The nuke load proportion is high right now. Quite often it's considerably lower, due to maintenance and other glitches. We're increasingly reliant on gas to make up shortfalls. CCGT isn't a bad technology, just not sustainable in the long term. We're currently experiencing low wind speeds across the UK (barely a leaf stirring here today). That's unlikely to last for long, but it doesn't help when it coincides with colder weather (it's actually unseasonably warm at the moment).
Much is made of the need for gas backup to cover the intermittent supply from wind, but the same backup's also needed for nuclear, as that can go offline very unexpectedly and suddenly if there are problems. At least with wind, we can rely on weather forecasting to an extent. Solar is reliable, and as that Gridwatch chart shows, isn't fully accounted for. Even here in Scotland, many homes now have solar arrays.
We have a lot of promising technologies that need more investment. If a fraction of what's been allocated to Hinkley was diverted into tidal stream (we have some interesting projects now coming online), geothermal, offshore wind (expensive now, but there are experimental installations trying to look at ways to bring that down) etc., it would be a much better investment. We should have been doing all this thirty or forty years ago, but y'know, Bush & Co. and the petro-industrial complex and the last round of pooh-poohing of climate change ....
The generation side is only one aspect, of course. We have massive gains to make in terms of conservation and efficiency. If we don't do it voluntarily, it will no doubt be forced on us by events.
This Telegraph article echoes similar warnings from Ofgem, for instance back in 2012, when they were predicting the lights might be going off at times of peak load within three years and prices would rocket. That hasn't happened, but probably more through luck than judgement.
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