The Trouble with Electrificandum #1

Recently, I was in a meeting with some proper boffins, and I was dismayed when one of them articulated their belief in what I call “electrificandum” – the imperative to convert all UK heating and transport to electrical energy. They said that electrical heating of homes had the potential to be highly efficient – they meant, of course, through the adoption of heat pumps. “How could you think that ?” I mused to myself, “Don’t you realised the awkward implications for power generation ?” Leaving aside the question of how the British people could be persuaded to ditch their liquid fuel cars for BEVs (battery electric vehicles) for the moment, I set about searching for a simple model of the UK electricity system. And spent nearly a week finding useful data. It really shouldn’t be this hard, but data on power is an absolute minefield loaded with caveats and lacking clarification. I have averaged, assumed, checked, modelled and massaged what I could find without paying for specialist data services, and worked them into an Excel spreadsheet. And my results astonish even me. The implications for the total generation capacity required for the peak in demand in the late afternoon and evening in 2050 put to bed the notion that nuclear power can help in any way – nuclear power being fairly steady in output. It also negates the assumption that electrical heating can be efficient : although electrical heating from heat pumps can be efficient from the consumer side, from the generator side it’s going to require huge adaptations and lead to gross wastage – partly because of the total gigawatts of power needed during the peak, and partly because of the speed at which it will need to become available. Even for a UK partway-electrified by 2030, the implications for the power sector are huge. The UK will need to adopt a mixed gas-and-power approach to the low carbon energy future. And because Natural Gas supplies could well become tight in the 2030s, and the development of shale gas will not prevent this, the UK needs to develop resources of Renewable Gas.