{"id":6973,"date":"2017-06-15T05:19:55","date_gmt":"2017-06-15T05:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6973"},"modified":"2017-06-15T05:19:55","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T05:19:55","slug":"uk-achieves-solar-power-record-momentarily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/06\/15\/uk-achieves-solar-power-record-momentarily\/","title":{"rendered":"UK achieves solar power record \u2013 momentarily"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-40058074\">BBC<\/a> reported\u00a0that the\u00a0UK achieved a new high for solar electricity\u00a0being transmitted through the grid: 8.7 GW (24.3% of power) \u2013 \u00a0on Friday May 26th. \u00a0It wasn't clear from the reporting whether this was an average figure or one at a particular time. \u00a0Given that the Grid <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Solar?src=hash\">tweeted<\/a> about the record around 1300\u00a0on the day, I guess it was the latter. \u00a0I wonder what the % was averaged out across the whole day. \u00a0Less than 24.3%, of course.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement of the blindingly\u00a0obvious, a Grid spokesperson said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"The record level of solar power was achieved largely because of to the clear and sunny weather on Friday.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>She added, just in case we'd not quite grasped the significance of this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"It would have been significantly harder to reach if it had been cloudy.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Dear me! \u00a0NB, I suspect the puzzling \"of to the\" phrase was down to the BBC's grammar police trying to change\u00a0\"due to\" to \"because of\", and getting distracted.<\/p>\n<p>The BBC added that, \"alongside the contribution from solar, 23% of power came from nuclear sources, 30% from natural gas and just 1.4% from coal. \u00a0Wind, hydro power and biomass were also used.\" \u00a0It's surprising, perhaps, that there was any coal used at all, but this could have been because there wasn't quite enough wind. \u00a0You can follow the ups and downs of all this <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NGControlRoom\">here<\/a>\u00a0and watch the demise of old king coal in almost real time.<\/p>\n<p>.........................................<\/p>\n<p>And then, at 1300 on June 7th,\u00a0renewable energy resources\u00a0set record figure of 18.7 gigawatts (~51% of demand). \u00a0This is a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/environment\/nuclear-power-solar-wind-provide-more-electricity-gas-coal-combined-first-time-renewable-energy-a7778541.html\">report<\/a> in the Independent saying that gas usage was lower than any renewable source, but the numbers are confusing. \u00a0There is still a lot of nuclear in there, but that didn't get a mention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The BBC reported\u00a0that the\u00a0UK achieved a new high for solar electricity\u00a0being transmitted through the grid: 8.7 GW (24.3% of power) \u2013 \u00a0on Friday May 26th. \u00a0It wasn't clear from the reporting whether this was an average figure or one at...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}