Are those gas plants not peakers? It seems wild to me there is 5gw of curtailment while there is 16gw of gas going. Surely the grid could use some more storage capacity.
The curtailed windfarms are in the north of Scotland. There is currently not enough transmission capacity to export electricity from there to the south of England where the demand is highest. New transmission lines are under construction, but they wont be ready until 2029.
Virtually none of the gas power in the UK is traditional "peakers" aka Open Cycle Gas Turbines. There's a lot of Combined Cycle Gas Turbines. Gas is much more expensive in the UK than, say, the US and so it doesn't make much sense to build OCGT because although they're cheap to build they are very inefficient so your bid prices will be really high.
It might be that the grid lacks the capacity to transmit the power from renewables. i think I read somewhere recently that there is an argument going on about adding or upgrading connections in East Anglia.
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Are those gas plants not peakers? It seems wild to me there is 5gw of curtailment while there is 16gw of gas going. Surely the grid could use some more storage capacity.
The curtailed windfarms are in the north of Scotland. There is currently not enough transmission capacity to export electricity from there to the south of England where the demand is highest. New transmission lines are under construction, but they wont be ready until 2029.
Virtually none of the gas power in the UK is traditional "peakers" aka Open Cycle Gas Turbines. There's a lot of Combined Cycle Gas Turbines. Gas is much more expensive in the UK than, say, the US and so it doesn't make much sense to build OCGT because although they're cheap to build they are very inefficient so your bid prices will be really high.
It might be that the grid lacks the capacity to transmit the power from renewables. i think I read somewhere recently that there is an argument going on about adding or upgrading connections in East Anglia.