A Telegraph article by Patrick Sawer before Christmas got us digging away with Google to find evidence to argue against a vehement greenie commenter, whose remarks have since been deleted, doubtless as they were so blatantly misleading.
So, we found the UK Government Dukes Chapter 5 report, which features a very nice graphic shown here.
Basically, the gentleman was claiming extremely high levels of contribution to UK energy consumption, by wind power, of over 10%. A glance at the diagram above tells you he needed to get his facts right.
Here are the facts, from the government, with an analysis of the figures from the diagram above, giving percentage of electricity generated by each means:
| Source | Percent of output |
| Coal | 43.6% |
| Natural Gas | 23.4% |
| Nuclear | 19.3% |
| Thermal Renewables | 6.7% |
| Wind | 2.3% |
| Imported Electricity | 1.5% |
| Manufactured Fuels | 1.4% |
| Petroleum | 1.0% |
| Hydro | 0.9% |
So, to summarise:
- Fossil – 70%
- Nuclear – 20% (assume most of the import is from French nuclear)
- Renewables: 10%
Renewables? Of the 10% a mere 3% comes from wind and hydro, and most of it from “thermal renewables” which are: solar thermal, deep geothermal and heat pumps.
Windmills are a waste of money, cannot be relied on as a source of power at times of peak demand, and ruin the environment. Solar panels are not much better, leaching nasty chemicals into the soil they are erected on, and we get precious little sun anyway – it’s a technology for deserts.
If you want renewables, let’s have more investment in deep geothermal and heat pumps.
And if you really want to cut down on how much electricity we have to create, perhaps investing in research to cut down the massive 62% waste in conversion, tramission and duplication of electricity might make a bigger contribution than covering the whole country in windmills.
According to http://www.renewableuk.com/en/renewable-energy/wind-energy/uk-wind-energy-database/index.cfm, that 2% represents the output of 4,229 Onshore Turbines and 1,075 Offshore Turbines. If you divide the total of 5304 by 2%, you get 265,200 in order to run the entire country, or nearly 3 per square mile.
Good article. This is another good source which gives near real time information of UK power consumption, where it comes from and percentages for each source. Hover your mouse cursor over the dials for detailed information and click on ‘info’ for site history.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php
I had no idea that the losses were that high(62%). The only ways to reduce those losses would be to have more power stations spaced out more evenly, but then not everyone would like a power station as their next door neighbour, or the cables would have to be larger, at enormous cost. There is no doubt that renewables like wind and solar have a role to play, but relying on those renewables, as a future supply of our energy needs, or shutting down perfectly working coal power stations, is not good planning.
The planning process we now have, is to steer this country into unreliable electricity supply, with brown outs and blackouts, during the Winter months. So many appliances require them to be left on, or they lose their programming. Street lighting after midnight. The reliance of freezers for storing food.
If every appliance had a little meter on it indicating how much it cost per day to run, our energy supply issues would be solved over night, but I think the energy firms would not like that much,because;
(a) they would not be selling as much electricity
(b) the market price of electricity per unit would fall. Price is determined by the quantity of electricity that is available against demand. The closer the demand/output figure is the more they can charge the National Grid.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/