By Paul Homewood
https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/the-seventh-carbon-budget/#publication-downloads
As promised, an in depth look at the Seventh Carbon Budget, which runs from 2038 to 2042.
Electricity Supply
Overall the CCC’s report seems to have less detail and technical input than previous budgets, and electricity supply is no exception.
It recommends a capacity mix, for instance, but little insight into the implications for the grid. It has Emma Pinchbeck’s fingerprints all over it, given her background as head of the lobbyist Renewable UK.
Incredibly nowhere does the document mention “peak demand” at all, except for this comment:
The object of the Budget report is clearly to force through as much renewable generation as possible, regardless of any other considerations.
But we do know from last year’s FES report that peak demand is projected to rise to 81 GW in 2035 and 102 GW in 2040. And as FES clarifies, these figures are after allowing for smart EV charging and residential demand side response, and therefore must be treated as optimistic.
According to the CCC’s plan, we will only have 52 GW of reliable capacity in 2040, nearly half of that being unabated gas power. We know that there are times when wind power runs at 5% or less of capacity, meaning we might get five or six gigawatts at most at these times. We also know that solar power is virtually non existent in mid winter.
Even if we could rely on interconnectors, which we most certainly cannot. we will still be well short of the supply needed. Storage would mainly only be enough for a couple of hours. (CCC also assume 7 GW/ 419 GWh of unproven medium term storage, enough to plug the gap for a few hours).
That leaves the frightening prospect of DSR, which the CCC estimate at 29 GW. (And as we have seen, the FES already allows for some DSR. Putting it bluntly, the CCC propose that we take up to a third of demand off the grid at times – rolling blackouts, in other words.
And let’s not fool ourselves that this would be merely switching demand from 5pm to 7pm, or even night. With the DSR already built into the FES, charging of EVs at night, spreading out heat pump loads and so on, daily demand in cold weather would probably range from about 80 GW to 100 GW. In other words, even at times of lowest demand, there would not be enough supply, and certainly no surplus to recharge batteries and other forms of storage.
Yet remarkably the CCC do not even recognise this as a problem, merely commenting:
I’ll cover the other sections later.