A series of events in recent weeks has set alarm bells ringing about the fragility of our electricity system.
On Wednesday, the National Energy System Operator, NESO, issued an Electricity Margin Notice (EMN) to the market, giving participants the opportunity to make any additional generation or flexibility available during the forecast period. It said its forecasts indicated tight electricity margins during Thursday evening's peak period, which it laughingly blamed on extreme temperatures across Europe reducing the availability of some generation.
In fact, the reason was very simple – lack of wind power during the hot weather.
EMNs used to be extremely rare, but this is the third issued this summer already. In the past our grid was largely centred around reliable baseload and dispatchable power. It was predictable and could easily be ramped up in times of emergency, such as lightning strikes. But now the system is over-reliant on weather-dependent renewables.
Two weeks ago, during the June heatwave, NESO was forced to import electricity from Europe, following another power supply warning. It paid 10 times the normal price for these emergency supplies from the Netherlands. To supply us, the Dutch ramped up their gas power plants – so much for Net Zero!
The situation on June 23rd was exactly the same as now – as solar power rapidly declines during early evening, there is a gap to fill, particularly with little wind power available. These conditions apply equally to Europe; they have a name for it – Hitzeflaute, which translates as 'heat
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So, at times, we need to use MORE electricity.
I seem to remember that, in the USA, they used to have ‘electric chairs’.
Our Beloved Leaders, so good at sitting on their plump posteriors, should help out by installing lots of them (for a start), in the Commons.
The most important question at this time is whether Burnham has both the will and the power to bring Miliband under control. Starmer tried and failed.
If not, then I fear that people will have to die before this madness can be ended. Loss of life in the Iberian blackout was limited because it happened in clement weather with several hours of daylight before nightfall. Sadly, the likelihood is that the first catastrophic cascade failure in the UK will occur during a dunkelflaute, in very cold weather and at night. The death toll doesn’t bear thinking about.
EDF idiot: “As a country, we’ve always got it wrong. We’ve always thought electricity demand was going to increase, but it decreased…”
Yes indeed if a supermarket halves the stock of a product on its shelves, and doubles the price – guess what? Customers will buy less.
Run continuous propaganda about how we must use less electricity, quadruple the price and guess what?
So Monsieur EDF demand has not decreased, consumers have not chosen to use less, they have been forced to use less.
To be fair it has decreased due to some sensible reasons – the move to LED lighting for one, LCD tv’s etc… sadly the hollowing out of our heavy industries is also a big reason, but that’s largely political sadly… technology improvements usually happen ‘despite’ governments, not because of…
”When we have too much wind power at the moment…”
Let’s analyse that. There is an over-capacity of wind power, but capacity is not power, which is the rate of energy flow.
And that is the problem. The political creatures and eco-loons do not understand the difference.
Since for 70% of the time on-shore wind provides no energy flow, for off-shore 50% to 60% of the time there is no energy flow, not only is there not too much power from wind, there is too little.
Building more and more capacity without actually increasing energy flow, is trying to solve the insoluble. It’s like trying to solve water shortage in the Sahara by building more and more reservoirs.
Wind turbines do not generate electricity, they capture kinetic energy from the wind and convert it into electricity, but no wind = no electricity.
Unless they can find a way to engineer a steady, constant air-stream at the right speed across the land and seas, then no matter how many more windmills they build, and transmission lines to connect them all up, they reality is as a means of electricity production it is entirely in the hands… Read more »
There you are, outlining the practicalities of power generation from a non continous source. All of this would have made perfect sense to a 20th century audience.
Now it seems to be increasingly a foreign language to the cultists out there. Like all fools they start with the conclusion they want and work back from there. They don’t follow the science, they corrupt it.
We also see next to no discussions or studies on how extracting this kinetic energy from the wind, usually over a nice cooling sea, impacts the cooling of the land / the urban heat island effect. In physics nothing is free – yet I see very little discussion or science on this…
Given the current temperatures across Europe, I wonder how much it’s impacted / caused by the slowing of the natural wind cycles across the continent by wind turbines…?
Solar power diminishes as the temperature rises, even with a blue sky. At least they can forecast the temperature and take it into account. More volatile under variable cloud cover.
Its not ‘heatwaves’ it’s summer!
Many hotter westenised countries dont moan about electricity availability, Saudi Arabia for instance, “Saudi Arabia generates nearly all of its electricity (over 97%) by burning fossil fuels, specifically splitting its power grid between natural gas and crude oil/petroleum liquids. Natural gas provides about 63% of the power, while crude oil and petroleum products supply approximately 35%”
Don’t forget that the activist Met Office have changed the limits to make ‘heatwaves’ appear more frequent when measured by their junk weather stations. I would say that I have seen readings over 90 on my patio thermometer quite a bit the last few weeks.
From the article…:
“In fact, the reason [for the problem] was very simple – lack of wind power during the hot weather.”
This reads as if the solution would be to have more windmills. It should be rephrased:
“In fact, the reason was very simple – a grid which has become overdependent on windmills which then failed to generate enough power during the hot, calm weather.”
We may have already hit the Pollack Factor – the amount of wind generation that can actually be used. Go beyond it such as enough to provide 100% of our maximum demand you will encounter a big increase in having to constrain wind generation. Under our system that means huge wads of taxpayers/consumers money being paid out. And of course the alert ones will have noted that you will need a full back up generation system for when there is no wind.
It’s a question of when it fails, not if. The sooner we have a Spanish style blackout the sooner the population will wake up. That should also be the end of Miliband.
He’ll blame it on the French not supplying…..
How do I contact the Sceptic team regards a possible subject worthy Net Zero investigation?
[email protected]
How to take a reliable, relatively cheap system of providing electricity, and utterly ruin it in less than two decades.
Well done Westminster Uni-Party, and a particular shout-out to Treason May, the Fat Oaf and Red Ed.
Just one more example of decades of successive governments doing the exact reverse of what they were elected and handsomely to do, to the detriment of the people who elected them.
“Two weeks ago, during the June heatwave, NESO was forced to import electricity from Europe”
We average net 10% from abroad. As I write it’s 26! That’s OK because we are the Saudi Arabia of wind, and as we know, wind is just like oil, very easy to store and control the supply thereof. I think it was one of those political heavyweights from the “Conservative” Party that coined that phrase, glad they were in charge for all that time rather than letting the woefully “under powered” Reform lot run things.
27.2 percent from interconnectors now. The highest I’ve ever seen.
Beyond incompetent, beyond embarrassing.
Thanks Uniparty.
And yet in my corner of Surrey it is really breezy this morning.
What is the hold Milliband has over the Labour Government.
Need to create demand for electricity. When it’s hot. How about air conditioning?
They could increase demand for electricity by reducing the prices. We’re all watching our bills go up and looking for what economies we can make. And it’s government policy that’s driving the price rises, through subsidies for unreliables and constraint payments.
Successive governments have seen Britain as the leader of the net zero transition. I think we’re more like the lemming at the front, charging full pelt for the cliff edge.
Precisely. The more the price of electricity increases the less I use. I live alone so I can control it very easily. I feel sorry for families with teenagers where it will be incredibly hard to cut consumption.
Unless they make electricity much cheaper thats a non starter.
A quarter of a century ago, it was – even cheaper than gas at low loads at night rate. It’s the other way round now, though. Back then, there was a lot more nuclear power that was looking for a base load to keep them running at night.
And we could still have that nice ‘problem’ to manage if we had politicians who could see further than a month or two ahead, and we’d built 10 or 20 more PWR’s when Sizewell B was built… sadly no longer the case
Jut how much more stupid can a nation’s government be? Heaven help us!
Wait until Prince Andrew is crowned PM by the end of the week.