It's Monday afternoon and a more than gentle north-easterly breeze is rustling the leaves on the trees. Ideal wind energy generating conditions, you might think. But no. The proportion of the UK's electricity coming from wind at this minute is 6.3%. This is ~30% of installed capacity) Solar is 21%; as is nuclear. Ever-reliable gas is 38%. And the interconnections to the continent are at 7.3%
The problem, it seems, is that there is a high pressure system sitting on top of where most of the wind farms are, and there is little wind. Some think that this is a reason for much more wind power capacity, particularly on land. Others think it points to more nuclear to consolidate a non-carbon base load.
I do hope that schools everywhere are monitoring all this and using the data with their classes.
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