I liked that report. Told us that the coal generation was not actually required, as it happened (presumably coal generation was brought back on line for possible required use on Thursday, not Wednesday night. It produced no more electricity than the minimum required for running up the plant?
The comment that the grid is aiming to be able to do without any fossil fuel generation by 2025 only means that sufficient alternative ‘restart of the grid’ options will be available by then. The comment re ‘weather permitting’ is a joke as the weather will clearly not permit fossil-free during the winter months and on low-wind days at any time of the year.
Of course the grid will use the cheapest energy supplies available - and nuclear, along with renewables, don’t require ‘chemical’ energy inputs during operation.
It will befuddle those that don’t have too much brain power and will likely be quoted back by some of them when it becomes clear (to them) that gas generation will be continuing beyond that date....
It's not the best grammar, but it is correct:
The government plans to close all the UK's coal plants by 2025, while National Grid is working to ensure fully fossil free generation across the grid by the same date, when weather conditions allow.
The NG has said that they are working to hopefully make the grid capable of running on 100% FF free by 2025 when/if generation is high enough. They are not suggesting 100% FF free on an annual basis, just if the RE + nuclear is enough to meet all demand, which I'd assume are periods of low demand during the summer, or nights.
Also, I think 'weather permitting' in the longer term is also entirely correct as we deploy intra-day storage as that would mean small excess being stored and covering small shortfalls, before expanding to cover medium and large excess/shortfalls.
Further down the 'weather permitting' route would be larger scale, longer term storage of RE excess. This could be CAES, LAES, H2 and bio-gas storage, all from RE generation, all stocks dependent
on earlier prevailing weather conditions (excess). Perhaps (without wishing to start an argument) this could also include stockpiled bio-mass for generation capacity taken off-line during favourable wind/solar weather conditions, again a form of storage (time shifting bio-mass generation).
Again, I agree that the comment is not clearly laid out, but I think RE generation and weather permitting are related terms, and do make sense when we start to consider the bigger issues, longer term, and the RE/storage package that we will have to deploy going forward.
Regarding gas generation continuing past 2025, absolutely, you are correct. But that figure will continue to decline*, and if at any point the gas being burnt is bio-gas from storage, then I'd also argue that that is 'gas free' in the sense that it would be FF free, and the gas burnt is simply a form of RE storage.
*Gas consumption for leccy generation has varied depending on the relative price v's coal, but at it's high around 10yrs ago, when coal and gas were supplying about 75% of our generation, gas consumption was about 400TWh. During gas lows / coal highs, gas was about 200TWh. Today gas, whilst shouldering almost all the FF load, is about 300TWh pa.
