Britain will soon have been powered for more than a thousand hours without coal this year, in a new milestone underscoring how the polluting fuel’s decline is accelerating. The UK’s last eight coal power plants staged a brief revival when the “beast from the east” pushed up gas prices earlier this year, causing coal plants to fire up. However, the blip proved short-lived and immaterial, figures compiled by MyGridGB show. The country is expected to pass the threshold of 1,000 coal-free hours before the weekend is out and possibly as early as Thursday night. The pace of coal power’s demise is speeding up. Throughout the whole of 2017 there were 624 coal-free hours, up from 21 0 hours in 2016.
Guardian 12th July 2018 read more »
More than 40GW of offshore wind farms could be installed in UK waters by 2050, according to the country’s grid operator, National Grid.
Windpowewr Monthly 12th July 2018 read more »
Solar PV could be the UK’s most significant power generation technology by as early as 2030, with 33GW of installed capacity, according to National Grid. Today’s Future Energy Scenarios release, which sees the transmission system operator evaluate and model different scenarios across the energy sector, suggests that solar PV could provide 33GW of power by 2030 and 66.2GW by 2050. That would be enough to topple solar’s nearest competitor – gas – which National Grid expects to supply 31.7GW in 2030 and 22.8GW by 2050.
Solar Power Portal 12th July 2018 read more »
