One of the most interesting findings from building this was to see just how important a distributed wind energy system is. The new offshore mega-projects like Dogger Bank are going to make a huge difference, and more onshore development will help with localised generation as well (avoiding transmission capacity issues, etc).
It's been fascinating to watch the various weather patterns over time to see where the gaps are in the locations of wind farms around the UK. It'll be great once we fill in the big hole in capacity off the south-west coast.
I was looking into this recently and future developments look exciting. There seems to be plenty of shallow water ripe for development similar to the north sea but there is also some focus on floating platforms too.
My casual observation is that it’s generally windy somewhere around the coast, and when not in one area like the north sea it is windy of the south west or south coast. And vice versa.
Once we build out farms around the four axis of the coast im sure the base load generated in aggregate will rise quite a bit.
The UK has had issues with limited transmission line capacity to Scotland which had led me to think that most of the generation potential was up there.
I live in North Wales so can confirm it's pretty windy here and we have a few onshore wind farms around here too. We've also a few decent-sized wind farms just off the coast like Gwynt y Mor.
The Scotland thing is interesting as there's definitely issues with transmission constraints over the B6 boundary, though there's still benefits to building more wind farms for local consumption and/or storage as more batteries (especially) and pumped hydro capacity is added to the mix. Plus the National Grid have plans to expand capacity through to 2030 but I had to admit that's at the limit of my knowledge.
> just how important a distributed wind energy system is
Every time I look at anything to do with grid scale energy, you see just how important it is to distribute and diversify everything from sources of energy to geographic location to interconnects.
Capitalism with its capacity utilisation targets, just in time delivery etc is not very well suited for a robust network.
It's been fascinating to watch the various weather patterns over time to see where the gaps are in the locations of wind farms around the UK. It'll be great once we fill in the big hole in capacity off the south-west coast.