On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:30:44 +0000, Corporal Jones
wrote:

I notice on grid watch the power requirement at the moment (17:30) is
55.41 GW.
Nuclear as usual is flat out, Coal is rising and looks near its limit,
CCGT (I presume this is gas) also looks to be near its limit and Wind,
well as usual when it is needed it is rubbish.
The other generation and imports does not amount to much.

Just How much can the UK generate in GW and how near are we to its
limit, also what happens if we go over our maximum generation limit?

The UK 'total' is theoretically approaching 80GW (see below) but quite a bit of
generation is offline at the moment.

Only one interconector (the Dutch one) is fully available.

The French one is down to 1GW at the moment, 1.5GW from next week, and back to
2GW from the new year. Irish interconector (North to Scotland) is down 0.25GW
(half capacity) for another couple of months The new East - West Irish
Interconnector (Republic to NW England) is coming online in late January @ 0.5GW

Take week 98 of 2013 (the highest currently declared week for next year) and the
MW declared availability is as follows:

25845 Coal
27165 CCGT
8693 Nuclear
2338 Oil
1227 OCGT
1045 Hydro
792 Other (Biomass)

2828 Pumped Storage

5702 Wind

2000 French
1000 Dutch
500 Irish
500 East-West

So that is

67.1GW of Generation
2.8 GW of Pumped storage (circa 7 hours)
5.7GW of Intermittent, disruptive, polluting, scenery destroying, investment
sapping, bill inflating, worthless, pointless, useless wind

+/- 4GW of interconnect (some realistically only being one way)

By the end of next year, CCGT rises about 3GW to 30230, Coal drops about 4GW to
21987, Oil drops by 1GW to 1370, Wind rises marginally to 6GW, Nuclear will
almost certainly drop 0.5GW.

One thing is pretty certain, this time next year there will be around 2GW less
generation available and it could be even worse due to more Euro eco ********
about protecting marine environments

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-s...wales-20660152




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