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Comment by DrBazza | Hacker News Reader

Unusually, for the time of year, the wind in early November dropped so low, that wind power in the UK, dropped to around 1GW, something like 2-5% of the grid total demand.

The uk needs to diversify its green energy, instead it seems to be consolidating on wind.

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At the present time, investing in wind is the most cost-effective way to reduce the carbon emissions of electricity generation in the UK.

That is, for every £ invested, putting that £ in wind farms produces more energy and reduces carbon emissions more than it would by investing it in other technologies. That will continue to be the case so long as each MWh of wind generation offsets a MWh that would otherwise be generated from fossil fuels (or dirty biomass, for that matter!).

That's not to say that we shouldn't be developing other technologies too. They will certainly be needed in the future to reach a 100% fossil-free grid. But it makes sense to continue building wind turbines for the foreseeable future.

(Side note: one thing that should help in the future is increasing geographic diversity of wind farm sites. Today we have light winds over Scotland and the east coast where most turbines are located. But plenty of wind on the Irish sea / Atlantic side where there are, currently, comparatively few turbines)

Much of the sea off Scotland and the east coast is just too deep to build cost effective wind turbines at the typical current distances off-short in the rest of the country, and I suspect it is typically much more stormy with waves rolling in from the Atlantic. The southern North Sea/Doggerland is ideal in this respect on account that in geological terms, it is relatively recently flooded land that is still particularly shallow.

Yes, but note the recent developments in floating turbine technology that promises to make developing deeper-water sites more practical. Besides that, there are still plenty of promising shallow water sites yet to be developed.

Even as I write this, wind is only 2%: https://gridwatch.co.uk/

Sure, but look at yesterday. In the near term, we clearly can't decommission the gas power plants because we still need them sometimes, but when the wind blows (as it often does), we save burning that gas and the associated CO₂ release.

Still 38% renewable/low carbon sources, so that's not bad even with wind nearly out of the picture this afternoon.

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