Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I guess having electricity when you need it is sooooo last century … UK families will have to get used to “only using power when it was available”. That constant electricity at home was dangerous anyhow, the unending hum of the wires can drive a man so insane that the only way to cure him is to make him head of the National Grid …
UK persons … comments?
w.
[Update, for those who believe the above is a faked article, I had Green Sand send me a photo and another scan of the actual newspaper. ~ ctm]
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“As a society we all need to be clear about what we can and cannot afford”. Exactly. As in, can you really afford all those expensive, ugly, noisy, inefficient and near-useless bird-blenders some like to call “wind turbines”? Of course not, so out they go. Next, analyze how affordable carbon taxes are. Those are really just dead weight on any economy, so jettison those. Somehow, I don’t think that is what he meant, though.
“As a society we all need to be clear on what we can and cannot afford.” Gee, is that how they debated green energy programs ?
I’m a UK citizen.
I left, some say abandoned ship, almost a decade ago. I live in a country not too far away with 80% of its power generated by nuclear reactors. A country that has just ruled an existing wind farm in Brittany (dang, gave the location away !) was built illegally, a ruling that looks like it could ban all offshore and coastal monuments to human credulity. We have a few windfarms, of course, but they are really only there to shut the looney greens up.
Would the UK allow private enterprise to provide power for the grid? Even with the carbon tax, you could make a killing when no other power is available, if you could charge whatever the market would bear.
Well he did warn that ‘the government was looking to communities and individuals to take power into their own hands’
I think that this is just the right sort of action to follow – but rather like in Egypt. – And sharpish too.
Douglas
Americans have started to draw the line and resoundingly voted in a congress with there wherewithall and madate to bring sanity into the energy debate. Unfortunately the EPA has way too much independent power and its affiliated NGOs (Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc) have too many lawyers at its beck and call and can litigate any power company into oblivion. Hopefully we can start rolling back their power and dismantle their bueracratic power base.
I know one congressman is attempting to reverse the banning of incandescent light bulbs. Now we need to get nukes back on the pipling by cutting through the ridiculous fear and demagogry that exitsts.
Wasn’t there a chap by the name of Cromwell that sorted out the last batch of tower-dwellers with similar aspirations to make the serfs get on with accepting their proper place in life? Anyone got his number so could ring him up for a sequel with even better special effects?
What is truly amazing is that he has actually said what many commentators like Christopher Booker have been saying for years that we are heading for rolling blackouts and brownouts because of the gap between new nuclear coming on stream and the old nuclear and coal being phased out. This is very much off-message and I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t made to retract in the future. Blackouts can not possibly be any government’s policy, it would be electoral suicide. He may be playing a clever game to put his political masters on the spot. Don’t forget that the grid operators have been complaining recently about the difficulties of coping with wind’s variability and how it unbalances the grid.
I echo all the other comments about lunatics and the management of the UK asylum.
I cannot believe this will be allowed to happen. If it did, the political fall-out would be massive. No government that had this as a policy would survive.
As a Brit who makes his living selling services to the electricity & gas sector….
When you read this, you need to have an understanding of how the UK industry is structured, and how National Grid makes it’s money.
Grid’s one of the remaining regulated parts of our industry. It’s permitted profits are tied to the capital value of the network, and that is largely a function of the sheer length of cable involved. If the network doesn’t grow, Grid doesn’t grow – and the share price doesn’t increase. If the network has to grow fast, Grid looks like a growth stock, and since it funds most investment through borrowing, the share price does VERY nicely.
So, on a small island like Britain, what makes the network mileage increase?
Connecting windfarms. Ideally lots of them. You may not pass much actual energy over the wires, but the regulator will adjust your unit price to compensate for that.
So, Grid’s been talking up the amount of wind capacity it can tolerate for a few years. Even better, since it doesn’t carry the costs of back-up generation, it doesn’t have to address that.
If, rather than building lots of windfarms, we put multiple nuclear units on existing sites, Grid would only have to spend perhaps £4bn on upgrades, as opposed to £20bn or so – but would only get a return on that smaller sum.
But… but… but… this is the 21 st century…
where is my trip to the moon, where is my sub orbital flight to Australia… where is my flying car?
I never figured that I would need to know where electricity went.
VOTE UKIP
All the stories have been told
Of kings and days of old,
But there’s no England now.
All the wars that were won and lost
Somehow don’t seem to matter very much anymore.
All the lies we were told,
All the lies of the people running round,
They’re castles have burned.
Now I see change,
But inside we’re the same as we ever were.
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Living this way, each day is a dream.
What am I, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Now another century nearly gone,
What are we gonna leave for the young?
What we couldn’t do, what we wouldn’t do,
It’s a crime, but does it matter?
Does it matter much, does it matter much to you?
Does it ever really matter?
Yes, it really, really matters.
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Now another leader says
Break their hearts and break some heads.
Is there nothing we can say or do?
Blame the future on the past,
Always lost in blood and guts.
And when they’re gone, it’s me and you.
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line.
Imagine if the head of the Water Utility said they would only supply water occasionally.
Does this clown not realist that it is his job to keep the lights on.
40 Shades
Unfortunately, here in the UK, the eco-loonies are still firmly in control of the agenda.
The BBC unquestionably regurgitates the gospel according to the IPCC and our prime minister is ignorant enough to say “If you want to understand climate change, go and see Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth”.
Luckily, public opinion does seem to be slowly turning and European shale gas could well turn out to be a game-changer.
The UK is in deep, deep trouble, but I haven’t given up all hope just yet.
Shimon peres – “We must end oil”
I’m glad you posted on this Willis, as it empitomises the insanity at the heart of British politics. All three main parties are drunk on the Kool-aid of AGW alarmism. They seem to have a contest to see who can out do each other at coming up with the most imaginative ways to cripple the economy.
Once we switch over to ‘renewables’ (ie wind) there will have to be a complete change in the way we do business. Firms and their employees will have to be on standby until they get a paging signal from the grid – the wind is blowing!
Can you hear the noise as machinery hums back into life? The much touted High Speed train which has been sat idle for the last 5 days while a high pressure system downed most of the electricity, is ready to roll, cutting down the journey time from Birmhingham to London from 1hr 40 minutes to 1 hour 10 minutes.
It is 4 am in London and it is pitch black- the street lamps that used to line the roads in bygone days are long gone. There just wasn’t sufficient power available. But now – now lights are shining from a thousand windows as the electricity begins to flow like streams in a Spring thaw. If you are careful you can pick your way down Euston Road without tripping up a kerb stone.
Idle machines are hummimg back to life. The country has set up a 3 shift pattern that will role 24/7 as long as the wind blows – no business would risk wasting one second of power-time, as they call it. Some of the old folks remember how it used to be, with shops and factories closing at 5. Now you can go to the bank, have a haircut or get your groceries at 2am on a Sunday. In fact, to avoid confusion they did away with week days. There are just months and day numbers. There are still some people who can calculate what day of the week it is – or would have been – today. But they are considered troublemakers who hanker over the past.
How long the hustle and bustle will continue before the wind passes, and sends the country back to its slumber, nobody is sure. The Met office have got a new model. They say they can predict how long the wind will blow, but to date they have had little success, and nobody listens to them any more. We just toil until the end of power-time, then sit and wait. And wait.
This is all about forcing each household to have a personal carbon allowance. It is the rise of the shadow currency.
It should come as no surprise that this issue is borne of the looming energy gap in the UK between supply and consumption. It should also come as no suprise that our now Deputy Prime Minister denied there was going to be an energy gap and claimed all that was needed was a greener energy mix – and not nuclear.
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/the-nick-clegg-lib-dem-approach-to-energy/
We also have to pay higher energy bills here because of the EU inspired Renewables Obligation, along with a number of other charges loaded into our bills. You can read about it here
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/wind-farm-subsidies-cost-us-1bn-in-energy-bills/
As has been recognised above, the implications of what was reported are enormous. Yet this short piece was buried amongst other short pieces on an inside page of a so called quality newspaper. It should have been a headline on the front page. UK is sleepwalking to disaster, yet so few of the populace, including the intelligent members of the community, appear to take a blind bit of notice. “Whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.” (Euripides)
Within a generation or so, the Unted Kingdom will have become part of the Islamic State of Europe, so getting our electricity supply to match those of so many present day Islamic states seems perfectly understandable.
We’re screwed. But I bet there’s someone in Obama’s administration eyeing this enviously. Where we lead today in the UK you’ll soon follow in the US…
During the early phase of the American running of Iraq many jounralist/talking heads grumbled about how the electricity was only operating part of the day. Little did we know that it was a good thing and Britain would decide to emulate Iraq.
I spent quite a bit of one moderatley cold December in Rome back around 1988 or 1989 when we had electricity 6 hours per day, and there was a rotating schedule for when you got your 6 hours. It was interesting, but not devastating. In a colder climate it would be much worse. Dickens anyone?
yes – All our polititcians believe in the green utopian energy fairy, one wave of her carbon wand will provide bountiful wind energy, whenever it is required..
That reminds me, just need to finish a blog post about a wind-turbine near me. 🙂
Mr Holliday is merely representing the logical outcome of the hand he’s been dealt. He can’t be complicit in this, right? IOW, if I were in charge “electricity distribution,” and my superiors told me “all distribution will be sourced via windfarms by 2030,” then my next statement would be “OK, but there won’t be enough electricity to go around.”
I do the same thing in business every day, when I’m in meetings consulting on database needs and solutions. Most of the time, I’m just there waiting to be told what to do. When I’m asked my opinion on something, I give it, and it’s summarily dismissed by the “dreamers” as a buzz-kill. So I let them pay me to build something I KNOW won’t meet their real longterm needs, but WILL do this one thing very well for a short period of time. So they have to pay me again, later.
Seems to me, Mr Holliday is doing the same thing: “I’m just the messenger. I’ve been told to make due with windfarms. This is the ramification.” All the while knowing it won’t affect him (his job will require 24/7 power; he’s one of the elites), and panders to the Greens. He’s playing it both ways, “my hands are tied.” I don’t think he personally cares either way.
The Era of the Power Chief, Steve Holliday, who says that the “Era of constand electricity at home is ending” is coming to an end. If he and his fellow government cult members really believe that people will put up with intermittent service they have a big surprise waiting for them when they no longer get government pay checks.
Yes, the people that need to the change in behavior are people like Steve Holliday and the rest of the National Grid organization. Time for a change in management to people and engineers who have the wherewithal to make the system work and keep on delivering power.
In addition, I do support independent power generation via any means that makes economic sense without subsidies, mostly because it makes sense to have independent distributed redundancy in a power grid. The big question is what technologies and the bigger question is having political policies that permit independent power generation and sale to the grid in a market based approach like they have in Alberta, Canada but prevent in British Columbia due to “green” politics. Yeah, that’s right, in a province which is mostly mountains we can’t put in our own power generation on our lands and sell it to the power grid but just next door in Alberta you can. Sigh.