Options
Emergency Measures To Prevent Against Powers cuts
Emergency measures have been put in place to prevent the lights going out this winter and over the next few years. A couple of power stations which have been mothballed will go back online once checked if the national grid need them, plus banks like HSBC and other business have their own generators. It will cost us in the long run, but will stop us going backwards to the 70s where we saw us using candles and torches.
http://www.itv.com/news/story/2014-10-28/national-grid-warns-of-lowest-winter-fuel-supply-for-a-decade/
http://www.itv.com/news/story/2014-10-28/national-grid-warns-of-lowest-winter-fuel-supply-for-a-decade/
0
Comments
Bribing power stations that have been shut down due to our energy policy and Green Blobs to get ready to start up again.
Paying businesses to shut down or run on their emergency generators when the wind isn't blowing hard enough.
Paying people to build 'STOR' (Short Term Operating Reserve) which are basically banks of diesel or gas generators.
And this is all thanks to Ed Milliband, Chris Huhne and Ed Davey. Masters of our 'Green' energy policy. Cheap, reliable energy is an alien concept to them which is why modern, 21st Century Britain is in such a mess.
Oh, and if some of the power stations currently offline don't come back online, our margins are already zero. And if our economy had grown as expected a decade ago, they would be negative.
We'll all be saying the same thing for decades to come - what we really need is cross party agreement on long term energy plans that don't change every 4-5 years or when there is a new energy minister or when the department name changes.
Centrica had 3 gas storage projects ready to go, but lack of encouragement from the government (i.e. subsidies) means we could run short of gas in really cold spells because they weren't sanctioned. It could be significant when Russia turns off the taps this winter in retaliation for sanctions.
When the the weather is really bad, the windmills have to shut down. Just think how much better it would be if the money squandered on windmills had been spent on proper power stations.
I'll be all right then. I still have some of my 1970s candles also my trusty torches. One is always at the ready on my bedside table.
I share your sentiment.:D:D
http://youtu.be/rb4vh0mcFK4
No, it's all thanks to the obsession with privatisation of the Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron governments. Private companies work in their own interests. understandably, not the national interest. All governments of the past 35 years cite Adam Smith as their mentor, if only they'd actually acquainted themselves with his theory of the free market. Smith said bluntly that strategic industries should not be left to the market, and you can't get much more strategic than energy.
So exactly how much electricity IS generated by these wind turbines if they were all scrapped or never built to start with, how many power stations would it take to produce the electricity lost from them. Remembering of course it needs to be electricity produced on demand not just when to wind blows.
Nationalise energy production and it'll be both cheaper and more effective in the long run.
Energy is hardly a free market when you have the EU closing power plants and dictating whether energy companies build new ones.
In a truly free market they would stop micro-managing and let the private sector get on with it.
Not tell everybody or one day this winter you'll get a knock on the door from a man from the civil service asking if you can supply southern england
You're deluded if you think the free market would do the right thing with regard to planning sustainable, long term, green energy solutions for the whole country.
We should have started building more nuclear power stations as an interim solution about 15 years ago, with an ever increasing number of renewable sources also being researched and planned for.
The last government and this government have just sat on their hands though.
Would cost them a lot to reroute it! It's some sort of 70's diesel thing that we get serviced every year (mainly in case it blows up or something). It looks terribly inefficient. Noisy too. I look at it suspiciously when I go into the garage (where it lives). I stay in the middle of nowhere in the Scottish Borders and there were loads of power cuts up to early 80's. I guess the previous inhabitants put it in.
We've got most of those things as well, I remember the 3 day week in the 70's . Also we used to live on Anglesey where there were always power cuts !
Except they're useless when the weathers bad, ie too windy or not windy enough. And they're hideously expensive. Watch this session for some good news, bad news-
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/10/28/dieter-helm-on-energy-policy.html
Where Prof. Helm shares some inconvenient truths..
Broadly speaking we've had that for over a decade and we've also allowed energy policy to be captured by rent-seekers and the EU. Hence the latest annoucement for 80% CO2 reductions, 27% renewables and 27% efficiency. Or another £3-400bn on our energy costs. But to steal from Prof Helm and a comment on BH-
The three pillars of energy policy; Security, Economy and Emission Reduction are mutually incompatible.
Which may bring some good news..
Prof Helm pointed out we get less security from our current 'renewables' due to the intermittency problem, and if we wanted energy security it'd be easier and cheaper to stockpile oil, coal and gas. Gas prices have halved, although retail customers won't see this any time soon I suspect. Coal and oil prices have fallen, which leaves wind & solar as expensive follies.
Power stations are right-wing, apparently.
That policy was widely criticised as many pointed out that closing down TV at 10.30 probably increased consumption as people who'd all been watching TV in the same room would probably scatter to different parts of the house and switch on lights, heaters etc.
I remember our school cancelled all sorts of after school activities due to the power crisis, but the headmaster made a decision that the film club should still go ahead, as lots of people would be sitting in the dark in one room at school watching a film rather than in their own homes with lights, TV, etc, all on. Made a lot of sense. He's still alive by the way, in his 90s now.
How was it when the industry was nationalised before?
The problem there was that the fear and bullshit from the green lobby didn't allow it to happen. I agree, though, nuclear power stations should have been built long before now.