Solar Power Threatens to Overwhelm Electricity Grid

And no, this won't mean lower prices

There are now serious concerns that too much solar power will soon overwhelm the electricity grid in Britain.

Too much energy sounds too good to be true. Surely it will mean lower prices for everybody? Unfortunately, electricity does not work like that.

A functioning electricity grid requires that supply and demand are matched every second of the day. Too little power results in blackouts, but so too does too much power. You can easily store oil and gas, but apart from the tiny amount of battery and pumped storage we have, you cannot do the same with electricity.

What you cannot use gets thrown away. Battery storage is incredibly expensive and currently we only have enough of it to power the country for a few minutes.

So, what is the problem?

We already have so much solar power capacity installed in the UK that it is close to overwhelming the grid. At midday on one sunny day last week, solar was providing 40% of our electricity. Add in wind and nuclear power and the figure goes up to 90%.

Ed Miliband wants to triple solar and wind power capacity by 2030, so it does not take a genius to work out that we will have much more electricity than the grid can handle on days like that one. Worse still, he wants to plaster our roof with solar panels, which will simply exacerbate the problem by reducing demand.