[alancalverd (OP)]

EoN supplies about 15% of the UK's electricity. Their current advertisement says they supply 100% renewables. But right now, and for the past month, only about 12% of the total UK  supply has been from renewables, and many smaller companies make the same claim.
How do they do it?   

[evan_au]

Maybe their renewable content is averaged over a period longer than 1 month?
- When wind/solar is scarce, EoN "borrow" some fossil electricity from other suppliers
- And when wind/solar is plentiful, EoN "pays it back" by having the other suppliers use more renewables?

or maybe "100%" is just "96% rounded off to the nearest 10%"?

...But if "100% renewables" is what their headline says, there seems to be some weasel-wording going on!

[alancalverd (OP)]

However long your average, it's going to be difficult to reach 100% of any variable. As far as the UK grid is concerned, 40% renewables is about the best you can expect, provided nobody else sells it and you don't supply electricity at night!

[Colin2B]

EoN supplies about 15% of the UK's electricity. Their current advertisement says they supply 100% renewables. But right now, and for the past month, only about 12% of the total UK  supply has been from renewables, and many smaller companies make the same claim.
How do they do it?

I think they do it by some sort of offsetting with low carbon emission areas , but would need to check details.
Potentially dubious practice in my opinion.

[Petrochemicals]

EoN supplies about 15% of the UK's electricity. Their current advertisement says they supply 100% renewables. But right now, and for the past month, only about 12% of the total UK  supply has been from renewables, and many smaller companies make the same claim.
How do they do it?

I think they do it by some sort of offsetting with low carbon emission areas , but would need to check details.
Potentially dubious practice in my opinion.

Buying Carbon Credits?

[alancalverd (OP)]

Domestic demand today is about 17 GW and wind is running at 5% of peak capacity - 730 MW shared between all the suppliers! Where is EoN getting the rest of its 2.6 GW (15% of total supply, remember) of renewable energy from?  Not solar, I hope, because the sun is going down.....

[Petrochemicals]

Domestic demand today is about 17 GW and wind is running at 5% of peak capacity - 730 MW shared between all the suppliers! Where is EoN getting the rest of its 2.6 GW (15% of total supply, remember) of renewable energy from?  Not solar, I hope, because the sun is going down.....

That cannot be right Alan, 17gw is only 1700 10mw turbines.

https://www.siemensgamesa.com/en-int/newsroom/2019/01/new-siemens-gamesa-10-mw-offshore-wind-turbine-sg-10-0-193-dd.

I know they are not continuous or always at peak but that would mean we only need about 8000

https://theswitch.co.uk/energy/guides/renewables/wind-energy#:~:text=Wind%20energy%20UK%3A%20the%20numbers%20%20%20,%202%2C450%20sites%20%20%2026%20million%20

[alancalverd (OP)]

I estimated domestic demand as about 50% of the actual demand at the time I was writing - best estimate from government figures is domestic electricity use accounts for about half of the total. 730 MW was the entire wind output at that moment.

The problem with wind generators is they rarely deliver more than 30% of rated output, generally 15 - 20% averaged over a year. Right now we have 15GW of installed wind capacity but only 0.5 GW of actual output. As I write, 62% of UK electricity is being generated from gas and 20% nuclear.

So where is my "100% renewable" electricity coming from?

[Colin2B]

So where is my "100% renewable" electricity coming from?

It’s coming from EoN buying Renewable Energy Certificates. These are traded and can be used to give the appearance that the energy all comes from renewables. Problem is, they can be traded like carbon offsetting.
https://energypost.eu/stop-trading-renewable-energy-supply-certificates-speed-up-the-transition/

[evan_au]

Domestic demand today is about 17 GW and wind is running at 5% of peak capacity

You can also get carbon credits for regrowing a forest that got cut down a century ago. And trees continue growing even in light winds.

Of course, in some countries, they are cutting down a diverse rainforest ecosystem today so they can get the carbon credits in 6 months by planting a monoculture.

[wolfekeeper]

Domestic demand today is about 17 GW and wind is running at 5% of peak capacity - 730 MW shared between all the suppliers! Where is EoN getting the rest of its 2.6 GW (15% of total supply, remember) of renewable energy from?  Not solar, I hope, because the sun is going down.....

It's going to be averaged over the month, maybe even longer. Don't forget although sometimes the wind and solar drops below the average output, that means that other times it overproduces above the average, so the fossil plants shutdown. The climate doesn't care if you produce more CO2 some days more than others, it's the average that matters over the year.

In fact the lowest that National Grid have reported in the last month that I could find was 16% on April 14th:

https://twitter.com/NGControlRoom/status/1382357399256858626

And was 58% on April 6th:

https://twitter.com/NGControlRoom/status/1379458291810627591

[alancalverd (OP)]

An average cannot reach 100%, which is what the advert claims. Domestic users don't only use electricity when the wind is blowing.

On Tuesday #gas generated 55.9% of British electricity, more than nuclear 17.4%, biomass 6.9%, imports 6.7%, solar 5.6%, coal 3.6%, hydro 2.5%, wind 1.4%, other 0.0%

That's 16.4% renewables over 24 hours (most of the "import" is French nuclear). Assuming the sun don't shine out of the grid's backside, that only gives me 11% of my consumption at night. But EoN promise 100% with no qualification!

[wolfekeeper]

100% of the renewable power generation you bought, happened, and the renewables certificates ensured no double selling.

And the day before yesterday was 29% renewables:

https://twitter.com/NGControlRoom/status/1388155603407757315

Which more than made up for it. 🤷‍♂️

[alancalverd (OP)]

So all the stuff I used was renewable, and my neighbor, on the same grid but with a different billing company, got different colored electrons?

EoN's boast is that all the mains electrons coming into my house at any time are from  renewable sources, even when those sources are not working. That's greenwash and bullshit of the worst kind.

Join E.ON where all our customers get 100% renewable electricity as standard, at no extra cost.

You can't "make up for it" because EoN don't offer any domestic energy storage capacity.

[evan_au]

my neighbor, on the same grid but with a different billing company, got different colored electrons?

Marking electrons with different colors is an accounting exercise.
- Accounting can also be done by computers without going to the trouble of colouring-in individual electrons.

In reality, because the UK grid runs on Alternating Current (AC), you are only ever consuming your own electrons (the net electron movement during an AC cycle is zero, regardless of how much AC current you draw).
- And if you sign up with EoN as your electricity retailer, Eon now "owns" all the electrons in your wires - and charges you for the privilege of using them.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternating_current

[CliffordK]

Around here we get a lot of renewable energy from hydroelectric. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electricity_production_from_renewable_sources

While the nation as a whole isn't that great, a few of the states have over 75% renewables, often with more than half of the electricity from hydroelectric sources.  I'm actually puzzled where all the non-renewable electricity is coming from.   

In theory a good hydroelectric source can store significant amounts of energy during off-peak hours, and utilize that energy during peak hours.

Around here we have a strong seasonal water flow, but also a lot of homes are 100% electric, so using electric heat during the winter when water flow is highest.

Some electricity intensive businesses such as aluminum production are encouraged to organize shifts around purchasing off-peak power, often at a significant discount.

[alancalverd (OP)]

And if you sign up with EoN as your electricity retailer, Eon now "owns" all the electrons in your wires - and charges you for the privilege of using them.

Not quite. They are charging for the electrical energy used to push them to and fro. Within living memory my grandfather's house was on 240V DC mains, where the London Electricity Company was indeed charging per electron.

So my complaint the insn't that my electrons aren't green, but that  they are being waggled by multicolored joules.

[Petrochemicals]

Around here we get a lot of renewable energy from hydroelectric. 

Trouble with hydro electric is there are few sites on the planet with a good enough river flow and suitable terrain to make it worth while. Most high level dams have a pitiful river flow, most rivers with suitable flow do not have terrain that is amenable to producing a reservoir. High level reservoirs do make excellent locations for pumped power storage, Dinorwig would look tiny by comparison.

[wolfekeeper]

So all the stuff I used was renewable, and my neighbor, on the same grid but with a different billing company, got different colored electrons?

EoN's boast is that all the mains electrons coming into my house at any time are from  renewable sources, even when those sources are not working. That's greenwash and bullshit of the worst kind.

Join E.ON where all our customers get 100% renewable electricity as standard, at no extra cost.

You can't "make up for it" because EoN don't offer any domestic energy storage capacity.

None of that matters. What matters is:

1) my money ends up in the hands of renewable power producers
2) none of my money ends up paying for fossil fuel production

I don't actually care whether my power producer pays fossil fuel producers or the grid occasionally when they underproduce provided they then get paid back on another day in the year by the fossil fuel producers or the grid when they overproduce, provided my money or power use doesn't increase the amount of carbon produced.

Given the state of the grid today, it doesn't.

[alancalverd (OP)]

2) none of my money ends up paying for fossil fuel production

Not production, but combustion. Never mind the money: the advert says

All our customers' homes and businesses get 100% renewable electricity, at no extra cost.

which is obviously at variance with

The electricity supplied to homes and businesses comes from the National Grid and DNOs.

In other words, they are charging me for renewables but supplying whatever comes down the line, which has been 80% gas and nuclear for  most of April.

That's deliberate misrepresentation.