Well round here there are fields of the damn things springing up on every 1000 sq meter scrap of land that would be too rough to plough and cannot get planning permission for a housing estate . The sort of land that would previously have been supporting sheep or pigs. In some cases the sheep and the panels seem to co-exist, though I do not know how well the cable protection will last. Not seen pigs & panels yet - I guess they dig too much. The dept of Energy statistics do suggest that as of dec 2019 the UK has solar panels installed of total name plate capacity a touch over 13GW nominal (and GB without NI a touch under, more like 12& 3/4 ) . In principle then if the whole UK were ever all sunny at once, we might muster a quarter of our daytime supply I suppose.
Now given the actual metered generation history suggests about 10% of that on average over all days of the year (more on sunny ones ?) I am inclined to agree the gridwatch figures that imply 1.5GW today are probably an over estimate - sky is clear here with odd clouds, but I do not know how sunny it is in other parts of the country. That was not really my main point- the main point was a large fraction, maybe half, of the generation with inertia on the grid has gone since it was first designed.
Well round here there are fields of the damn things springing up on every 1000 sq meter scrap of land that would be too rough to plough and cannot get planning permission for a housing estate . The sort of land that would previously have been supporting sheep or pigs. In some cases the sheep and the panels seem to co-exist, though I do not know how well the cable protection will last. Not seen pigs & panels yet - I guess they dig too much. The dept of Energy statistics do suggest that as of dec 2019 the UK has solar panels installed of total name plate capacity a touch over 13GW nominal (and GB without NI a touch under, more like 12& 3/4 ) . In principle then if the whole UK were ever all sunny at once, we might muster a quarter of our daytime supply I suppose.
Now given the actual metered generation history suggests about 10% of that on average over all days of the year (more on sunny ones ?) I am inclined to agree the gridwatch figures that imply 1.5GW today are probably an over estimate - sky is clear here with odd clouds, but I do not know how sunny it is in other parts of the country. That was not really my main point- the main point was a large fraction, maybe half, of the generation with inertia on the grid has gone since it was first designed.
