In order to accommodate more than token
(10-15% of peak demand) amounts of renewable electricity on the grid in UK, we will
need to adjust our demand to meet available generation on a hitherto
unprecedented scale.
This will mean:
·
Switching almost everything that is not essential off
after dark if the wind is not blowing
·
Because the wind sometimes does
not blow hard for weeks at a time in mid-winter, any storage will need to be
capable of providing power for much more than a day or two.
There is a way of reducing this – a global
renewable grid so that those parts of the world which have very high demand on
winter evenings are supplied from places where the sun is still shining – e.g.
Western Europe from Texas. (At the peak UK demand time, it’s around midday in Texas).
A first step to this is the Iceland –
Scotland undersea link, initially to provide geothermal electricity to Europe.
The less we like the idea of these mega-projects
and their financial and environmental costs, the more we will need to think
about –and implement- demand management.
The time to start is now. It will take many years or decades from early
adopters like you and I doing something about it to mainstream action having a decisive effect.
Iceland
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