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Renewables Met 97% of Scotland's Electricity Demand in 2020 (bbc.com) 58

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Scotland has narrowly missed a target to generate the equivalent of 100% of its electricity demand from renewables in 2020. New figures reveal it reached 97.4% from renewable sources. From a report: This target was set in 2011, when renewable technologies generated just 37% of national demand. Industry body Scottish Renewables said output had tripled in the last 10 years, with enough power for the equivalent of seven million households. Chief executive Claire Mack, said: "Scotland's climate change targets have been a tremendous motivator to the industry to increase deployment of renewable energy sources. "Renewable energy projects are displacing tens of millions of tonnes of carbon every year, employing the equivalent of 17,700 people and bringing enormous socio-economic benefits to communities." In 2019 Scotland met 90.1% of its equivalent electricity consumption from renewables, according to Scottish Government figures. Scotland has some of the most ambitious climate targets in the world, with its Climate Change Bill setting out a legally binding target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2045. By 2030, ministers want renewable energy generation to account for 50% of energy demand across electricity, heat and transport.
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Renewables Met 97% of Scotland's Electricity Demand in 2020 More

Renewables Met 97% of Scotland's Electricity Demand in 2020

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  • Onshore wind delivers about 70% of capacity, followed by hydro and offshore wind as Scotland's main sources of renewable power.

    Hopefully their grid is up to the task. ;-)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      As offshore tech gets better and cheaper they will be able to exploit their vast resources. They have a huge amount of untapped energy that will make them rich.

      Wind will be the new oil, a massive export.

    • English lesson (Score:3, Insightful)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 )

      Another lesson to go with it:

      "generate the equivalent of 100% of its electricity demand from renewables in 2020. ... Scotland met 90.1% of its equivalent electricity"

      Guess what "the equivalent of" means in this context?

      It means one week when the wind was just perfect, it generated three times as much electricity as was being used. Another week, when the wind wasn't quite as strong, or was a little too strong, it generated 25% of what was needed.

      Whenever you see "the equivalent of" in energy, you know some

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by phantomfive ( 622387 )

        Whenever you see "the equivalent of" in energy, you know someone is trying to spin you.

        This is a serious problem with these renewable energy stories. They always rely on statistics that are misleading one way or another. Makes it hard to really get a good understanding of the situation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        It means one week when the wind was just perfect, it generated three times as much electricity as was being used.

        Where did the excess power go? Into a bank of resistors?

        • Yeah when there's a lot of excess it gets discharged into the ground. The power companies still get paid for having produced it, though. Still counts as "power generated".

          In Scotland, the largest use of electricity is heating. Which is one reason solar-electric isn't really practical there. Solar electric is great in sunny summer afternoons - when Scotland's electricity usage is low. They still do it because the company gets paid to generate electricity and discharge it to ground, but it doesn't actually do

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Uecker ( 1842596 )

          Into exports, storage, or wind power is throttled (but in the later case it is *not* counted as generation).

      • The only thing that matters is the total electricity generated over a course of a given time frame.
        Your nitpicking is completely unwarranted.

        Guess what "the equivalent of" means in this context?

        It means one week when the wind was just perfect, it generated three times as much electricity as was being used. Another week, when the wind wasn't quite as strong, or was a little too strong, it generated 25% of what was needed.
        Unlikely ... because: it is Scotland. And with the upgrades to off shore wind getting m

        • > The only thing that matters is the total electricity generated over a course of a given time frame.

          So you're thinking lightning is just as useful as a generator is, if they both produce the same amount of electricity this week. You run your household from a lightning rod?

          I'm thinking it kinda matters that you get the amount of electricity you need, when and where you need it. Lightning and wind don't provide any of those three - they provide an uncontrollable amount of electricity, when and where nat

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Uecker ( 1842596 )

        There are a couple of awesome things about wind power and one big problem - an unavoidable physics problem. The power of wind is proportional to the wind speed CUBED. That's the cube power law. What it means is that a small change in wind speed causes a large change in power.

        First, a cube law does not mean that a small change causes a large change. This could be true also for a linear law with high coefficient, and could not be true for a cube law when the coefficients and parameters are small. But second, it is completely irrelevant. Wind velocities are not distributed equally. So what is interesting for wind power is the statistical distribution expressed in terms of extractable power. Without saying what the distribution is it is completely irrelevant that one quantity is t

        • > First, a cube law does not mean that a small change causes a large change.

          It means that doubling the wind speed, makes EIGHT TIMES as much power. If you're unaware that 8 is larger than 2, I'm not sure there is anything more to discuss.

          • A more clear example is probably that 4X the wind speed is 64X power.

            64 is rather larger than 4, by the way.

      • I agree.

        According to this data 43.4 % of Scotland's electric consumption is from nuclear and fossil fuels. I think they are using those firm sources to backup intermittent renewable and not counting significant electric exports fairly.

        Source: https://scotland.shinyapps.io/sg-energy/?Section=RenLowCarbon&Subsection=RenElec&Chart=ElecConsumptionFuel

        In other words, renewables produced electricity equivalent to 97.4 % of domestic consumption, not 97.4 % of all electric production. Elsewhere on that we

    • Scotland has been a leader in renewable energy generation for a good few decades now. Pretty sure they've got some experience of how to design a grid to deal with renewables.

  • Big whoop. Their GDP is less than that of Kentucky.

    • To be fair 80% of Kentucky's GDP is overpriced Bourbon.
      • Sounds like a GDP I could drink to!
      • Um... trying to think of the most popular and profitable export from Scotland... it's on the tip of my tongue...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 )
        Its not overpriced if you live nearby ;-) Woodford Reserve is only $28 a $30 for 750ml.
    • So you're saying Kentucky could do it?
      • They might have a bit of difficulty getting any power from offshore wind. I think we'd need some really bad global warming and increases in sea level for that to happen. Fortunately the average wind speed across the state is substantially higher than most other parts of the U.S. so that might compensate.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Right. So the five in the half million people who live there have no significance in your world view.

  • Onshore wind delivers about 70% of capacity, followed by hydro and offshore wind as Scotland's main sources of renewable power.

    Wind usually makes more sense than solar. Of course, in the UK solar isn't a viable option anyway.

    • Having lived in Scotland I assure you that they can forget about solar, but should be able to power the world on the wind coming from the north sea and from fronts coming up the west coast of the UK

      • If you actually tried it, you'd (eventually) disrupt wind flow. Same as with hydroelectric, although you need to fuck it up on a larger scale (probably larger than the entire land mass available) because..gas, not liquid.

        There is no such thing as renewable. There is a giant fusion reactor over there, burning up its fuel, and also a large rock orbiting around us.

        Repent at the altar of entropy!

        (or don't. who cares? entropy will win in the end).

        Practically speaking, yes, this is a decent solution. For the mome

        • If you actually tried it, you'd (eventually) disrupt wind flow.

          Two solutions:

          Solution 1: Wind turbines block the wind, but so do trees. So require anyone erecting a turbine to cut down a few trees.

          Solution 2: Improve science and math education so fewer people are dumb enough to believe this is an actual problem.

          Either with work.

          • Open Fluent. Put a volume with a flow. See nothing. Put a giant object in the middle. See kinetic energy of flow diverted and partly converted to thermal motion. Wasted kinetic energy means less potential energy remaining in the system.

            • Okay, sure... Now make a volume that's 100000m by 1000000m by 1000000m, and add an object that's 500m by 300m by 10m.

          • For starters, I refer you to https://link.springer.com/arti... [springer.com].

            Moreover, inside wind farms, the turbulent wake flows that form downwind of the turbines are responsible for substantial power losses, due to the reduced wind speed in the wakes, as well as increased fatigue loads and associated maintenance costs, due to the augmented turbulence levels (e.g., see reviews by Vermeer et al. 2003; Sanderse et al. 2011; Stevens and Meneveau 2017, and references therein).

          • But Solution 2 would eradicate people like you too, who call people dumb because they got no actual arguments, because they themselves don't actually know why they hold the belief they hold.

            It is in fact an actual problem by the way. Which is very fucking obvious to anyone who actually built wind turbines. Since all turbines downwind will perform worse. As energy has been taken out of the wind. And of course, over distance, the edges blur more and more, and after a certain distance, it is negligible. But of

            • Yes if the entire surface of the planet was nothing but wind turbines then you'd have a point--but if we're allowed to use extreme hypotheticals then the counter-point is that for every wind turbine we'll station 10 million people blowing on it.

              Are we good again? Does my crazy strawman cancel out your crazy strawman?

    • Wind usually makes more sense than solar.

      That is less and less true as you head toward the equator.

      The sun gets brighter and the winds fade away.

      The furious 50s become the roaring 40s and then turn into the horse latitudes in the 30s.

      • Neither are a problem.

        The key problem in the coming decades will be long distance power lines.

        If you can send electricity halfway around the globe, nights, winters, and storage issues will vanish.
        That's *the* key tech to invest in.

        Anyone here with better ideas than Siemens' most modern HVDC tech?

    • Yes, solar is very viable in the UK. The resorts of no sunlight are exaggerated. ðYoe

  • How is wind considered renewable? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Friday March 26, 2021 @07:46PM (#61203184)

    The energy is free but unless all parts are recyclable [bloomberg.com] how are they renewable?

    “The wind turbine blade will be there, ultimately, forever,”

    • Gotta wonder about solar too, right?... Or prerogative its just poor use of English.

    • "Renewable" refers to the source of the energy, not the equipment.

      The wind always blows, so wind is renewable.
      The sun shines daily, so solar is renewable.
      Oil and coal, on the other hand, are gone once used (burned), so are non-renewable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      How does that compare to other energy sources though?

      Last time I checked you can't recycle burnt coal or used reactors.

      Given that wind power is a relatively new technology it will take some time to develop recycling for the turbine blades.

  • The population of Scotland is 5 million. Anything that can be done there is irrelevant for any country with a larger population.

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