Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Beautiful pictures Ducked!
Ontario phased out coal, primarily with Nuclear, in 2012. 85% of Ontario's power comes from Nuclear and Hydro-Electric. The rest of it is a mix of gas, wind and solar.
It would seem wind is markedly more effective in Scotland than it is in Ontario, as the Wiki indicates an average capacity factor of 31%, which is higher than the rest of the EU at ~25% and they have a record-holding farm with a 58% CF. They have ~1,200MW more than we do (5,645MW vs 4,412MW) which produces ~22,000GWh based on 3.91GWh/MW of installed capacity calculated using the Wiki numbers. Comparatively we produced 9,200GWh; 2.09GWh/MW, which accounts for only 8% of our needs.
Generally windier conditions and a significantly smaller market (1/3rd the size) certainly helps with these experiments and transitions. They also export almost 30% of their power.
I also find Scotland's nuclear market to be a bit interesting, as it accounted for 35% of their generation in 2015 (from the Scottish government, renewables were listed as 42%) yet they only have two units with a total installed capacity of 2,652MW.
Scotland is an interesting use case in power generation. It's a country, sure, but at 5.3 million people, it would be 23rd in population of US states, just ahead of South Carolina, just below Minnesota. Power generation for a that small of a user group can be greatly influenced by just a few plants, where a province like Ontario, at 12 million, isn't influenced as much by one plant. As you say, 1/3 the size, windier, less densely populated.
