Essay by Eric Worrall
Unless there is another cold snap like January 2024?
UK’s last coal-fired power station set to close
2 days ago
Alex Smith
BBC News, NottinghamThe closure of the UK’s last coal-fired power station has been described by officials as a “tremendously important milestone” in energy production.
Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire is due to shut early next week, with demolition of the site to follow after decommissioning, which is set to take two years.
The site – a landmark in the East Midlands – has been producing energy since 1967, enough to make more than one billion cups of tea per day.
Mike Lewis, CEO of the site’s owner Uniper, told the BBC the closure was a key step in the “global route to decarbonisation”.
…
Mr Lewis, who confirmed plans for a clean energy technology park at the site, said the closure was a “tremendously important milestone in the global route to decarbonisation”.
When asked if a future with clean energy and no blackouts is possible, he said “absolutely”, adding that solutions are being worked on now.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgn4gg5y2yo
Back in January this year, Ratcliffe was “ramped up” to deal with a cold snap and renewable shortfall;
Britain’s final coal power plant ramps up power as cold snap hits
15 January 2024 • 6:26pm
Britain is leaning on its final coal power plant for increased electricity supply as an Arctic blast hits the country.
Coal contributed its largest share of electricity generation on Monday since November, Energy Dashboard figures show.
Britain’s last active coal plant, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, helped generate 3.4pc of all electricity produced in the UK at the start of the week, well above average levels throughout the year.
It could be on course for its busiest week in at least a year, after contributing 2.3pc to electricity generation over the past week which is one of the highest levels in the past 12 months.
It comes as temperatures in the UK plummet and could go as low as -10 Celsius in the coming days. It is expected to lead to higher demand for electricity.
…
Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/15/ftse-100-markets-latest-news-house-price-rise-live-updates/
Of course, nobody in Britain should be worried about winter blackouts – Britain’s Secretary of State for Net Zero Energy Security Ed Miliband apparently plans to heat homes in winter using solar farms and rooftop solar energy.
UK Government approves three major solar farms, promises rooftop solar ‘revolution’
The Department for Energy Security and Net-Zero (DESNZ) has granted planning permissions for the construction of three major solar farms in the east of England, in a bid to decarbonise UK’s electricity system by 2030.
Today (15 July), Energy Security and Net-Zero Secretary Ed Miliband has granted construction consent for Low Carbon’s Gate Burton Energy Park in Lincolnshire, Sunnica Energy Farm on the Suffolk/Cambridgeshire border, and Mallard Pass Solar Farm, which spans both sides of the East Coast Mainline in Lincolnshire and Rutland.
Sunnica and Gate Burton will each have a capacity of 500 megawatts (MW), while Mallard Pass will have a capacity of 350MW.
Together, their total capacity is approximately two-thirds of the 1.9 gigawatts (GW) of solar energy installed on rooftops and the ground last year, according to Solar Media.
The Government is shortly set to unveil plans to boost rooftop solar, as well as supporting these large ground-mounted projects.
…
Read more: https://www.edie.net/uk-government-approves-three-major-solar-farms-promises-rooftop-solar-revolution/
Britain gets an average of around 62 sunny days per year (1500 hours), but obviously you’d have to be unlucky for a windless cold snap to occur during a period of low sunshine, like what happened last January. In any case, global warming is set to eliminate cold snaps in Britain. Any minute now.
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Bonkers and achieves nothing for the climate. Only needs dirty emissions to be scrubbed.
But how will they signal their adherence to the Climate Overlords without destroying the country?
They could pretend- like China.
It will be interesting to watch the Mauna Loa measurement of global atmospheric CO2 concentration start to decline now.
Since the western world has deemed closing coal plants as the prima facie method of fighting climate change, that should start to happen very soon now, wouldn’t it?
________________________________________________________
Monthly average daily sun hours in the United Kingdom
from January 2015 to June 2024 LINK
Daily average solar production time
0600=0%
0700=0%
0800=20%
0900=50%
1000=90%
1100=95%
1200=100%ish
1300=95%
1400=90%
1500=50%
1600=20%
1700=0%
1800-0700=back to Net Zero
Reduce those figures by about 50% in Winter vs Summer
The risk of blackouts is much higher on “extreme” days than on “average” days.
When looking at the total energy, in GWh per 24-hour period, the ‘cherry-picked” ratio can get as high as 100:1 (instead of your 2:1).
On average you live. In the extremes you die.
And when cloudy?
Incidentally this plot shows just how sunny spring 2020 was – while everyone was locked down and hiding under their beds.
On X there was a post from Miliband saying heat pumps produce 3X more energy than they use. Did his, office really post something that stupid?
Perpetual motion is a great way to fight climate change. However, It works better after liberal politicians endorse it and their supporters all clap about the innovation.
I am not trying to defend Miliband in general, but maybe he was indicating heat pumps transfer 3X more energy from the atmosphere than used to run the heat pump. Oh and most of the energy used to run the compressor is recovered as heat into the refrigerant which heats the buildings’ air.
But I prefer my gas “boiler” that heats water circulated to radiators.
So if the sun is shining for less than two hours per day in January in the UK, and it is less than 20 degrees above the southern horizon, how much power will that generate?
Time to shear all the sheep in Scotland and make wool coats. They will be needed next winter.
Think of all the green jobs for shepherds!
The sheep have already been shorn, but not those type of sheep.
I predict Mylar, as in solar blankets, will become a very popular item in British homes this winter. Woven into fabric, blankets, socks, sweaters, etc., it makes a dandy body heat conservation device. Children will grow up to the comforting crinkling sound that the solar blanket makes as you climb into bed at night. Mind the candles near the bed, kiddos. What a small price to pay to save the planet./sarc
I shared this on Fakebook. They deleted it. I’ll post it again.
I believe they actively remove every post with a link to WUWT
Such is the AntiSocial Media platform Farcebook
When people start reading WUWT, they tend to NOT come back to fear-exploiting-media plus discourage others from reading it. Can you blame the alphabetters for protecting their click-coin income ?
Apparently, you can’t post this on FB in Canada because of a government edict forbidding posting news on FB.
got to- that’s where all those evil, deplorable, climate deniers hang out, conspiring to promote extreme right wing politicians and scientists in the pocket of fossil fuel companies! /s
Restraint of trade isn’t a constitutional right, is it?
Subsidy Farms and Rooftop Subsidy platforms are great and all at producing income for their owner but highly ineffective at producing power for heating…especially at night when it’s needed most.
The entire UK solar output today, 1 GW.
Gotta love Dim Watted Ideas…unless they’re foisted upon you at the command of goobermint
Any more solar generation than it takes to run your AC on a sunny afternoon is not really useful to humanity. Wind is too random to be worthwhile at all. Storing the energy for later when you need it is just too expensive. Standby generation is the least costly “storage method” (except for load shedding blackouts) but then you will have paid the cap cost of the generators anyway, maybe saving a bit on fuel, probably less than the green subsidy amounted to on the renewable scheme.
If we get a blocking high this winter as happened in 2017-18 then we will have bright frosty days but with no wind, from the winter solstice to February or March. Alternatively, if we experience our normal winter weather from the Atlantic then we’ll have dull days with maybe moderate winds interspersed with strong winds and light winds, which would mean the wind farms may or may not be able to generate neither will the solar farms.
Either way we are going to need traditional power generators online just in case.
The Gov standard answer to shortfalls seems to be the European interconnects will save us…unless weather patterns affect them as well I guess.
Fortunately France electricity is still predominantly nuclear powered
“Clean energy and no Blackouts in the future.” “Absolutely. We’re working on that solution NOW.”
Are these people brain dead?
The residents of large parts of Lincolnshire (UK) are beginning to revolt against the number of ‘solar farms’ being proposed for their county.
Four giant solar projects have been proposed in the same part of the West Lindsey district, north of Lincoln and will eventually cover an area of about 15 square miles. Miliband recently approved Cottam Solar which will be the UK’s largest solar farm with 3 sites spread over an area of 5 square miles. Another site up for approval is West Burton Solar Project which has four sites covering almost 4 square miles near Cottam.
This is ex commenter Peta of Newark’s country, shame he or she no longer contributes to this site.
Wonder how long it will take to get the actual grid connections set up though…
Build first, connections later seems to be the operational strategy.
All that capacity is useless without that…
Worse…bought and paid for.
“The Solution” is a reduction in global atmospheric CO2 concentration.
When are we going to see the results of the “fight”, or is this just another endless war?
AND today the last blast furnace at Port Talbot steelworks closes after 100 years. It’s going to be replaced by a subsidised ‘green’ electric furnace to recover scrap!
How to destroy an economy on the altar of Climatism
“How to destroy an economy on the altar of Climatism”
____________________________________________
“It could not be simpler,” said the Aztec priests. “We simply cut out beating
hearts and roll heads down the temple steps … and it rains.” They all believed it.
Kront 2014
And thus Britain started and led the industrial revolution became the first nation to exit it.
How sad.
Here in America, Wokeachusetts was the leading industrial state- partly thanks to stealing tech from the UK. Now it’s a leading net zero state. We’ve already lost most industry. Now, the biggest employer is the state government- followed by universities and hospitals. There is also some high tech, software bio engineering and the like. But few decent blue collar jobs.
Right, James, and we can now expect James Bond to drive a Yugo? My genetics are British and this dysfunction onset is scaring me.
James Bond will be driving an EV, and the villains will sabotage his charging station at night, and be able to escape the next day when Bond’s battery dies.
How to destroy an economy on the altar of
ClimatismSocialism. ‘Climatism’ is a means, not an end.“The Cause”.
Yup, “The Cause”. People forget that the Climatista’s have an admitted agenda.
It all comes back to the basic intermittency/storage problem, which, at an absolutely fundamental level, is unsolvable.
All though your point about storage is correct the basic problem is believing something that isn’t true and making all your decisions on that false belief. CO2 can’t cause warming on Earth.
We’re never going to win an argument against the “believers”, so I focus my interest on the technical aspects where there is clear and unarguable evidence.
Ultimately, if you believe in AGW/climate change etc, and think net-zero really has to be done, then nuclear is the only game in town, the only thing renewables achieve is to displace nuclear and replace it with unreliable sources and gas backup, which is expensive and not net-zero anyway.
The politicians and many other brain-dead folks, have forgotten/ignored Ayn Rand’s credo: “Check your premise”.
I would be happy to “Decarbonise” Ed Miliband. Does he not realise we are a carbon based life form?
Without carbon in our bodies we would all turn to water!
You could burn him at the stake.
Beyond parody.
It is an important step toward the creation of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Morocco.
Round here you’d best include Somalia, too.
And the Port Talbot steel plant closed today with the loss of three thousand jobs countrywide.
Still we have lots of barber shops.
That’s three thousand green jobs …
………. in China
And armies serving coffee to eachother.
Well, it’s going to be a long costly cold winter.
I will be foraging for firewood on Tooting common. Coal may be tricky this year, we’ll see.
‘Good King Wenceslas went out, gathering Winter Fuel’
Recently checked out the performance of solar power in the Philippines.
Tropical sunny country, slightly North of the Equator. Lovely weather most of the year, apart from mid-afternoon thunderstorms in summer and the odd typhoon.
Solar Power capacity factor in what is an ideal location is only 13.5%.
Electricity is expensive in PH because it has many small grids on multiple islandS, so does not have the benefits of scale. A few years ago I examined the possibility of setting up a company to provide a solar power based off grid solution for homes, running all domestic appliances including air-conditioning. Initial capital cost to be repaid over several years through lack of need to pay electricity bills. Didn’t work. The basic gear was cheap enough, but the additional cost of batteries for at least several days powers plus a generator made it only very marginally economic and too risky.
So, that’s solar power in a tropical latitude.
Solar power in Northern latitudes? ROTFLMAO
It’s a Richard III moment. Soon there won’t be a horse to put behind the cart.
What? Buried under a car park?
“… one billion cups of tea …” Barf!
Most conventional teacups normally hold 150 ml, when filled to 1.5 cm below the rim. Unknown is how many lumps of coal are needed to brew one cup. How about the number of elephants? Consider Topsy: https://www.wired.com/2008/01/dayintech-0104/
If you add up all the CO2 emitted from beers, sparkling wines, soft drinks etc and globally… it must be controlled. /sarc
Add CO2 from baking bread.
Flat bread (or whatever it is called) does not use yeast, hence no CO2.
Try to make a sandwich…. ouch.
On the ‘coal’s embers… oh, wait…
You know they’ll try.
‘
62 days of sunshine for 24.2 hours per day? Was this statistic AI generated, too?
If the sun shone 12 hours per average day (it doesn’t), 62 sunny days is less than 750 hours. Multiply any of those plant ratings by 750 to get your MWh. Even given this overestimate, GB solar would generate less than the annual demand of most third world countries. Which, incidentally, is where Britain is heading. Good luck keeping that kingdom united.
The point being made is that the best we could expect from solar power (if it were possible to make it continuous) would be whatever the conditions will allow for 15% or so of the year, but obviously this has to be averaged over the entire year. The other 85% of the time we will get all 57 varieties of f*ck all.
Right! So…
…is true only if “extrememly unlucky” means 60 to 70% of the time (wind greater than f*** all being available only 30-40% of the time).
That is, all the while paying brexit penalties and electricity overcharges to the EU. Also Known As: Labour selling out the means of production to the new management.
Good bye heavy industry, we hardly knew ye.
Unless they can elect Nigel Farage as PM.
Absolutely not. Farage is already laying the groundwork to abandon Reform and distance himself from the “bigots” it contains, just like he did with UKIP. He doesn’t want to be a leader; he wants to claim expenses and collect another pension.
“Put not your trust in Princes” Even as PM, Nigel al Farage can’t do anything without a coalition actually committed to real reform, and not just the party of that name.
Mathematics is not Science… why are you introducing it?/s
Saying solutions to renewable blackouts are “being worked on” means they do not exist. Except nuclear does but is not allowed. Mind you using nuclear intermittently will be very expensive.
Plus, if you have nuclear, what’s the point of renewables?
A decade ago, nuclear advocates were pushing a public policy mix of one-third nuclear, one-third gas-fired, and one-third wind & solar. Nuclear would handle baseload, gas-fired would handle a mix of baseload and load-following, while wind & solar would handle the need to appease the renewable energy industrial complex.
First Q: Why should there be a “need to appease…”
David Wojick: “Saying solutions to renewable blackouts are “being worked on” means they do not exist. Except nuclear does but is not allowed. Mind you using nuclear intermittently will be very expensive.”
The oncoming SMRs will be more technically efficient at load following than the legacy Gen III reactors. But these SMRs will always be more expensive than either hydro or gas-fired as load-following generators.
We buy nuclear power for purposes of energy security and reliability, not because nuclear produces cheaper electricity in comparison with hydro, gas-fired, and last but not least, coal.
Going with nuclear is strictly a public policy decision. If you are in a position to determine public energy policy, at what point does the nuclear premium become so large that it no longer makes sense to you, acting in your role as a public official, to build new reactors?
And so the question becomes, if you are willing to pay a premium for the energy security and reliability benefits that nuclear provides, how much of a premium should you be willing to pay?
It’s my opinion that at some point in early 2025, New York State will be adding nuclear power to the list of technologies it considers acceptable for use in meeting the 2019 Climate Act’s net zero goals.
But adding nuclear to the Climate Act’s list is a far cry from actually constructing new reactors in New York state.
That can only happen if New York’s state government charters a state-owned power generation corporation along the lines of Ontario Power Generation in Canada which finances, constructs, and then operates nuclear reactors.
They already have such an entity. It is called the NY Power Authority. It used to own several nuclear plants, but sold them to private operators. They now operate hydro facilities, and gas generators. But since they no longer have any nuclear facilities, they lack the expertise to build or run any new ones. They threw away/sold the expertise.
Through its direct financial support for expanding the Darlington site with four 300 MW SMRs, the province of Ontario right across the border in Canada is now positioning itself to become the center of expertise in North America for SMR manufacturing and construction.
Twenty years ago, it was politically expedient for New York state’s government to get out of nuclear power. Here in the year 2024, it is becoming politically expedient for New York state’s government to get back into nuclear power.
Reading the tea leaves of what is now happening with the Hochul Administration’s apparent embrace of nuclear — at least on paper, anyway — the option of establishing a working partnership with Ontario would offer the most expedient pathway towards regaining the nuclear construction expertise which has been lost.
IMHO, New York’s state government will be closely watching what happens with Ontario’s four-unit SMR Darlington expansion project. Only if that project is brought in on budget and on schedule will the state of New York then commit to funding a new-build reactor inside the state.
“politically expedient” = Hell.
I would think that the destruction shown caused by Hurricane Helene would put everyone off starting solar panels and wind mills.
Good point. I’m sure EVs aren’t doing very well without a functioning grid, either.
They are not doing well in 2 feet of flood water and who would be so stupid to try to recharge standing in water?
Yes, and if we’re lucky enough to avoid electrocution and/or starting an inextinguishable fire, we can relive our junior high science experiment of electrolyzing salt water to produce chlorine gas.
The Tesla recharging station at Runnymede had a few flooding problems in 2019 with the whole car park flooded.
Look up ‘Runnymede charging station flooded’ and click on images.
Actually, today’s news from Florida says some EVs are catching fire from salt water shorting them out.
I saw that on breitbart – https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2024/09/30/electric-time-bomb-tesla-bursts-into-flames-inside-garage-flooded-by-hurricane-helene/
From the article:
Towed by what, an electric tow-truck? Wah wah wah waaaaaah…
Should be national news since they all want to show how bad weather disasters are.
https://youtu.be/r-p9_Eut18A?si=euBKeooY4nBVfeVK
starve to death in the freezing dark.
Build back bettah!
Poh, we can always import nuclear from France, the French will understand that. Except ze French will fart at the UK, as the English do at the French, and sell to the Germans instead, parblue!
Unless, of course, Putin decides to blow up the inter-connectors, or the French want us to take another 100,000 “refugees”, and so on.
“When asked if a future with clean energy and no blackouts is possible, he said “absolutely”, adding that solutions are being worked on now.”
Um…maybe it’s just me, but it I’d think that the solutions should be worked on, tested, finalized and implemented BEFORE shutting down the current providers, not at some unknown time in the future after they’ve already turned the electricity off.
“We’re closing down food production”
“But what are we going to eat?”
“We’re working on a solution to that. Hopefully you won’t starve to death first.”
These people better wake up, they are doing incredibly stupid things.
Well this latest measure along the road to reduce Climate Change tells us something.
It tells us it makes absolutely no difference who you vote for on our faux Uniparty Parliamentary democracy.
The traditional Party choice for voters in the UK was Labour, Conservatives and LibDems for those who had no idea what their political policies were. The official notice that Ratcliff is to close and be destroyed is proof positive, we ae in very deep trouble as a fully developed nation.
Our politicians have become our greatest enemy to national security and stable society.
The removal of winter fuel allowance from the OAPs was the first act the Labour Party introduced on taking power. Now they are removing the very last major coal fired power plant that is needed to keep the ;lights and heaters on for those still able to afford energy here in 21st century Britain.
It is now obvious the political class hate their voters and hate their own country.
The rise of the Reform Party will continue and is now essential if the Nation is to have any chance of returning to sensible energy policies.
This will be a very challenging winter here in the UK energy sector.
You will be poor, but you will be happye.
They will be rich and laughing at the deplorables.
I’ve just been taking a look at this website, which shows information relating to electricity generation in the UK.
https://grid.iamkate.com/
There is a graph that shows the amount of electricity being transferred in from other countries, and we can see there are quite long periods of time where multiple interconnectors have flat-lined at what appears to be their maximum capacity.
This site
https://gridwatch.co.uk/
has a section that indicates the capacities of the interconnectors, and the numbers seem to line up.
So if the coal-fired generation is gone, ruinable generation isn’t working, and interconnectors are at capacity, the only generation left of any use is gas (not counting biomass, battery (snigger) and hydro).
Let’s hope some genius politician doesn’t decide that gas should be next to go, and let’s hope there’s plenty of gas capacity left for when it really starts to get cold there.
Word to the wise – buy blankets, candles, and a generator. I wish I was joking.
Miliband the Marxist marches forward with the flameless torch of his father for the benefit of his greater good.
The greater good being Miliband.