2024 power generation in the UK
Introduction
Germany, the United Kingdom and France account for close to half of all European Weather-Dependent “Renewables”.
The illustrations here show the hourly power production by all generation technologies. The data is as complete as possible for the UK.
The United Kingdom power generation illustrated 2024
The Gridwatch UK data had a major deficiency from 1/6/2024 to 10/7/2024, accordingly a batch of data was substituted from later in July that year. This substitution will not materially affect any cumulative results shown here.
UK Weather-Dependent “Renewables”
Productivity matters
The illustrations of UK power generation in 2024 shown above, indicate:
the imposition of an additional ~48 Gigawatt of Weather-Dependent “Renewables” has reduced the overall UK power fleet productivity, normally ~90%, down to ~39.5%.
in 2024 ~48GW of installed Weather-Dependent “Renewables” contributed the equivalent of ~9GW to the UK grid.
in 2024 UK Weather-Dependent “Renewables” achieved a combined productivity of ~18.4%, a relatively low value.
in 2024 Offshore UK wind power, which is normally quite productive, only achieved the low level of productivity of 23.5%.
the unreliability and intermittency of both Onshore and Offshore Wind power is clear from the third graphic above:
Wind power output can vary from close to full power on occasions down to virtually nil power output within a few hours.
Solar power is inevitably diurnal, very variable Summer to Winter and dependent on cloudiness. The UK is one of the cloudiest nations.
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