In addition to The Times taking on the subject, The Daily Telegraph also picks up on Tuesday’s power outages, albeit – afflicted by the need for lurid headlines – under the misleading title, “Household energy bills 'to top £1,500'”.

Well down into the report, we find a “meanwhile” link (very useful that word), when the paper gets to the meat. Industry experts, we are told, are warning that “Britain's energy crisis could lead to a summer of blackouts because ageing power stations may be unable to cope with ever-increasing demand for electricity.”

View full article here

So the wind turbines won't save us?

I suspect not ... just a hunch!

http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/Global_War ... ocked.html

and

http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/Global_War ... e_Too.html

and

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/cdaebea0-2d18-1 ... 07658.html (wind farms getting dearer, aww)

and

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/11cba8b0-2d18 ... 07658.html

Like the new format by the way ... and not a trace of green anywhere!

Interesting stuff. King, as always, a bit unimaginative. You could, for instance, for for 100 percent of peak for your nuclear capacity, and use the spare capacity for high temperature electrolysis - moving towards a hydrogen economy.

Its not just about raw capacity but the ability to deliver it to customers.

Just have a read of the Pitt Review Interim Report into last summers floods to see how weak our whole critical national infrastructure is, lots of single points of failure

Scary stuff

Need to seperate out immediate problems from long term.

There is absolutely no problem with power capacity right now (on paper). Yesterday was the usual perfect storm but actually happens quite frequently in May and June. This is because most of the stations go down for maintenance during this period so plant margin is always a lot lower in May than it is during the winter. The grid tries to get companies to phase the maintenance but they have no compulsory powers (unlike the good old GEGB days). Its awkward to get maintenance crews later in the summer (they are like combine harvestor contractors) because of the holiday period. Simple remedy - give the Grid powers to control maintence periods, or a wider solution that would help a lot of other things too - i.e. do something about the summer school holidays.

The long term problem is the EU LCPD. We will lose significant coal plant capacity around 2014/15 because of this directive even though there is life left in the plants. However there is not enough life left (maybe 5/7 years) to pay for installation of the FGD clean up technology which would exempt you from the LCPD. Parking the "leave the EU" option, or "rescind the LCPD because AGW is a scam" option, it would of course be perfectly possible for the government (us) to just part pay (i.e. subsidise) more FGD, which can be installed very quickly, and so buy a further five years to mess around, or even build nuclear stations. Such a subsidy would be a lot less than that required for renewables and it would of course be spun as "green"

I don't think that subsidy could be paid without the direct permission of the EU ... otherwise, illegal state aid is it not?

it would be done on energy security and environmental grounds, the EU would pass it OK i think, esp. as EdF and RWE would be amongst the beneficeries

Only if it overcome these hurdles. I do not see that state aid to specific companies for the purpose of complying with a directive would necessarily do that.

The Greens are the greatest impediment to any sensible energy policy. In order to regain sanity, they need to lose their sheen. The best way to do that is to give the extremists what they want.

A couple of years ago protesters attempted to close Drax
http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 14071.html
It seemed to me at the time and more so now that a wise government would have "allowed" the protesters to storm the power station and shut down the grid, thereby causing a blackout across Yorkshire, at least. The government could have shared the pain by revolving power cuts across the regions of Britain, while it attempted to peacefully remove the protesters. Ordinary people would have been angered by the self righteous action of the protesters and as that anger grew they would have sanctioned forcible removal. Result: the Green movement discredited, at least at the extremes.

It's not inevitable that the Conservatives take the flak (assuming they are in power when the lights go out), providing they prepare the ground by continually warning about the consequences of current policy. Not that I expect them to do this of course.

Correction



In order for our energy policy to regain sanity, they (ie the Greens) need...