Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Pretty sure the UK National Grid does not have interconnects and pricing between Scotland and England in the same way as between UK and interconnect partners in the EU. It's part of the same grid. Scotland has no choice but that some of it be fossil unless and until England and Wales are fully renewable also. Northern Ireland and Orkney do have interconnects.

So they can monitor total renewable generation, and total consumption, but can't have influence on what the shortfall is made up by. I've no doubt the grid will move toward more locality as it redesigns for a smart grid suitable for 100% renewables, and Scottish independence might provoke formal interconnecting.

For now they are both in the same 'house'.

Edit: I find myself newly suspicious of that site's agenda as he links to Watts Up With That, a notorious and extreme denialist site in his blog role. His phrasing may have been carefully chosen to downplay and minimise the achievement. He seems to have a fair time in the oil industry from his about page.

I don't think it's just a question of Scotland not having a choice about where the shortfall is made up by, but of the shortfall having to be made up using fossil fuels.

For context, because Scotland is so big and empty, a disproportionate chunk of UK wind power is based there compared to their population - so much so that if I remember correctly their wind power has to curtail sometimes due to interconnect limits with the rest of the UK. It's kind of hard to get day-by-day or hour-by-hour figures for Scotland alone, but Scottish nuclear + renewables in the entire UK dropped well below Scotland's peak demand a good few times just in the last two months. That shortfall has to be made up using fossil fuels, there's no alternative - and a good chunk of that is going to be Scottish fossil fuel plants due to interconnect limits.

The Scottish government is simply using the fact that a disprortionate amount of UK wind power ended up there to spin themselves as less dependent on fossil electricity than they are. You can't measure progress towards an 100% grid using net figures like this because the last bit of demand is so much harder to satisfy renewably than the first, and countries with the ability to play silly tricks like this with net power can skip the hard part and pretend they've solved the problem. If/when renewable generation in England and Wales increases it might well even roll this figure back as less electricity is imported during peak wind generation, despite the fact that both Scotland and the rest of the UK would be getting more of their actual electricity from renewable sources.

It's the Orkney interconnect that's at capacity. They really need an extra one.

Sure it's a lot of PR, but it's not just empty PR with a grid that's controlled mainland wide, and chooses sources minute to minute depending on availability, demand and price it's the best they can do. Scotland can, and does, encourage a much healthier approach to the adoption of renewables than Westminster. With more powers to the regions outside London, including Holyrood, so much more could, and would be done.

You can make the same criticism for every use of home solar panels, of green suppliers, of the whole transition to sustainable, and even of the entire markets for gas and electric considering we can't segregate individual electrons and atoms.

It's kind of hard to get Scotland figures alone because there is no separate Scottish grid, nor interconnects as such, just the mainland National Grid encompassing the three mainland countries. It's accounting, but it's not silly, it's the market we're all forced to participate in. We could have more precise regional figures with regional grids with interconnects between. We're not really large enough to need or justify that. Scottish independence, if it ever comes, might well see a Scottish grid as separate entity.

You're right that the same criticism could and perhaps sometimes should be aimed at "net zero" homes with solar. Arguably solar is even worse than wind in the UK, because we're so far north that it has an awful capacity factor and it reliably drops off when power is needed the most. Ecohomes and net-zero homes have extra insulation that does provide a benefit in winter, but home solar alone is dubious. (The UK government also basically killed off subsidies for it.) It's a little more useful in countries closer to the equator with better capacity factors and summer aircon rather than winter heating, since output is reasonably closely correlated to demand then, but still won't get us to actual zero even there.

No it's not dubious at all. It's hilariously beneficial considering how far north we are, where I honestly thought it would be very borderline, and probably not worth it at all.

We just about eliminated the electricity component of the typical UK supply of electricity and gas for heating. That's not net zero, or creative accounting, that's actually eliminate use of grid electric for nine or ten months, with a little use in winter. That only because of switching water heating to the panels, that was previously on gas. We're in N Cumbria.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com