Let me take this a step farther, incorporating Cyrille's comment that no single technology can make a reliable grid, and

Plus, you are a LOOONNNGGG way from having solar and wind producing anywhere near the required electricity in the UK

Repeat, no one on the renewable side wants anything less than the viable mix of technologies creating a smart, sustainable grid. Many of the necessary technologies commercially exist, remaining are in various stages of likely. Given that we are using what's already built until retirement time, there is a time window long enough to incorporate all which needs to be accomplished.

LOOOONNNGGG way? Sorry, not at all true. When Romania alone this year installed 2/3 of the UK onshore wind capacity, and when 5 European countries are ALREADY between 10% and 25% of electrical demand, then what you mean by long is a short.

The complete maturity of the onshore windpower supply chain in Europe has already proven how quickly modular wind can scale up. In the UK this hasn't happened because of anemic governmental policy and will, poor and unworkable neo-lib financing methods, and an organized anti-wind effort underwritten by the usual suspects.

Given that we're discussing the premier wind resource in Europe, with ONSHORE capacity factors reaching from the low 30's in the worst areas to the low 40's in the best, the UK program is a travesty.

With normal supply chain growth, the UK could go from 2 gigs/yr to 6 gigs a year by 2015 EASILY, the equivalent of several giant nukes a year, long before the first nuke is even permitted, much less financed and under a decade of construction.

The existing fossil plants can handle that for generation, and the grid itself can be modernized within the same time frame.

The UK would supplant Denmark's percentage before 2020, while creating an actual industry for itself. Scotland will could equal that sooner.

The only LOOONNNGGG in the equation are the noses of the lying opposition.


"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin