demand for a wind record on Sunday but both Monday and Tuesday look very windy everywhere, so a new record may be possible.

[Stinsy]

Storm Isha is coming Sunday with potentially another named storm on Tuesday. There is usually not enough energy demand for a wind record on Sunday but both Monday and Tuesday look very windy everywhere, so a new record may be possible.

Are we ever going to get one of those free electric slots?

[nowty]

We are now only just over 1GW away from the record now and its only Saturday.

[Moxi]

Heysham 2 reactor seven looks like it’s coming back on load, currently absorbing 42 MW which suggests the coolant recirc fans are online and the boiler pumps are running.

Moxi