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]
John says:
March 4, 2011 at 12:59 pm
I am dumbfounded that people keep commenting on a FAKE ARTICLE. It is not real, no author, no record at the Telegraph NOTTA. Someone is having a good laugh, like moveon.org.
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Its real, I have the paper infront of me, this is a typical “spin” technique used in the UK, slide it out page 14, not attributed. But have no doubt the man said it and he means it. He will not go against his masters policies.
subjects.
à la lanterne!
How the hell will we keep our food frozen? This will be a public health nightmare.
The bloke, Steve Holliday, should be sacked!
This may be of use:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/minimalist-emergency-power/
The Guardian also covered the speech, but didn’t think this little tidbit was worth mentioning:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/01/national-grid-steve-holliday-energy-market
Britain began to cease as a nation-state in the eighties. This process is now almost complete. We are a fracture country, all but under the complete control of the Federal European Union. As Scotland, Wales and Ireland break ever further from union with England, they each sacrifice their perceived independence to central control by the unelected, undemocratic “parliament” of the Euro Soviet. On world-wide issues the British Government does as the US Administration says. Internally, we do what the European Parliament and Courts dictate. The lights might as well go out. I propose that England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales each apply to become the 51st, 52nd, 53rd and 54th states of the USA, respectively. Any seconders?
Marion says:
So welcome to the world politics of the future. Just as Obama in the US and Gillard in Australia totally disregard the will of the people and lead their countries to economic suicide (with he help of a compliant media ) so the same is happening in the UK.
Our politicians no longer represent the people.
They might want to take a look at Egypt and Libya for how the end game of that tends to go… Or maybe that little thing with Hitler and Stalin… or even how things like that lead up to the French Revolution…
Anyone who thinks things are “different now” is a poor student of history…
Then again, Europe seems to like “making a lot of history”. Too bad most of it is wars…
I’d blame this one mostly on poor reporting (coupled with poor phrasing on Holliday’s part). If you listen to the original interview, its clearer that he is talking about the ability of a smart grid to use various demand-response strategies (equipment cycling, etc.) coupled with a time of use price signal to flatten out load variations. We’re quickly implementing something similar here in the U.S.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9410000/9410485.stm
Willis if you are going to quote you should quote accurately not follow the route of the ubiquitous spin doctors. Your head post says “only using power when it was available” this does NOT appear in the article which says “get used to using power when it was available”. This is not a semantic quibble but a different meaning. In your interpretation it implies times when power is simply not there, but the article is making the point that smarter grid systems will enable power consumption to be more closely related to power availability i.e. peak demand being adjusted to mesh with peak supply. To some extent this is done already in a rather crude way by load balancing usually through price mechanisms cheaper power is available at night when demand is low but spare capacity high.
There is enough crap about in this issue without artificailly creating more
Speaking of the Guardian, it’s got a dedicated T-Shirt here:
http://dailymash.shotdeadinthehead.com/product_view.aspx?pid=1573
A more likely scenario than blackouts would be different electricity prices depending on how the power is being produced at the moment. On a windy day electricity would be very cheap and on a calm day hugely expensive. The metering would be fully automatic and display the current tariff for the consumer to encourage saving energy. People would install 10 cubic meter insulated water tanks and accumulate heat for household needs at the best price. Appliances could be programmed to start preferentially at the lower tariff. Industrial users could get a set tariff for the next 3 days based on the weather forecast.
Of course it seems absurd now that unpredictable power, produced at great expense, should be subsidized by overpricing more reliable energy sources, but five years of this tariff model, and nobody would give it much thought anymore.
Snip snip snip snip snip oooooh that’s gotta hurt snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip Hanging is too snip good for these scum sucking, bottom dwelling, snip snip snip snip snips.
That’s my candid opinion.
I think as an example of their environmental credentials, that all politicians, the Palace of Westminster (House of Commons and Lords), and the politicians’ private houses and their family residences, plus those of members of Greenpeace and other AGW supporters by volunteering – should be linked to the grid by smart meters that stop any supply from the grid should windfarms fall below lets say 50% of their contracted capacity.
This way they will show that they are leading from the front and relying on renewables. They will be able to set an example to the rest of the population in the ways to cope with power outages.
Watch the rapid rise of the UK Independence party over the next 5 years. I predict the UK Establishment is in for a shock as the population finally wakes up and smells the coffee.
I’ve tried every way I can think of to track down this report and can’t find it anywhere. Since the source at Bishop Hill was Phillip Bratby I believe it existed — it wouldn’t be like Phillip to play this sort of practical joke and anyway we’ve seen the scan. A commenter on Richard Black’s blog quotes from it but without a link; two other sites link either to here or Bishop Hill.
It looks as if it was either in the print edition only or got pulled very early Wednesday morning, for whatever reason.
The last person leaving the UK won’t need to switch out the lights!
Presumably the smart meters will be smart enough to ensure that the Guardian readers doing safe, grossly over-paid “non-jobs”get electricity when they want it. It will be the rest of us who suffer the power cuts.
At present it is the phoney war…..no warming since 1998 and all manner of pathetic excuses but the move away from the AGW doctrine is gathering pace and when the political morons come to us for their vote reality will eventually return.
Our Government who until fairly recently would not consider a new generation of nuclear power plants eventually saw the light even if we still have to go through the public enquiry stage.
A few years ago Prof. Philip Stott implored the Government to install the new wave of nuclear power plants, he wanted the same type as France and Finland as we could pool our technolgy and that is exactly what will happen even if french companies like EDF have to do it for us.
The nonsense will contiue for a while but eventually sanity will return…later than hoped for but it will return.
Wait for a raft of “early retirements” in the areas of green science and green media “experts”.
Rocky road perhaps but change will come.
Storm in a teacup – this will never, ever be allowed to happen, the person quoted was either an idiot or misquoted. Given the source of the quote I’m not surprised.
And the Agenda to rid the world of “undesirables” continues apace. Time to man up. You have a choice. You can either be a victim or a victor. Choose.
This is just code for smart grid.
What they mean is that the smart grid will enable people to choose to not consume as much energy when generation output falls. You will choose to turn your aircon off for half an hour during peak load times to maintain the transmission grid integrity. In exchange, you won’t face punitive prices for consuming energy during a load/generation mismatch time.
I’ll agree it is badly phrased, but this is basically what the addled mind is trying to say.
I heard China, India, Russia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Iran, Egypt, Philippines, ………………………
…….were doing the same
/sarc
E.M.Smith says:
March 4, 2011 at 1:25 pm
Marion says:
So welcome to the world politics of the future. Just as Obama in the US and Gillard in Australia totally disregard the will of the people and lead their countries to economic suicide (with he help of a compliant media ) so the same is happening in the UK.
Our politicians no longer represent the people.
They might want to take a look at Egypt and Libya for how the end game of that tends to go… Or maybe that little thing with Hitler and Stalin… or even how things like that lead up to the French Revolution…
Anyone who thinks things are “different now” is a poor student of history…
Then again, Europe seems to like “making a lot of history”. Too bad most of it is wars…
Mussolini was very popular – and look how that turned out.
Although one or two people have commented about generators, no-one seems to have picked up the fact that there are advanced plans being developed to site banks of large diesel generators on various industrial sites in the UK, specifically to be fired up when BigWind power generation drops off.
It seems likely that these are ex MoD generators, and I doubt that they will be burning bio-diesel!
Due to the Grid’s pricing structure, anyone who can supply decent quantities of electricity to the grid at very short notice (when the grid is under great strain) will be able to clean up.
They anticipate only operating a couple of hundred hours per year, but it looks like being a licence to print money.
I’ve not seen a whisper about this plan in the media.
Funny, that, isn’t it?