There is an app you can load onto your smartphone, called UK Energy, which can tell you how much electricity is currently being generated in Britain and what percentage is coming from different sources. This afternoon the contribution from wind increased sharply from 1.3 per cent to 2.8 per cent as the wind picked up in the west. On some of the coldest winter days, when an anticyclone is sitting over Britain wind will contribute next to nothing, and once the sun goes down solar panels will generate nothing, either.
It is a mark of our unjoined-up energy policy that vast subsidies have been thrown at wind turbines and solar panels without any real thought being put into electricity storage. There remains no practical and cost-effective way of smoothing out the intermittent generation of wind and solar power.
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