Nant-y-Moch revisited

OK, let's revisit the Nant-y-Moch wind farm numbers but restrict ourselves to kWh as the unit of energy and days for the unit of time.

Total UK electricity consumption in 2009 worked out at 15.6 kWh per person per day.

SSE, the wind farm developers, are claiming average production of 837,000 kWh per day.

This is equivalent to 53,700 people's daily usage. Or about 75% of the population of Ceredigion.

[Note: one kWh is the energy consumed by a 1kW 2-bar fire running for one hour]

Nant-y-Moch Wind Farm

According to SSE, the developers of the Nant-y-Moch wind farm, the annual energy output would provide for 65,000 homes (at 4.7MWh per household per year). This equates to 305 GWh/yr.

• http://www.nantymochwindfarm.com/the_facts.html

Annual UK per capita electricity consumption (not just household but shops, factories, street lights etc) was 5,692 kWh in 2009. Therefore Nant-y-Moch would provide the TOTAL electricity consumption for 53.6k people. Or nearly one in a thousand of the UK population. Just one wind farm!

Now US says solar PV to be cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020

RE < C? (renewable energy less than the price of coal?)

US Energy secretary "Chu began by making several observations about the US energy industry as it now stands. Onshore wind is already cheaper than new coal-fired energy"

And solar panel costs are falling amazingly rapidly...

Source: REneweconomy

UK Energy Consumption 2010

Drax, Yorkshire

Here it is: 114 kWh per person per day.

I was at a meeting the other day when someone said UK energy consumption was 125 kWh pp pday. That seemed high to me so I checked it out. My first attempt came in at 99 kWh pp pday. I then used BP's Statistical Review which shows UK 2010 consumption at 209.1 Mboe (Million barrels of oil equivalent). Using the excellent Wolfram site I converted this to TWh/year to GWh/day to kWh per person per day: 114.4.

This 114kWh per person per day is equivalent to a continuous usage of 4.77kW.

My personal electricity consumption is less than 2.75kWh per day or 0.115kW continuous.