Post #1087550

2026-04-10 09:29 UTC

However, the electricity is still needed in the south (it's still thirsty) so what happens next is that we replace that lost wind energy at the last minute with electricity generated via (usually) gas. This is not only a waste of low-carbon energy, it's also expensive. You can see this play out on my map and in the attached visual: 🚦 Traffic-coloured lines show boundary constraints 🟡 Yellow rings show wind farms that were turned off 🔴 Red rings show gas plants that were turned on

Replies (3)

@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl 2026-04-10 11:43

@robhawkes That sounds absurd but only until you start running numbers. The actual reason for running on gas and curtailing wind is that granted how many days per year the north actually generates 5 GW it’s likely cheaper to waste that energy than build a 5 GW grid connector that would be idling for most of the year. I’m not even sure if there are grids that allow such power to be moved, the largest I’ve seen in Poland was 2 GW and it’s like a highway (in literal sense of land occupied). That’s the cost of variable renewables that nobody mentions when they argue that “wind always blows somewhere”. Mark Z. Jacobson mastered this kind of manipulative modeling by burying a tiny “the model assumes perfect grid” in his papers. It’s also not captured by LCOE. It is however captured by LFSCOE (levelized full-system cost of energy).

Open ##1087551
@robhawkes@fosstodon.org 2026-04-10 09:29

See this for yourself on my live energy map for Great Britain: https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/?date=2026-04-04T22%3A00%3A00.000Z

Open ##1598019
@sephster@fosstodon.org 2026-04-10 09:35

@robhawkes do you know of any plans to fix this so we don't need to discard the energy? Any plans to build a bigger straw?

Open ##1598021