On: Britain’s electricity since 2010: fossil fuel use nearly halves

[zeristor]

Being able to import electricity depends on what has been decided in the Brexit agreement.

Importing electricity is one option, although for a country the size of the UK it does depend a lot on importing electricity:

https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/GB

[patrickk → zeristor]

There's already a planned 500km interconnector between Ireland and France[1], which avoids Brexit related risks. Since wind power is growing in importance in Ireland, it's a great chance to make the EU grid greener, and build out the idea of the EU super grid[2] concept.

Ireland also has enormous offshore wind potential off the Atlantic coast, which could be built out and the energy exported to mainland Europe.

However, let's hope that the UK can agree to a deal to fully develop the potential of the Dogger Bank project[3, 4] (collaboration between the British, Dutch, Germans and Danes to build the largest offshore wind project in the world).

Another project I'd love to see is Iceland's geothermal energy piped through Ireland or the UK to mainland Europe[5], supplying crucial baseload energy to the UK, perhaps even to mainland Europe.

[1] https://www.eirgridgroup.com/the-grid/projects/celtic-interc...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid

[3] http://www.scottishenergynews.com/dutch-and-danish-grid-oper...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Wind_Power_Hub

[5] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iceland-energy-britain-id...

[6] https://www.landsvirkjun.com/researchdevelopment/submarineca...

[VBprogrammer → zeristor]

Depending on importing electricity is the wrong phasing I think.

Most of the electricity we import is due to French nuclear power overproduction, the marginal cost of producing more power is negligible so it's more economical for them to produce as much as they can sell at almost any price.

[bb123 → zeristor]

Do you have a source for this? It’s my understanding that import/export of electricity to the continent happens today already and is important to regulating grid stability.

[FartyMcFarter → bb123]

You're right, it already happens and you can even see the current flows:

https://gridwatch.co.uk/

The boxes starting with "IC" are inter-connections to other countries.

[hanoz → FartyMcFarter]

3% solar and 4% wind right now. Seems a long way to go before these can get us through days like today.

[futevolei → hanoz]

< Second place now belongs to wind power, which supplied almost 21% of the country’s electrical demand in 2019

On the whole it seems like it doesn’t have that far to go

[emteycz → futevolei]

But looking at the whole is not nearly enough. I don't want my electricity turned off during winter.

[ben_w → emteycz]

Of course, but there has already been a massive change in a really short period, and maintaining the current rate of change is likely to make the UK CO2 emissions a non-issue over just the next decade or two.

[emteycz → ben_w]

I am not sure if maintaining the rate of change is possible. There was a lot of low hanging fruit that is being picked now, but the winter months are not easy to pick.

[ben_w → emteycz]

The current trend for declining cost/MWh for both green production of energy and battery storage of energy is why I am optimistic. It doesn’t look like we’ve reached the declining returns part of a logistic curve yet.

[futevolei → emteycz]

Are you confusing wind and solar? If anything I would guess wind production increases in winter.