> Low-carbon supply: by 2040, our Balanced Pathway sees offshore wind grow six-fold from 15 GW of capacity in 2023 to 88 GW by 2040. Onshore wind capacity doubles to 32 GW by 2040 and solar capacity increases to 82 GW
And once you multiply by capacity factor the solar and onshore wind are about equal so solar will be less than a third of modern renewables.
Plus UK wind peaks in the winter.
Usually, but not always. You can have many days or weeks, e.g. in mid-winter of overcast weather and very little wind. This is a real problem for renewable energy sources, they're not comprehensively viable unless supplemented by alternatives like gas peakers or perhaps nuclear.
This model posits 97% carbon free generation in Australia with 5 hours of storage using actual real world weather data:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g...
>You can have many days or weeks
Maybe cite actual data.
>alternatives like gas peakers or perhaps nuclear.
Nuclear isnt a peaker. Or rather, it can theoretically be used as a peaker but burning literal $100 notes may be more cost effective in the long run than using it as a peaker.
Batteries and pumped storage are cost effective peakers. I find it's better when modeling renewable energy generation scenarios to try not to pretend they dont exist.
Thats the question this guy asked, using actual weather data to power his models instead of carbon industry fluff.
Unfortunately the instinctive skeptical reaction to this is not "here's an alternative model and alternative data" but "here's even more FUD".
You're confusing pumped storage with river dams. The geography for pumped storage is abundant, river dams not so much.
>Battery storage is entirely speculative so far.
In 2012 maybe. These days grid level battery plants are deployed routinely.
>Whilst nuclear is a proven baseload source
At 5x the cost per kwh, according to lazard.
Baseload also means "requires peakers". That means gas or...batteries.
When french nuclear plants go down for maintenance the country chews through ungodly amounts of gas. Some of their plants have capacity factors of like ~80% - not much better than high performing wind farms.
This means that solar power output is much more seasonal, and most critically, power consumption in Northern Europe is highest during the winter months. I expect this is not the case for Australia.
Battery systems installed in the last 5 years in America are 15 times more powerful than all the fission reactors built in the same time. Meanwhile, US reactor capacity is now lower than it was in 1990. One of these power sources is "speculative" and the other is a rapidly-growing, practical and economical way to store and distribute energy.
Transmission losses are subject to engineering, and can be as low as you're willing to spend money to get them — as in, if the world all suddenly (magically and unrealistically) decided to be friends, you could put a girdle around the world with only 1 Ω resistance using existing manufacturing capacity[2].
[0] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=Tarifa+Spain+sunrise+21...
[1] https://www.finavia.fi/en/newsroom/2023/what-polar-night-exp...
[2] ~ 12 months global aluminium production, but you could do it