Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

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> "I suppose this stability is mostly thanks to (A) natural gas and (B) biomass, aka wood pellets being burnt in former coal power plants. Those two basically replaced the coal that was phased out."

Actually, most of the coal has been replaced by wind and solar. Biomass is not really that significant: it's only around 5% of the UK's grid supply, compared to over 30% for wind and solar. New biomass plants are no longer considered renewable in the UK so it's unlikely to increase in the future.

Not sure what data your chart is based on, but it's wrong, at least for biomass. See here for some up-to-date data (you can use the controls at the top to see different periods and historic data): https://www.electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard

Natural gas is still the largest single contributor to the UK's grid supply, but it's in decline, and will be overtaken by renewables in the coming years. Wind capacity will triple in the UK by 2030!

Imports have also increased in recent years as new HVDC interconnects have been brought online.

> Actually, most of the coal has been replaced by wind and solar. Biomass is not really that significant: it's only around 5% of the UK's grid supply, compared to over 30% for wind and solar.

True. By electricity produced natural gas and biomass have not replaced all TWh that formerly came from coal. (Even though you can see how natural gas directly replaced coal during the 90s here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by... )

The point I intended to make is: there's two kinds of electricity production capacity. There's Flexible/dispatchable capacity such as gas, coal and others. And there's intermittent capacity such as solar and wind.

Without electrical storage (almost non existent), solar and wind cannot replace dispatchable capacity in the context of grid stability.

The increase in electricity produced from natural gas and biomass is what directly contributed to the grid remaining stable, _despite_ the increased production from wind and solar.

> Natural gas is still the largest single contributor to the UK's grid supply, but it's in decline, and will be overtaken by renewables in the coming years. Wind capacity will triple in the UK by 2030!

Yes. But it won't be the wind, that'll be keeping the grid stable, that's for sure.

Natural gas did partly replace coal during the 1990s, but renewables (mostly wind) is replacing natural gas today.

An increase in production from natural gas isn't needed to keep the grid stable. It just needs to be available for when supply falls short due to weather conditions.

The interconnections are also a big part of the solution: excess wind energy can be exported when it's plentiful, and imported (along with hydro, nuclear) from other countries when UK weather is unfavourable. It's always windy somewhere!

> "But it won't be the wind, that'll be keeping the grid stable, that's for sure."

No, but it will greatly reduce emissions, and improve energy self-sufficiency, security of supply and stability of prices when external events (like the Russia-Ukraine war) disrupt the market.

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