Jacob Reese Mogg is involved, you know there's a bit of back scratching going on there then.
I think the UK by 2030 (or so) is actually going to have a really major problem with too much renewable capacity at times - not just not enough transmission capacity, just too much full stop.
There's currently 30GW of wind in the UK (offshore + onshore), plus an ambition to get another 35GW of offshore installed in the next 6 years. I'm not sure whether that will be met, but I would project at least another 20GW of offshore wind will come online based on in construction/approved projects by 2030.
At that point we'll have 55GW of wind, plus a huge amount of solar (probably 25GW minimum, potentially a lot lot more).
UK electricity consumption is very low per capita and it is falling rapidly with not much sign of this changing.
I think we are going to be in a position where we have (way) too much power at least 50% of the year.
Some will be able to be used for storage, and some potentially exported via HVDC, but I fear the generation on windy + sunny days will be pretty enormous.
This would all get sorted out by 'the market' but CfD contracts basically pay to keep producing whatever the price (I believe some of the contracts may have changed slightly on this). Which really distorts the market.
It's probably time to phase out curtailment payments. If renewable is to be the default form of generation it can't have special treatment forever. And it would be an incentive to deploy battery systems on the wind farm side of the grid connection to smooth peaks.
(The whole "overstating your forecast" thing sounds a lot like LIBOR)
This is a naive question, but would batteries to offset actual (and predicted) excess be too costly?
Why is there so much less tidal power.
The tides are constant, unlike wind and sun.
The UK has a lot of coast and a lot of tides.
Sounds like good, old-fashioned British capitalism to me - lying is made extremely lucrative for big companies, while regulation & enforcement are only for the little people.
The curtailment periods in the UK are already a problem, particularly in Scotland where there is now not enough grid capacity. There's no point building massive farms up there now without corresponding National Grid investment, which isn't happening anywhere near fast enough.