General Discussion

Unfortunately, because of the way the UK grid is regulated, that doesn't mean people in Scotland pay less for electricity than those living in the south, so we put up with some of the negative impacts but don't see all the direct benefits.

There is some resistance to the locating of new windfarms, along with the power lines to support them, but nothing like the hysteria Trump's expressed about their defiling the views from his golf courses.

His insane hatred of wind power in the US may be traceable to his humiliating protracted defeat when he challenged the construction of a sea-based wind farm that would be barely visible with the naked eye from his course at Menie on the Aberdeenshire coast:

The UK's Labour government, like other recent UK governments before it, is pressuring Scotland to allow the building of new nuclear power stations as its ageing nuclear plants near decommissioning. The SNP-led government in Holyrood has long opposed this as ecologically perilous and unnecessary given that Scotland already more than meets its own needs. The innumerable problems, delays and vast cost escalations encountered in building the new nuclear power station Hinkley Point C in Somerset in England haven't helped the UK government's case.

Anyone interested in how the loads on the UK electricity grid work can view the proportions from various sources in use in real time at https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

The smaller dials in the second row on the right show the two-way interconnector contributions via a network of cables linking the UK, Ireland, France, the Netherlands and other locations on the Continent. The flows will vary dynamically depending on which source has a surplus at any time and the spot price of electricity from that source.