Elsewhere we have mentioned that we have a micro-hydro generation system on the farm. It’s not huge, but it makes a small contribution to the growing proportion of UK energy which comes from renewable sources.
This morning I found a site which tells us exactly what proportion of the UK demand we satisfy. Gridwatch.co.uk isn’t a compelling site, but it does have real-time, hard data on where our power comes from at any given time.
This is the picture from today – a sunny day in February 2019:
So right now, the UK is consuming around 40GW of electricity, of which 674MW is coming from Hydro.
And our contribution?
This is the real-time reading from us: ok, it’s the middle of winter, and not much rain recently. Maximum is around 8kW.
Which means we’re creating about 1/10,000 th of the UK hydro energy. We also have solar PV, which is producing 3.3kW right now (middle of the day, sunny, February), which is a bit extra.
This might give you an idea of how much hydro and PV it takes to make a difference to the bigger picture. Like I said – tiny steps.