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Comment by eldaisfish | Hacker News Reader

spot on. Every time this comes up, it's the same BS.

The actual figure for the UK grid (there is no separate Scotland grid) is just over 40% of net electrical energy demand supplied by renewable sources. If Scotland was severed from the grid it would require fossil fuels and nuclear just like the rest of the UK.

The 97% figure is arrived at by taking British renewable energy that happens to be in Scotland and subtracting that against Scottish energy use. This is in no way accurate and ignores time - there are many periods of time where Scotland's wind turbines aren't spinning and the region is drawing power from the rest of the UK grid.

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I don't see the problem with this number. Scotland (seen as a separate energy economy) sometimes exports energy to England and Wales, sometimes imports it. Scotland's production of renewable energy, considered in total MWh, represents 97% of its consumption of all electrical energy. Clearly, in dollar value, the number is smaller since they usually export at times of low prices and import at times of higher prices. That isn't the comparison that's being made.

Electrical energy is always in balance. Saying that 97% of Scotland's electrical energy needs were met by renewables is highly misleading because it ignores the most important piece of context - time.

Scotland could have generated 300% of daily energy demand from wind one some days. And zero on others. The reality is that one cannot be subtracted from the other to claim that net consumption is zero precisely because there is a time when that is not true.

Electrical energy is not like balance of trade i.e. it is not fungible. There is a further complication here - the assumption that there is a ready sink of generated energy. If that stops being the case, then suddenly those days of 300% demand being generated are no longer possible.

The headline is a mischaracterisation and is misleading.

The claim that 'one can be subtracted from the other' is a straw man. The words 'Equivalent of 97%' are right there in the headline.

This is something that never seems to come up in discussions on Scottish independence interestingly enough. I guess it'd be like Ireland and Northern Ireland where both jurisdictions use a common electricity market, unless politicians on either side throw their toys out of the pram which is highly likely in my opinion.

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