Thanks, Chris, very useful. I have to say that my numbers here in the UK are very different. We currently use up to 45 GW. When we add transport and heating, etc we will need something over 100GW of capacity. Assuming we make some effort at nuclear power (very unlikely), we will still need 80 GW of wind and solar. Based on 2022 figures, these can go down to essentially zero for periods of a week so we would need storage for that order of time 80 X 168 = 13 TWhr. This is either 400 pumped hydro units like the new one in Scotland or 4 million Megapacks or (I don't understand hydrogen!). Even these numbers are potentially conservative depending on people's behaviour - if half of the 40 million new electric vehicles come home at 6pm and plug in, that could be 150 GW capacity needed.
Thanks, Chris, very useful. I have to say that my numbers here in the UK are very different. We currently use up to 45 GW. When we add transport and heating, etc we will need something over 100GW of capacity. Assuming we make some effort at nuclear power (very unlikely), we will still need 80 GW of wind and solar. Based on 2022 figures, these can go down to essentially zero for periods of a week so we would need storage for that order of time 80 X 168 = 13 TWhr. This is either 400 pumped hydro units like the new one in Scotland or 4 million Megapacks or (I don't understand hydrogen!). Even these numbers are potentially conservative depending on people's behaviour - if half of the 40 million new electric vehicles come home at 6pm and plug in, that could be 150 GW capacity needed.
Thank you Pat, and yes indeed UK demand will go higher as more things are electrified.
I've covered some of this in my other substack posts.