It's almost nine years since Semington A burst into life exporting solar power to the national grid as part of the UK's renewables revolution. Last week saw the third best generating week on record, despite the low arc of the sun at this time of year. The secret was, of course, the 7 days of unremittingly blue skies with barely a cloud to shield the panels from the sun's gaze. The fact that the air was unusually clear (thanks to the economic shutdown) would have helped.
Indeed, the country as a whole enjoyed a lot of solar energy output last week. The data on Gridwatch show a clear picture with solar electricity production being in the 21% to 24% range on seven days. The data also show how far we have to go given the amount of gas power that was used last week, with even coal being in the mix.
If you switch the reporting to output in GW (rather than %s by clicking here), the data also show how electricity production is falling because of the economic shutdown.
What the data don't show is how much money was given to wind generators in Scotland not to produce power because there is still not the capacity to export the electricity to where it is needed. Whatever it was it's likely to have been in the tens of millions of pounds.
Time for joined up generation.
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