the solar pv in summer will be used, for sure, because batteries will forward the production until later in the day. Meanwhile wind production complements this by being stronger in the winter. A lot of storage is needed princippally because wind output varies from year to year. All this is discussed in a report published by 100percentrenewableuk, see discussion and links at https://100percentrenewableuk.org/
Even in high summer you would need to have 200-300GWhs of storage c 50x more than we have now albeit the gap will close down as the decade progresses. In winter the requirement goes upto 500-600GWh (and thats on todays consumption levels) so that would need a huge amount of solar panels to deliver in mid winter. Wont happen but we need to keep the lights on so we come back to having to keep all that gas sitting on standby which isn't going to cost nothing. Personally I believe there could come a time that we can eliminate those gas plants but not yet yet Milliband is hell bent on achieving NZ2030 whatever the cost. What we need is a more measured approach oh and as an aside time to re-establish more local content for at least wind farms and the supporting electrical equipment (the panels are only ever going to come from China) so UK citizens genuinely benefit from this.
It is almost meaningless to use total energy requirements as the yardstick. Solar is many times more efficient in summer than winter for obvious reasons and demand is much higher in winter. So unless you have months of storage you would need far greater quantities.
the solar pv in summer will be used, for sure, because batteries will forward the production until later in the day. Meanwhile wind production complements this by being stronger in the winter. A lot of storage is needed princippally because wind output varies from year to year. All this is discussed in a report published by 100percentrenewableuk, see discussion and links at https://100percentrenewableuk.org/
Even in high summer you would need to have 200-300GWhs of storage c 50x more than we have now albeit the gap will close down as the decade progresses. In winter the requirement goes upto 500-600GWh (and thats on todays consumption levels) so that would need a huge amount of solar panels to deliver in mid winter. Wont happen but we need to keep the lights on so we come back to having to keep all that gas sitting on standby which isn't going to cost nothing. Personally I believe there could come a time that we can eliminate those gas plants but not yet yet Milliband is hell bent on achieving NZ2030 whatever the cost. What we need is a more measured approach oh and as an aside time to re-establish more local content for at least wind farms and the supporting electrical equipment (the panels are only ever going to come from China) so UK citizens genuinely benefit from this.
It is almost meaningless to use total energy requirements as the yardstick. Solar is many times more efficient in summer than winter for obvious reasons and demand is much higher in winter. So unless you have months of storage you would need far greater quantities.