How to use the Grid Model

The model uses source data from real-world industry records of UK wind and solar outputs over a 10-year time period.

The aim is to meet demand at all times, using just renewables, at minimum cost

If supply fails to meet demand at any moment, a blackout crashes the UK grid


Simulate a UK clean energy grid in 5 easy steps:




Step (1) - Scale up renewables:

What if the UK built more Wind and Solar capacity?

UK electricity data records how much power wind, coal, gas, etc generated every 30 minutes since 2015, recording supply and demand across the ever-changing weather and seasons. That’s 175,000 data points. To model a clean grid, the first step is to eliminate all electricity generated from coal/oil/gas/biomass, then scale up wind and solar data to try to take its place:

Use the sliders below to see how energy supply and weather affect the ability to meet demand:




(Graph derived from half-hourly figures from National Grid/Elexon and Sheffield Solar)

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GW or GWh?

What's the difference?

Modern turbines that generate electricity from natural gas can turn up to 60% of the fuel's energy into electricity. Manufacturers are now designing (CCGT) gas turbines to run on hydrogen.
Photo: Wikimedia/ CREDIT

Step (2) - Add storage

Stockpile surplus electricity using batteries or other storage to use when needed later

The best options to store electricity include batteries, pumped storage hydro and hydrogen. Any stockpiles of surplus energy from windy periods can feed back into the grid when there is not enough wind or solar.



Use the sliders to add battery storage:

STORAGE CAPACITY - GWh - £ Bn
STORAGE POWER - GW
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Total cost: £ Bn
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Pumped Storage Hydro is well established for helping smooth out the peaks and troughs of electricity demand. But could it store enough energy to help meet winter demand? Photo: WikiMedia Commons

Step (3) - Adjust demand

UK needs to double electricity supply
Just 19% of the UK's energy comes from electricity today. 45% is from petroleum products (mostly in transport) , and 29% from natural gas used for heating. Electrifying heating and road transport, which are both three times more efficient, will double UK electricity demand.
Data from Gov.UK

Transitioning to electric heating and road transport will increase demand on the grid

Electrify Road Transport?

Electrify heating (phase out Natural Gas)?

Adds massive load to grid, mostly during winter. The only way to reduce this is to lower demand through energy efficiency:

Insulation 1 in of homes £ Bn

Heatpumps 2 in of homes £ Bn



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Total cost: £ Bn


STORAGE CAPACITY - GWh - £ Bn
STORAGE POWER - GW


The next steps look at different kinds of storage, and testing over a much longer period

Step 4 - Optimise Storage

This model uses three main storage technologies
Batteries - Very expensive, cost is determined by the amount of energy stored, but can be up to 90% efficient
Pumped Storage Hydro - also expensive, costs depend on size of reservoir (amount of energy) and the power of turbines. 85% efficient
Hydrogen - electrolysers to make hydrogen and CCGT (turbines to turn it back into electricity) are both relatively cheap, and the amount of energy stored could be almost limitless. However, at least 60% of the precious electricity is wasted during the processes of converting to hydrogen and back to electricity.


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Total cost: £ Bn


WIND
SOLAR
NUCLEAR 1
Elec ROADS?
Elec HEATING?
INSULATION
HEAT PUMPS
STORAGE POWER CAPACITY
BATTERIES £ 0Bn
PUMPED
STORAGE 		£ Bn
HYDROGEN 2 £ Bn
CCGT 3
V2G 4

Stored energy

Stored energy (in Thousand GWh): Hydrogen stores (Graphs 2) Battery, Pumped Storage and V2G stores (Graph 3):
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Step 5 - Select Dates

This simulation can cover a time period up to 1 year

Use the 'black bar' sliders to set start and end dates


👈 ADJUST 👉HERE <=Adjust start/end dates => (sliders)

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Use the two date-zoom sliders above to adjust start and end dates.

The basic looks at a whole year's data, but there are actually 10 years of data available (from 2015 onwards) detailing over 140,000 data periods soon to be developed.


Start grid model


More options

Why to leave out other technologies that could play a role in an electricity grid powered only by renewables:


Interconnectors

Interconnectors linking the UK to other national grids on the continent currently make up a significant share of the UK's electricity. However, if all those other grids also rely on wind and solar, they may not be available to supply power just when the UK needs it. For that reason, this model excludes contributions from interconnectors.


Demand response (also called load shifting)

Shifting power-hungry devices (car charging, heat pumps, industrial processes) to off-peak hours will undoubtedly play an important role in smoothing out the peaks and troughs in demand for electricity (in a very similar way to batteries), but it doesn't address the bigger problem of long term energy storage.


Tidal power

Studies have proposed that tidal barrages could supply up to 7GW of electricity, reliably, for many decades. Similarly tidal flow schemes promise predictable reliable power akin to baseload. But the numbers are too small to contribute significantly to the UK's power supply.


Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

The promise that small modular reactors will be cheaper than large reactors looks like magical thinking to me. I'm not an expert, but the potential savings from the 'modular' construction approach seem less significant than the economies of scale that a single large reactor can deliver. Take the experience of Nu-Scale Power. Its costs ballooned three-fold, even after the project was scaled down in size before being cancelled at huge costs to Idaho consumers. That SMR suffered exactly the same massive cost over-runs as large projects such as Hinkley Point, Flamanville, Vogtle, etc.


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Full charge/discharge cycles completed: