Here's a renewables Christmas quiz for you: 12 questions. Getting 4 right or nearly right will be pretty good and show a better understanding of the problems our electricity grid faces than most people.
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1 – The proportion of our electricity generated by coal in 2011 was 29.5%. What was it in 2021?
2 – The proportion of wind and solar generation in 2011 was 5.2% of the total. What was it in 2021?
3 – Burning biomass generated 3.6% of electricity in 2011. What proportion was generated in 2021?
4 – Gas generated 39.9% of electricity in 2021. What was the proportion generated in 2011?
5 – It costs more to store a unit of electricity than it does to generate it in the first place. By how much?
6 – In terms of time, how much of the country’s electricity demand do we currently have the capacity to store?
7 – Overall generation capacity available to the National Grid was 77.9 GW in 2019? How much was it in 2021?
8 – During 2021 by what percentage did the available generation capacity grow for wind and for solar?
9 – In 2021 by how much did the amount of electricity actually generated by wind, wave and solar rise (or fall)?
10 – Thinking about wind speed across the world? Is it falling, level or increasing?
11 – At one point in September 2022, the Grid paid wholesale prices of £2,500 per MWh to persuade gas power stations to make and sell electricity. What was the average gas price at the time in £ per MWh?
12 – For a brief period in Summer, the grid briefly paid Belgian electricity suppliers to provide power to the UK. How much did they have to pay in £ per MWh?
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12 answers – not all are intuitive. Some are concerning ...
1 – 2.1%
2 – 24.6%
3 – 13%
4 – 39.8%
5 – between three and four times as much
6 – less than an hour
7 – 76.6 GW
8 – wind by 5.3% and solar by 2.8%
9 – it decreased by 9.3%
10 – it's falling.
11 – £50
12 – £9,724 per MWh
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Source: I got most of these data from The Spectator website and data hub, though all are freely available.
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