Here's a renewables Christmas quiz for you: 12 questions. \u00a0Getting 4 right or nearly right will be pretty good and show a better understanding of the problems our electricity grid faces than most people.<\/p>\n
...........<\/p>\n
1 \u2013 The proportion of our electricity generated by coal in 2011 was 29.5%. \u00a0What was it in 2021?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n 2 \u2013 The proportion of wind and solar generation in 2011 was 5.2% of the total. \u00a0What was it in 2021?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n 3 \u2013 Burning biomass generated 3.6% of electricity in 2011. \u00a0What proportion was generated in 2021?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n 4 \u2013 Gas generated 39.9% of electricity in 2021. \u00a0What was the proportion generated in 2011?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n 5 \u2013 It costs more to store a unit of electricity than it does to generate it in the first place. \u00a0By how much?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n 6 \u2013 In terms of time, how much<\/strong><\/em> of the country\u2019s electricity demand do we currently have the capacity to store?<\/p>\n 7 \u2013 Overall generation capacity available to the National Grid was 77.9 GW in 2019? \u00a0How much was it in 2021?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n 8 \u2013 During 2021 by what percentage<\/strong><\/em> did the available generation capacity grow for wind and for solar?<\/p>\n 9 \u2013 In 2021 by how much<\/strong><\/em> did the amount of electricity actually generated by wind, wave and solar rise (or fall)?<\/p>\n 10 \u2013 Thinking about wind speed across the world? \u00a0Is it falling, level or increasing?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n 11 \u2013 At one point in September 2022, the Grid paid wholesale prices of \u00a32,500 per MWh to persuade gas power stations to make and sell electricity. \u00a0What was the average gas price at the time in \u00a3 per MWh?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n 12 \u2013 For a brief period in Summer, the grid briefly paid\u00a0Belgian electricity suppliers to provide power to the UK. \u00a0How much did they have to pay in \u00a3 per MWh?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n ........................................<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 12 answers \u2013 not all are intuitive. \u00a0Some are concerning ...<\/p>\n 1 \u2013 \u00a02.1%<\/p>\n 2 \u2013 24.6%<\/p>\n 3 \u2013 \u00a013%<\/p>\n 4 \u2013 39.8%<\/p>\n 5 \u2013 between three and four times as much<\/p>\n 6 \u2013 \u00a0less than an hour<\/p>\n 7 \u2013 76.6 GW<\/p>\n 8 \u2013 wind by 5.3% and solar by 2.8%<\/p>\n 9 \u2013 it decreased by 9.3%<\/p>\n 10 \u2013 it's falling.<\/p>\n 11 \u2013 \u00a0\u00a350<\/p>\n 12 \u2013 \u00a39,724 per MWh<\/p>\n ..................................................<\/p>\n Source: I got most of these data from The Spectator<\/em>\u00a0website and data hub, though all are freely available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here's a renewables Christmas quiz for you: 12 questions. \u00a0Getting 4 right or nearly right will be pretty good and show a better understanding of the problems our electricity grid faces than most people. ........... 1 \u2013 The proportion of...<\/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-8226","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\/8226","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=8226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}