From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
DECEMBER 17, 2021
By Paul Homewood
High pressure is settling in now for at least the next week, not only in the UK but also over much of NW Europe.
Hardly surprising then that wind power has disappeared to virtually nothing here, just 0.62 GW:
We are now dangerously reliant on interconnectors, not least because wind power is also falling in countries like Germany and Denmark:
In Germany, demand is currently running at 70 GW, leaving a shortfall of 10 GW with generation at 60 GW.
Poland, France and Spain have little to spare, which means that the rest of Europe is largely dependent on Norway and Sweden, which together have a surplus of 13 GW.
Given that this surplus all comes from hydro and nuclear (Sweden), there will be no easy way to increase this when the demand for it inevitable arises.
To griff et al, well done! /S
Griffo has put all his money in solar, another big con of catastrophists.
However there is some serious solar science done as you are reading this
Parker solar probe flying into solar plasma
https://youtu.be/Ihcekc8C4AU
Like to know more, easy listening here
https://youtu.be/aQaCY7wlQEc
Let’s close the nuclear and coal powerplants!
That’s indeed the plan in Germany..
also need to boycott and stop using Russian gas
Germany and the rest of the like-minded wimps are Putin’s biach …. for decades to come … at best.
Gawd help humanity, for the politicians won’t.
Tut: humanity is so yesterday.
it’s because they wrote ‘man’ bit out of it, but hue bit is all the rage.
Indeed.
Also I see no real problem here, as I’m sure griff can confirm. If you eliminate the 75% supplied by fossil fuel and nuclear, surely the elite represent less than 25% of the population. There will always be plenty for them, right? So where exactly does anybody see a problem?
Going back to living like the Teutons did. Jippy.
“No Wind Friday”
No wind Saturday or Sunday, too.
I hear they’ve ramped up coal – quietly, of course.
What if that high pressure center just sits there for weeks – not days — like an old broody hen on a fresh clutch of eggs????
Then solar panels kick in and save the day … er … the night ,,. er … hmm … better make a friendly phone call to Vald …
Of course they kick in, especially here in sunny England, where we have 16 hours of night and can have four hours of gloom (sometimes more) in December
High-pressure systems can certainly last a long time over the United States land area.
I don’t know how long the UK will enjoy this nice weather from the high-pressure system overhead, but eventually it will move off and then the UK will be north of the jet stream where cold air can come in along with another high-pressure system that might sit on top of them for some more time, and the windmills will fall to zero again, only it will be cold this time.
Most of us are probably seeing the folly of windmills by now. Are our leaders starting to wake up to this reality? Maybe some, but it will probably take some disaster to really bring them around, like a very cold spell in the UK and no electricity to fend off the cold.
We are hitting the Windmill Wall. The sooner the leadership figures this out, the better off all of us will be.
Unfortunately our useless politicians are increasingly in favour of making the UK “the Saudi Arabia of wind power”. More like “the laughing stock of wind power”.
“the UK will enjoy this nice weather from the high-pressure system”
I’m not sure on which planet 5 degrees would be considered nice weather. It’s fiendishly cold by my standards (Canberra).
Let’s just say it is better to be south of the jet stream, if you like warmer weather, than north of the jet stream.
I admit to being a bit of a naturist. Here is what one wind project does to many square miles of once pristine natural landscape.
From space. Remember that all the towers are tied together with roadways and powerlines which must be capable of transmitting about 115% of the nameplate power rating but end up carrying an average of only about 25% of nameplate power. Waste on waste.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Henvey+Inlet+Indian+Reserve+No.+2,+Unorganized+Centre+Parry+Sound+District,+ON,+Canada/@45.8468237,-80.7247116,21645m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x4d2854b13122e2ef:0x5037b28c7232700!2sNorth+Bay,+ON,+Canada!3b1!8m2!3d46.3091152!4d-79.4608204!3m4!1s0x4d2ea7a2f3e23051:0xe6fbc40c2b8a32b9!8m2!3d45.8347199!4d-80.6366444
And the construction, from the ground:
https://henveyinletwind.com/galley/construction-gallery
The blades sweep a disk of 136 meters with hub heights as great as 149 meters, so they are taller than a 60-story building:
https://www.vestas.com/en/products/4-mw-platform/V136-3-45-MW
Oooh! Juat, checked the wind speed: less than 10MPH, and it’s been like that all day – so quiet you’d think a swarm of something or other might be heading this way….
And baby, it’s cold outside, too! Barely 30F, cloudy, no wind – we’re doomed!!
Sunday afternoon, and still not on breath or hint of even a small breeze.
What’s happening??????????
It’s Monday, just after sunset, and there has not been a breath of air stirring all day. Period. We are in a deadly calm…. or something like that.
I have pretty good weather forecasting.
It’s currently freezing, with zilch wind in most of central France, so no doubt the same in Germany nearby.
Thick freezing fog means ZILCH solar, and the snow that fell is lying there in the valleys not melting with temp inversions in those valleys.
(that can last months in Germany.
It’s forecast to have wind and rain for 25th-27th december after which it goes dead calm all over again.
A very cold winter has started.
I haven’t seen the temps in the Baltic and Russia so early for many many years.
good luck to the useful idiots in Germany who shut down NPPs, just at the exact time the northern hemisphere goes into a series of freezing winters. (I reckon until beyond 2030…)
shush now, don’t tell anybody!
How about we send all our politicians a beautifully wrapped up lump of coal for Christmas?
Chucking it would be quicker!
In one breath, the various trolls declare that the lack of wind isn’t a problem because the coal plants took up the load.
In the next breath they declare how urgent it is that coal plants be shut down.
And then they wonder why the rest of us are laughing at them.
And clandestine diesel generators, as they do in South Australia and Victoria?
And interconnectors
Almost 2GW of coal today.
JF
Reliance on everyone else’s power generation is what you get when you californicate a country.
The alarmists consoled themselves with having the ability to import electricity from other nations when the wind did not blow in the UK, but they are going to need longer transmission lines because, as we see with this current high-pressure system, it covers a very large area so there may not be any extra electricity to import within the confines of the high-pressure system.
Windmills are a deadend. It’s time for alarmists to pivot. And we know where.
You can see it in real time here – https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/GB
This morning I attempted to leave a rather innocuous and 100% factual remark on one of the few YouTube channels to which I subscribe (Blancolirio). I happened to refresh the page and… comment deleted. Tried 5 more times and all deleted within 30 seconds. According to the movie quote “they can’t handle the truth”.
Here is the horrible comment. ( a recalled recap of my first attempt, and copy-pasted from the next five):
When the clock struck midnight in CA this evening (12/18-19) all “renewables” combined with batteries supplied less power to the grid than the one remaining nuclear plant, and met less than 10% of the demand. The vast majority of demand was met by natural gas and imports from other states. And yet the leftists in CA want to eliminate nuclear and eventually natural gas. And now they want you to surrender your backup generators.
It is not unusual at all for “renewables” to meet less than 10% of demand, so these intermittent sources require 100% backup.
Data here: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html
Select a day on the calendar, scroll down to “Supply trend” and point the curser to any time on the graph.
They can’t stand the truth.
People should stop using Youtube, and use an alternate service.
Congress 2023 may have something to say about all this censorship by the Leftwing Social Media.
The radical Left is definitely trying to usher in 1984. They got a huge setback yesterday from Senator Manchin. I may have to send Manchin a campiagn contribution. He may have just saved the Republic from socialism. There’s more work to do, of course. It’s not over yet.
The green blob needs to work on their wind dance.
Sorry about your luck!
Robert Heinlein proved right again:
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
Agreed. I found over the years that Mr. Heinlein has been right about quite a few things.
That was the theme of Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
Sow the wind power, reap the lack of power.
I checked outside just now. It isn’t even moving here where I live!!
Who stole the wind????
Really, I would rather see the treetops here moving just about – about 50 feet up at the top – than standing there doing nothing.
Somebody needs to do an investigation of how American windmill farms fared during this blast of high winds we had a couple of days ago. The winds were up over 100mph in many locations and were strong clear across the United States. This had to have put pressure on the windmill farms to shut down their windmills in the high winds.
We hardly ever get any statistics on these kinds of things. The windmill companies tend to be secretive for some reason.
Well, the wind must be blowing somewhere! All they have to do is run some wires to the windmills in those windy areas. At least, that’s what the green blob says will work. 😉 Amiright?
Why can’t they hook a fan up and blow air into the windmills….perpetual motion 🤓
Mid north Atlantic basin?
“All they have to do is run some wires to the windmills in those windy areas.”
Yes, you are right. I’ve seen alarmists suggest we run transmission lines all around the world because the wind is always blowing somewhere, and get our electricity that way. The same for solar panels.
It’s ridiculous, or course. Even if we had transmission lines all around the world, the nation selling electricity, might not have enough to sell and cover its own domestic needs, too, even with the wind blowing and the sun shining. And then national interests become a part of the equation, so they might have enough to sell, but decide for political reasons not to do so.
Everybody is better off with homegrown nuclear. This eliminates a lot of problems.
Or they could sell their available electricity at inflated prices to jurisdictions in need. The world is not a friendly place.
The WORLD needs a French Revolution, Leftist politicians need to GO, and get gone.
I believe wind turbines only chop off the heads of birds.
Perhaps not a “French Revolution”.
Quoth the Wiki: “The Reign of Terror, commonly called The Terror (French: la Terreur), was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety.”
Now an American Revolution would be a much better option.
The temporary insanity of a mob is not a good option.
I think you missed the point
Thank goodness we have reliable energy to back up unreliable windmills and solar.
If we didn’t have windmills and solar, we’d have a reliable, cheap grid
I 💘 Iamkate
Of course they had no wind, we had it all in Michigan the last few days, sustained winds of 35mph+ in many spots. In fact so much wind that most all the turbines in the state had to be shut down, I heard, from a quasi-reliable source, that Thursday’s total useful production was about 3 megawatts, add that to the fact that there was widespread mixed precipitation and any solar in the state probably produced close to zilch. Renewables, that’s the ticket.
It would be nice to see some statistics on windmills. I bet most of them were shut down all across the central U.S. during those couple of days of very high winds.
Windmills don’t work good in no-wind conditions, and they don’t work good in high-wind conditions. They need everything “just right”.
The meaning of “Goldilocks Climate”.
We have a large and growing interconnector capacity by design…
Yeah, which makes it easier for the entire system collapse, gee you don’t get it as usual.
To paraphrase a religious quote,
Green energy judgement day is coming! And it’s coming right soon!
Griff I rather suspect that most of Europe is going to get a serious reality slap this winter.
Unfortunately idiots like you will just double down and claim its simply because we haven’t moved quickly enough to renewables.
You are the kind of zealot that will freeze to death – whilst claiming green energy is working.
It isn’t and it never will – trust me I’m an engineer.
So how does that work if the wind isn’t blowing, griff???
I think Griff wants to expand the interconnection over to China in hopes that the wind is blowing over there, when he runs short of wind in the UK.
Way more windmills of course. And for calm nights add a bunch of solar panels.
Griff seems to think interconnectors actually generate electricity.
DC Interconnection of local grids is the way forward. Not all demand peaks at the same time. Not all generation falls to zero at the same time.
Over Nov and Dec the French have been dipping into UK supplies (up to 2GW limit) since they seem to have maxed out their Nuclear supply. They have also been using up to 8GW of German supply. French National Grid status (templar.co.uk)
There are “plans” for an interconnector to north Africa from uk. this is to allow cheap solar to be used.
The Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project will be a new electricity generation facility entirely powered by solar and wind energy combined with a battery storage facility. Located in Morocco’s renewable energy rich region of Guelmim Oued Noun, it will cover an approximate area of 1,500km2 and will be connected exclusively to Great Britain via 3,800km HVDC sub-sea cables.
(sounds a bit ott to me)
+
Feasibility study underway for Elmed Mediterranean (Italy-Tunisia) electricity interconnector
0 Oct 2021 — In North Africa, Egypt is setting itself up to become a major regional power interconnector.
Ahh the drink bleach Ghalfrunt returns with more stupid
Connection to North African Solar generated electricity. What can go wrong?
Putting your electricity supply in the hands of people who aren’t really your friend. What can go wrong? There’s a time difference to consider.
And what happens when the wind is not blowing everywhere, and it’s night time?
You do realize that those batteries are only good for a minute or two of power?
That’s just about enough time to get the cover off the diesel generator and top up the tank if necessary!
“Not all demand peaks at the same time. Not all generation falls to zero at the same time.”
Wind and solar *do* fall to zero at the same time. It’s called nighttime.
Europe spans how many time zones? Four? During the winter you get what, eight hours of sun leaving 16 hours of dark? Subtract four hours from that to account for the spread of the time zones and it leaves you 12 full hours of dark.
What happens during the dark hours? The dark hours which have peak EV charging demand, peak home appliance usage, high industrial plant usage, etc?
Simples: just lay a copper cable across the Atlantic ocean floor between the US and the EU.
Has to be 3 meter / 10 feet thick though.
You forgot the sarc tag.
“Not all generation falls to zero at the same time.”
but a lot of wind and solar generation does, solar falling to zero for hours on end… reliably.
i don’t care what you do to upgrade the grid, if you don’t produce electricity the juice don’t flow. wind and solar can not and will not supply civilization with needed power with out massive backup from fossil and nucs. reality is going to slap you very hard.
Correction –
“regional lunacy interconnector”
It makes a lot of money for some folk. That’s the point.
” … it will cover an approximate area of 1,500km2 … ”
Are you talking about 1500 km2 of disaster, problems, headaches, failures and permanent high cost of repairs?
An array of 1500 sq Km is equivalent to an approximately 40Km x 40Km area of land. That’s absolutely colossal.
Perhaps Griff and Ghalfrunt could be usefully employed to clean the sand and dust off said array.
Yes, they must also build a city and transfer to there the thousands of maintenace staff needed to keep it working!…
I think he’s talking about 1,500 km2 of poverty stricken people that could really do with the money they’d get from stealing all that copper and selling it for food.
You do know they have night time in Africa too, don’t you?
DC inter-connectors are for 3rd world countries … oh wait UK is trying to get itself there so keep going.
“We have a large and growing interconnector capacity by design…”
…better sort out those north south German connections first, wouldn’t want any of those nasty destabilizing loop-flows to block things up.
Well the capacity was growing … until the IFA-1 fire happened, at least …
Interconnectors only work when the other guy has excess power.
Once everything is wind and solar, that will end.
I’m sure that the climate pious like griff and ghalfrunt will be happy (and indeed proud) to have their power shut off multiple times per week and for several days at a stretch a few times per quarter.
Continuous power is for the Politburo, of course.
You have a large and glowing interconnect running over design capacity. There I fixed it for you. 😰
Interconnects assume your partners on the the other side have a surplus and are not looking to get power from you instead. This is not a safe assumption with partners who also depend on renewables to a significant degree.
I provided details on current UK interconnects in a separate comment. Largest single partner is France with 3.0GW capacity over two links. Next is Norway with 1.4 GW. Then Belgium and Netherlands at 1 GW each. Finally Ireland and Northern Ireland at 0.5 GW each. France is mostly nuclear and Norway is almost entirely hydro, so roughly 4.4 GW can be reasonably counted on if needed. But when you need to import power the most the rest of those partners might not have any surplus. For example today at peak demand the UK was importing 5.36 GW.
Based on 2016 data, France has a total generation capacity of 130.80 GW and Norway has 33.86 GW. Both have interconnects with multiple other countries.
If everyone is looking at interconnects to compensate for insufficient renewable production, unless someone builds more reliable generation capacity there won’t be enough to go around. Solar PV output goes to zero for all of Europe at the same time, and persistent weather conditions can drop wind output to near zero for large areas covering most of Europe. The cookie jar simply isn’t big enough for everyone to have their hands in at the same time.
Northern Ireland is out of the UK already?
I guess grid management boundaries don’t align exactly with political entities. Northern Ireland is a separate grid, so flows on that link will be reported as power import/exports.
Might want to say interconnections to Great Britain?
Not So Great Britain?
The country formerly known as Great Britain?
Maybe should just say Britain, to your point, but “Great” is a reference to the whole island of Britain—England, Scotland, and Wales. As in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
And its destined to get much worse over the coming years as fossil fuel cars and trucks are eradicated (2030 ?) . Imagine all the people coming home at 5-6 o’clock and plugging in their EV supplied by ????????? PV ? , then batteries will be required , vast vast battery arrays that will stupefy even Elon ! You certainly can’t rely on wind to supply this load . In the USA alone for the elimination of petrol cars by 2035 over 380 Nuclear power Stations (1200 MW each ) will be required just to charge the EVs at night . That means building 2 1/2 nuclear power plants every week till 2035 starting today !
You might have capacity but nothing to fill it with. The same as having nameplate capacity but operating at a fraction of it all the time. Your bias makes you incapable of admitting this reality.
That’s a pretty good description of the situation.
Growing rather slowly:
So the likely interconnector growth appears limited to 2.4 GW over the next two years. Everything after that is facing opposition, has not been approved, and no work started. Of the two active projects, only the 1.0 GW link with France can be relied on when renewable production is down — Danish electricity is already 80% renewable (mostly wind). Denmark will likely have no surplus at exactly the times the UK needs to import.
Moreover, in addtion to the IFA1 fire at Sellindge, the Irish have set an export limit of zero to prevent shortage pricing, Norway has also limited export to 700MW until 31 December to preserve reservoir levels – and extended that limit to Valentine’s day because of problems with thyristors at Blyth. Belgium is shutting a nuclear unit at Doel next year, which will threaten their export surplus. The result is that the UK has about 1GW less of import capacity it can rely on than the case assumed by National Grid in its Winter Outlook, tightening the capacity margin and increasing the risk of extreme pricing and of blackout should grid management of backup diesel go awry.
“We have a large and growing interconnector capacity by design…”
griff, what you have written is similar to answering to someone who had his wallet pickpocketed that “We have laws that make pickpocketing ilegal by design!”
griff is famous for believing that anything stated in a press release has already happened.
Your Grandfather was not the captain of the Titanic by any chance???
Aha ! Griff Smith , we finally have his fullname !
Yeah nothing like becoming totally dependent on another country 🙂
A powerful high will block zonal circulation in Europe for a long period due to very weak solar wind. Overnight temperatures in the UK, Scandinavia, Central Europe may reach very low values. Energy demand will increase significantly.
La Niña will play a part in this.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=europe×pan=24hrs&anim=html5
That animation took about 10 minutes to load for some reason.
I see the high-pressure system centered over the UK. What else should I be seeing?
The animation is updated every hour. Look at the arctic high falling from the north.
Ok, thanks. I’ll keep an eye on that website.
So here comes another high-pressure system to the UK, only this one will be colder than the current one. Windmill output is going to fall again. One hit after another.
You understand that the advocates of wind power will say this just means we need more wind turbines.
Well if you don’t have enough electrons, clearly you need more wind turbines … like, duh!
And we all know how many extra electrons are provided by each additional wind turbine when the wind stops blowing –
zero, zilch, nought, none, nada.
Which can be added to what the original number of turbines were producing-
zero, zilch, nought, none, nada.
‘added’? What’s that?
Ghoul Font has already done that.
It’s like the Covid gene therapy…just keep jabbing
“we need more wind turbines.”
That’s what they always say. They apparently have not realized that if the wind doesn’t blow, it doesn’t matter how many windmills you have, you won’t get any electricity.
But how many more? At one stage yesterday the UK turbine forest was producing 0.66GW from an installed capacity of 24GW. So to cover that 24GW we need 24/0.66 times the number you first thought of. Griff, help me out here, I don’t do sums…
JF
People who advocate replacing fossil fuel with wind are numerically challenged.
This equation: many * 0 = 0
is beyond them.
I wish I were being facetious, but I am not.
This is all part of the “leftist” mindset. They are seduced by beautiful ideas but hate to confront the messy details. In the past, they have killed people who brought up the messy details of their beautiful utopias. The Energy Transition is really all about politics.
Boris Johnson ‘to make UK the Saudi Arabia of wind power’ Prime Minister pledges offshore turbines will provide enough electricity to power every home in a decade !!
Wind is currently providing 2% & the annual average = 18.5%.
Don’t know who’s more dangerous Bonkers Boris … or the silly sods who believe him.
Griff QED?
Just saw a VoxPop on SkyNews where someone said they still think Boris is the right man for the job. They felt sorry for him because everything he does goes wrong.
At no point did it occur to the little old lady that the PM’s poor judgment might be why everything he does goes wrong.
Energy policy is just one of the fool’s follies.
Boris was better than the guy (lady?) he replaced, but only because his predecessor was so very, very bad.
Oh, the irony!!!
This is when I sincerely wish I could install a wood-burning fireplace in my house.
That looks lovely and smells lovely but that really is an actual source of air pollution.
Plants and trees love it
Better than freezing to death when the electrical supply fails.
I fitted one when I built this house. It works well and I have a good supply of wood.
A woodburning stove has saved me on more than one occasion. I wouldn’t be without one. Fortunately, I live in an area where they are not restricted.
“Given that this surplus all comes from hydro and nuclear (Sweden), there will be no easy way to increase this when the demand for it inevitable arises.”
The woody biomass potential is vast- most coming from America, of course, the wood basket of the world. It’s renewable, dependable base load and for free, you get plant food emissions. I see that currently it’s 6.1%, a respectable amount. And no need to uglify Britain with solar and wind.
It’s quasi renewable. Most jurisdictions in Canada practise primitive forest management with minimal intervention to increase productivity, including fertilisation and returning ash to the forests. Our management systems are not designed to sustain wood mining as sustaining natural ecosystem function requires maintaining significant amounts of woody debris in the systems. We have no capacity to sustain wood mining, especially if forest fertilisation becomes even less practical than it is now and if the green blob dictates that we shall not have intensively managed forests because they are not green nice.
It would appear that there is growing resistance to burning American wood to generate UK electricity.
Burning wood for energy is a ‘scandal’ that will worsen global warming, group of 50 MPs tell energy minister
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10315351/Burning-wood-energy-scandal-worsen-global-warming.html
And the timber lorries trundling through Dumfriesshire.
Now now, Mr. Wilson, you know they are all taking logs to the sawmills at Lockerbie and Dalbeattie to make housebuilkding material.
As I type this, coal is producing 41% more power in the UK than wind. Using Griff’s logic, coal is on track to completely replace wind power by Christmas. When will the dismantling of wind turbines begin?
Not soon enough
Perhaps this is due to a lack of hyperventilation by the Greens and the renewable mob?
More or less the same deal on Saturday. UK has around 38GW nameplate capacity of wind and solar, 24.5GW and 13.5GW respectively, generating this pitiful contribution.
Isle of Mull, Scotland, United Kingdom
Feels Like: 2 °C
Wind: 2 m/s ↑ from Southeast
Current Time: 18 gru 2021 17:04:35
Latest Report: 18 gru 2021 13:50
Pressure: 1040 mbar
It is very useful to follow the link given above to the site which provides these graphs (the post does not make clear they are for the UK). https://grid.iamkate.com/
Many thanks to to the site creator:
You can look at daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and cumulative data from 2012.
I find the all-time data most interesting. Here are the trends from 2012 – 2021. All figures are averaged over the entire year.
The growth in renewables over the same period comes from:
So the renewable increases cover roughly half of the lost fossil fuel and nuclear generation. The rest was made up in dropping demand and increased imports.
All figures averaged over the entire year and the main point of this post is that renewables can be essentially absent for extended periods.
The 30-minute average over the past day shows peak demand is generally between 4:30 – 5:30 PM. For today it was at 5:30; total demand was 42.5 GW. Supply came from:
Total current UK interconnect capacity is:
Total import capacity is 7.4 GW and the peak usage today was 5.36 GW, or 72.4%
UK policies to convert building heat from gas to electric seem very unwise.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
The original.
And best. Itzman posts here occasionally.
JF
In Maine, that’s what is referred to as, “you cahn’t get they-yah from hea-yah”.
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7
You write:
“UK policies to convert building heat from gas to electric seem very unwise.”
As the UK is going over to Electric cars – no ICE cars to be sold after 2030 – how can that be unwise?
Ohhhh.
Ri-i-ight.
I see what you did there. . . .
We’re gonna freeze.
Auto, hoping you and I are wrong!
Bear in mind that generation connected at the distribution level voltages is not included. That includes a lot of small scale wind and solar, and diesel and gas backup generation, much of it “behind the meter” at industrial sites seeking to reduce triad risk – being caught using power on one of the three peak demand half hours over the winter, for which a very large capacity payment is extracted. Lately, those subject to wholesale related pricing have found they can generate more cheaply for themselves from diesel during more of the day.
Perhaps some severe outages will awaken their populations to the dangerous course their “leadership” has embarked. If they get rid of the idiots, they’ll benefit. If they don’t, they’ll suffer. Either way, it will be their choice and they can live with it.
There is generally a large, if minority, percentage who get no say as they are not the majority so, no it is not their choice.
13% of French nuclear capacity is presently off line and will be for months. Interconnects will not save the UK this winter. And Nord 2 won’t get German start up approval until next July. Going to be a very dicey winter.
It would be best if the Grid fails sooner rather than later. The longer we wait for that inevitable crash, the worse will be our situation.
JF
I read Nordstream 2 may not be approved before next October (if at all, now that there is a Green as Foreign Minister). Too late for the storage injection season, so winter 2022/23 with be very fraught, with 8GW of German nuclear also shut down, plus nuclear closures in Belgium and the UK and Sweden. Natural gas futures prices in Europe for next summer and winter have moved up sharply. (TTF, NBP)
“with 8GW of German nuclear also shut down, plus nuclear closures in Belgium and the UK and Sweden.”
Pure insanity.
These leaders fear CO2, and fear electricity blackouts, and yet they shut down a power source, nuclear, that does not produce CO2. And keeping the nuclear plants online would go a long ways towards keeping their grids stable, yet here they are shutting them down.
This is not leadership. These are deluded people stumbling around in the dark.
But, “shut up” is all we are told.
Prices per tonne
Copper $9,470
Steel (rebar) $737
Neodymium $164,000
Aluminium $2,725
Lithium carbonate $36,000
Cobalt $70,000
At 18:44hrs GMT, wind <3%, solar 0%, biomass 3%.
So, you build windmills a lot.
What do they?
They stop the wind.
What a surprize!
The UK’s supply side problem is going to actually be addressed on the demand side. EVs are not going to happen, at least not in any 1 for 1 swap of ICE to EV by motorists. This is because they are going to simply be too expensive too charge as energy poverty for most of the UK middle class will set in with rapidly rising electric rates. The choice will be< “Do I freeze tonight or do I charge the car?” An easy answer.
So the UK’s supply side electrical problem will be corrected on the demand side by having the middle class be forced to freeze in the dark. And the public will be gaslighted in to accepting this energy poverty, just as they’ve been conditioned to accept COVID business lockdowns and COVID vaccine mandates for what is now merely a nuisance cold virus.
Energy Rationing coming your way soon…Stalin would be proud.
Plant a few fast growing trees in the back, for firewood.
“The choice will be< “Do I freeze tonight or do I charge the car?””
I think the old fashioned answer for homeless people used to be “do I go and freeze in the car”.
I did a winter in the UK in 2010 when the temps hit -18C in the night.
I have to say for a one time defence of the cops (I never do this normally).
They came along at about 3-4am and asked if I was OK?
With the right blankets you will survive, and if stuck, turn on the engine to heat it all up..
Having said that, some of the first people to die from Hypo are people who sleep on the streets and in shop entrances…
To quote a certain HBO series…”Winter is Coming”.
Wheel out Griffo and park him in front of one of the turbines.
A useful site for looking at current European electricity generation with drill down by country. Some of the country data are missing or evidently wrong, but it gives an overall impression, and in many cases, interesting signs of historically sensible decisions, and of more recent poor decisions about capacity investment.
https://windeurope.org/about-wind/daily-wind/electricity-mix?utf8=%E2%9C%93&areas=AL%2CAT%2CBE%2CBA%2CBG%2CHR%2CCY%2CCZ%2CDK%2CEE%2CFI%2CFR%2CMK%2CDE%2CGR%2CHU%2CIE%2CIT%2CLV%2CLT%2CLU%2CNL%2CNO%2CPL%2CPT%2CRO%2CRS%2CSK%2CSI%2CES%2CSE%2CCH%2CGB&commit=Apply+filters
Thanks, great site.
High pressure over Iceland predicts freezing temperatures in Europe.
…We haven’t had a decent storm over Denmark for the last 630 days. A new record.
https://vejr.tv2.dk/2021-12-09-ny-dansk-rekord-slaaet-i-dag-laengste-stormfri-periode-i-dansk-vejrhistorie
The last time we had storm draft remotely like that was in the 40th. Back then it went on for a decade, and of course it is somehow governed by AMO. But the solution proposed and agreed now is to build even more mills – and so they will stand ready when the draft is over….
The price of electricity here is now around 1$ kWh.
The old saying was
‘You reap what you sow’
But I think it could be changed to.
‘We reap what they sow’
Although many of the ‘they’ are unelected with a saviour complex that makes them unable and unwilling to see the harm their actions cause because they will save the world even if it means they have to destroy it.
James Bull
The winter of 2021/22 may be worthy of Maunder’s Minimum.
Meanwhile, La Niña’s strongest wave of the season is developing.
Are those temperatures in Celcius of Farenheit? Even if they’re Celcius, that’s terribly cold. Why on Earth do they think a warmer environment would be a problem?
It’s only going to get colder, especially starting in early January.
sorry but it was already exceptional cold for Estonia in NOV-DEC.
My heating bill is thru the roof!
I can see another cold wave developing from just post christmas with below -25C in URAL.
The scandinavian high is building, which is indication of an extremely cold winter for St Petersburg Russia, thou I doubt it will yet rival the 1941-1943 siege times (when 1000s died of cold and lack of food)…but no doubt it will come back in 2021-2030..
once we get into January I can see regular stuff in the -20C>-30C range appearing for SF and the Baltic states, but hey in their great wisdom, the only budget they decided to cut this winter was the one that certifies ice roads between the islands…err…I guess cos they bought into the wisdom that gormless warming would mean the ice roads will never happen again.
FAIL.
I can see a lot of people getting really annoyed about being cut off from the mainland with no ferries for 6-8 weeks and the shops there running out of produce…..now woulda thunk it???
The pressure difference between the high over the UK and the low over Russia reaches 65 hPa! The pressure over the UK is 1035 hPa, while in the center of the low over Russia is 970 hPa.
it never says that on my local railway station (on the trans-sib). No idea where you get your figures from.
I live in the real world.
Here’s the data updated as it comes in.
https://www.wunderground.com/wundermap
The reality is in the actual data, first hand.
Wunderground?? WTF, it’s almost as bad as the Grauniad!
The resident nutter on there is worse than Griff & Banton combined.
Add to that wunderground is a major propaganda outlet for AGW nuts.
Iit was years I gave up on their crappy forecasts, and adware laden site!
If only the weather they “predicted” could be correct, but it was worse than useles!
Respectfully, I don’t agree with your assessment. I’ve used wunderground forecasts for a long time. They are usually more reliable than the local TV and radio forecasters.
I check, I don’t wait for processed information.
Is there any studies or discussions around what wind turbines do to weather?
A turbine removes energy from the atmosphere, by definition.
So when we reduce the energy in a given natural system, what effect does that have on the weather, the climate, the planet?
Wind is not limitless. The planetary weather system driven by temperature differences creates a certain amount of energy, every joule we take out is one less joule in the system.
Does this in any way relate to the supposed 15% decrease in wind in Europe this year?
The more you take out the less there is left?
Just curious.
According to data on that website (https://grid.iamkate.com/) the weekly average production from fossil fuels went up from 10.46GW to 22.02GW over the year up to 7th December 2021. Over the same period production from renewables went down from 9.25GW to 5.18GW. Wind fell from 8.24GW to 1.60GW.
London, Moscow, Lisbon, Rome, Reykjavik and Stocksbridge! The village with the haunted bypass. How did that get on the map?