Energy infrastructure

Some global facts for March from the IEA.

In March 2024, the total net electricity production in total OECD reached 883.7 TWh, decreasing by 0.3% compared to the same period last year. On a year-to-date basis, total net electricity production increased by 2.5% in the first quarter of 2024.

Electricity generation from fossil fuels amounted to 394.5 TWh in March 2024, marking a decline of 4.6% compared to March 2023. This reduction was largely driven by lower electricity output from coal, which witnessed a 10.2% year-on-year decrease, followed by gas with a decrease of 1.9% y-o-y. The decrease in coal-fired electricity generation was most significant in the OECD Americas, experiencing a 19.6% y-o-y decline, followed by OECD Europe (-13.5% y-o-y). Conversely, OECD Asia-Oceania registered an increase of 7.2% y-o-y in electricity generated from fossil fuels, mainly driven by natural gas (+8.2% y-o-y). Overall, fossil fuels accounted for 44.6% of the electricity mix.

Electricity production from renewable sources increased by 4.6% y-o-y to 340.7 TWh in March 2024. This growth was primarily driven by increased electricity generation from solar (+16.7% y-o-y) and hydro (+5.7% y-o-y) power, with OECD Europe leading the trend with a 7.9% y-o-y overall increase. Wind power generation experienced a drop of 1.4% year-on-year, driven by decreased output in OECD Europe (-8.8% y-o-y), due to wind conditions. Conversely, OECD Asia Oceania and the OECD Americas witnessed increased output in wind power generation by 33.2% y-o-y and 4.8% y-o-y, respectively. Solar power generation continued its upward trend, with significant increases observed in the OECD Americas (+23.8% y-o-y) and in OECD Europe (+20.1% y-o-y). Overall, electricity generated from renewable sources increased by 6.7% y-t-d during the first quarter of 2024 and, in March 2024, it represented 38.5% of the OECD electricity mix.

Nuclear electricity production reached 146.0 TWh in March 2024, reflecting a 1.0% increase compared to the same month last year. This growth was attributable to increased nuclear output in OECD Asia Oceania, notably with Japan’s output increasing by 26.2% y-o-y or 1.4 TWh. Overall, nuclear power contributed 16.5% to the OECD electricity mix

Highlight of the month

In India, total net electricity production amounted to 155.4 TWh in March 2024, up by 6.6% on a year-on-year basis. Over the first quarter of 2024, total electricity output increased by 5.3% or 22.8 TWh compared to the same period last year. Most of the additional generation originated from coal power plants (+7.9% y-t-d), while renewables dropped by 7.0% y-t-d, mainly because of significantly lower hydropower output (-20.3% y-t-d). This led to coal providing around 76.5% of the country’s total electricity generation over the first three months of 2024, reverting to the same levels observed in Q1-2021 and hence breaking the downward trend observed for the same periods in 2022 and in 2023.

It’s a pity that the Eirgrid dashboard doesn’t provide more detail on the current % of renewable generation especially now that we have so much solar. It breaks down the wind generation but doesn’t for the biomass, hydro, solar and other renewable. The uk one is so much better.

How useful will all that be in winter, when our energy needs are the greatest?

Hopefully we should be adding nearly 1GW per year from now on.

The renewables on our grid is 75% and our total demand is 6GW ( I think), so in theory in 3 years, there should times when the 75% is coming from solar and a bit of wind.

I know they're planning to increase the 75% to 95% but I don't know the timeline for that.

Interesting.

They said a record was set a few days ago of over 600MW for solar generation.

I wonder will it hit over 1GW this time next year.

Seems completely possible. We'll have around 2GW connected by then maybe.

Ah ok. Didn't know that. I'd assumed they included houses.

So we could already have hit over 1GW and next year we could hit 2GW.

Not exactly a common occurrence in this country. If there ever renewables powered by cold and dampness, Ireland would be all set!

The gas saved in summer will be used in winter

Given we have barely got out of 2nd gear when it comes to Solar and off-shore wind, its kind of amazing we have approx 40% of our energy coming from renewables.

Scaling up to 8GW of solar will just take a bit of time, but its where offshore wind is here the key is to the mix.

Yeah I think the same.

Solar has just taken off here.

I think in a 3 or 4 years there'll be times where 75% of electricity is coming from solar. If we add a GW of solar a year then it's definitely possible.

We already have that with wind but with offshore it'll be more frequent and longer.

Ah, the eager anticipation of more renewables rollout.

‘Dark doldrums’ hits wind power supply

A “drought” in wind power generation, described by the German word dunkelflaute meaning “dark doldrums”, has surprised the market and contributed to a squeeze on east-coast gas supplies inflating wholesale prices.

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Electricity generation from wind farms in the National Electricity Market since April 1 is roughly flat compared with the same quarter in 2021, despite about 2500 megawatts of wind capacity having been added since then

This is what is happening in Australia. The investors must be swaeting bullets. This might be why Australias largest energy company AGL, said:

The investment case for new wind and solar generation is “tricky” and AGL Energy will instead focus on hydro, gas and batteries, chief operating officer Markus Brokhof says.

Which is incredibly ironic since green activist investors recently had multiple members of the board of directors ejected, including the chairwoman, because they thought the company had too high a CO2 footprint and that their nominees to the board could do better.

Renewables are a rotten, terrible idea as a way to power a grid reliably. It might happen here also as the doomsday climate models predict a drop in wind speeds in Europe as warming increases.

We dont have any gas storage ..

If we reduce our domestic gas demand, will that reduce the extraction rate of gas from Corrib?

Or is that under the control of Shell/someone else and they can continue to extract and export across an interconnector if markets elsewhere wanted it?