{"id":8084,"date":"2022-04-30T07:05:16","date_gmt":"2022-04-30T07:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8084"},"modified":"2022-04-30T07:05:16","modified_gmt":"2022-04-30T07:05:16","slug":"windy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2022\/04\/30\/windy\/","title":{"rendered":"Windy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NAEE weekly round up reports new research published by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.evwind.es\/2022\/03\/22\/uk-raises-offshore-wind-power-target-to-86-gw\/85254\"><em>RenewableUK<\/em><\/a>\u00a0shows the total planned capacity of the UK\u2019s offshore wind projects now stands at 86GW.\u00a0\u00a0It is more than eight times the current operational capacity (around 10.5 GW) and over two and half times the typical maximum electricity demand.\u00a0\u00a0It is larger than that planned by China (75 GW).\u00a0 Sounds good.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote the above on a cold afternoon in March when wind was contributing only 1.4GW \u2013 3.8% \u2013 to the country's electricity need which totalled around 38GW. Even solar was producing more: 2.2GW \u2013 5.8%.<\/p>\n<p>It's fair to say, therefore, that were all the planned 86GW in place, other things being equal, we'd be getting ~40% of our electricity from wind. And the other 60%? \u00a0You might well ask.<\/p>\n<p>Not nuclear if the Treasury has its way \u2013 too expensive and too long a build time \u2013 as they have been saying (and preventing investment) since the 1990s. So what? \u00a0Batteries? \u00a0Carbon capture and storage? \u00a0Modular nuclear? \u00a0Hydrogen? \u00a0Tidal? \u00a0xxx?<\/p>\n<p>\"yes\" seems to be the answer. \u00a0Batteries and hydrogen can go hand-in-hand with wind to soak up the excess on windy days, but we shall need an awful lot of batteries. \u00a0Maybe even projects to lessen demand with better insulation will make a comeback, especially with sky-rocketing prices. \u00a0Who knows? \u00a0The government certainly doesn't seem to. \u00a0I even read that there's a movement to stop heating space and to heat clothes instead (think plug-in jumpers, socks and trousers). \u00a0The gov isn't sure about that either.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, for a cold 8 am in April with the heating turned off, I'm feeling rather under-dressed!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NAEE weekly round up reports new research published by\u00a0RenewableUK\u00a0shows the total planned capacity of the UK\u2019s offshore wind projects now stands at 86GW.\u00a0\u00a0It is more than eight times the current operational capacity (around 10.5 GW) and over two and...<\/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-8084","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\/8084","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=8084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}