Britain Pushed Ahead With Green Power. Its Grid Can’t Handle It.

Aging power infrastructure threatens ability of U.K. and others to capitalize on AI boom

By Rebecca Feng of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"countries around the world have raced to install solar panels and wind turbines."

"aging electricity grids that can’t handle the power."

"In Europe, a sweeping blackout in Spain in April highlighted how big power swings can overwhelm the system."

"Britain built a vast network of wind and solar farms and generates a higher proportion of its power from renewables than most places in the world. But it didn’t build the transmission lines needed to move all that clean energy around."

"Grid upgrades and associated costs add to what are already some of the world’s most expensive electricity bills. The average-size British household paid almost $1,500 for electricity last year, more than double the bill in 2008, government data show."

"American households pay $1,700 each year for consuming three times as much."

"Wind farms off the coast of Scotland are far from customers in the populated south, and leaving them constantly on risks frying the grid. The U.K. paid power generators $2.3 billion in the year to March to not produce electricity"

"a lot of wind farms are in Scotland, meaning the region generates far more power than it requires and needs to transmit some south, where most of the demand is. The current infrastructure isn’t sufficient to transport all that power." 

"The output from new solar panels and wind turbines depends on the weather, which doesn’t always align with demand. In the past, the grid operator could coordinate with coal-fired power plants to increase output when it knew Britons would return home from work and start turning on lights and TVs."

"Building a new transmission line can take up to a decade"