Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t michel – “… The plans come as low wind and solar power generation forced Britain to rely heavily on burning gas and wood pellets. …”
Ed Miliband pledges ‘most ambitious reforms to UK energy system in generations’
Energy secretary to set out plan to boost renewable energy supply, such as building canopies of solar panels on outdoor car parks
Guardian staff
Fri 13 Dec 2024 16.00 AEDTEd Miliband has pledged to bring in “the most ambitious reforms to the country’s energy system in generations” as he presses ahead with plans to accelerate the development of onshore windfarms in England.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/13/ed-miliband-pledges-most-ambitious-reforms-to-uk-energy-system-in-generations
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero says the proposals will generate £40bn a year from the private sector.
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The plans come as low wind and solar power generation forced Britain to rely heavily on burning gas and wood pellets. As of Thursday, about 65% of Britain’s electricity was being generated from gas and biomass, with only 5.3% coming from wind.
…Miliband said: “A new era of clean electricity for our country offers a positive vision of Britain’s future with energy security, lower bills, good jobs and climate action. This can only happen with big, bold change and that is why the government is embarking on the most ambitious reforms to our energy system in generations.
“The era of clean electricity is about harnessing the power of Britain’s natural resources so we can protect working people from the ravages of global energy markets.
“The clean power sprint is the national security, economic security, and social justice fight of our time – and this plan gives us the tools we need to win this fight for the British people.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/13/ed-miliband-pledges-most-ambitious-reforms-to-uk-energy-system-in-generations
Britain sites between 51° to 60° North. In winter, when people really need home heating, Britain receives around 7 hours (or less) of sunlight. Much of the time in winter the sky is overcast, sometimes whole months can go by when you barely see the sun. The wind is also unreliable in winter – some of the coldest winter nights have no wind at all.
All of this should be obvious to anyone who has lived in Britain. If even places like sunny Australia can’t get solar and wind energy to work well enough to replace coal and gas, a nation as far North as Britain has no hope.
The 40 billion a year is a staggering cost not a benefit.
Eric,
“… The plans come as low wind and solar power generation forced Britain to rely heavily on burning gas and wood pellets. …”
Is that all you have to justify the headline? Of course, at present gas and wood are needed as a backup. We knew that. Miliband is talking about the future, as plans usually do. The plan may not succeed in totally eliminating gas usage, but it should be greatly reduced. Since gas will mostly be imported, that will save a lot of money, and of course, will reduce emissions.
Tell me about this future Nick – does Miliband have a plan to make the wind blow or the sun shine when he needs it?
Good questions!
I notice Nick has no answer. And that’s because there is no answer if the UK relies on windmills and solar.
Windmills and solar are deadends. That should be obvious by now. The more of them you add to a grid the worse things become. That it is not obvious to UK leadership should cause great concern to the citizens. These UK politicians are doubling down on stupid because they don’t have anything else to suggest as an alternative.
CO2-phobia is crippling the UK. Net Zero is a delusion, and those trying to implement it are delusional.
The UK could solve its problems by scrapping the windmills and solar and replacing them with nuclear power plants. But UK politicians are so stupid they can’t see this way out of their predicament. It’s not even considered by these fools.
I guess UK voters will oust these fools after the UK economy goes in the dumper. Of course, that may be way too late to save the UK economy. Now would be a much better time to oust these fools, before the UK economy crashes and burns.
As long as they can rule over the ashes, they don’t care if it burns down.
It was obvious to me as soon as Merkel revealed her ENERGIEWENDE IN 2000, because I am an energy systems analyst with decades of experience.
No one listened or dared speak up at that time
Lots of ridicule I endured
“Oh, Lord, forgive them”, but I will not
Yes. Merkel’s knee-jerk reaction to Fukishima was always going to result in the disaster they’re in now.
Nick’s answer was (down) at the level of belief of 7th Day Adventists. And I thought he was ‘scientist’…
Cristian Scientist
Nuclear isn’t the best way out of the UK and German energy crisis, it’s the only way.
And the very large coal supply it has?
Perhaps a significant quantity of gas underfoot for a longish time too?
British coal is expensive and difficult to extract. It’s all in deep underground mines. Coal is available at much lower cost shipped in from overseas. Importing cheap coal was one of the main methods by which Margaret Thatcher and Walter Marshall crushed the strike by NUM in 1984-5.
I don’t think imported coal played that big of a role until afterwards. The plan was simply to get the miners to undermine themselves: they were well paid to produce extra coal which was stockpiled at power stations. The supply of oil fuelled power stations was also substantially stepped up, and those with large storage encouraged to fill it. When the strike was triggered the large stocks meant that blackouts were averted. Oil imports increased sharply – power station fuel required refineries to run heavy oils, with additional imports of HFO on top. Light North Sea oil was exported. It provided the real impetus for the development of the Brent oil market.
Having demonstrated that the lights could be kept on without coal the government opened the market to coal imports, and privatised the remains of the nationalised coal industry. A few more productive pits survived the experience. Meantime the reliability of the oil and gas industry as a supplier underpinned the dash for gas that ensued afterwards. In fact, coal imports only really increased significantly long after Thatcher had departed. They had a last hurrah following Fukushima, but collpased after 2015 when many coal fires stations closed due to the EU’s LCPD.
Does the UK have a good supply of nuclear material currently setting in the ground?
I don’t know the answer to that but here’s what the search AI had to say on the matter:
“AI Overview
The United Kingdom possesses significant quantities of nuclear material, including both civilian-grade plutonium and uranium, accumulated through its past and current nuclear power programs, and also maintains a stockpile of military-grade nuclear material for its nuclear weapons program; this material is strictly regulated and monitored by the UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to comply with international safeguards agreements.”
The UK could build some Canadian Candu nuclear reactors that can use yellowcake uranium as fuel.
Canada has 400 tones of yellowcake uranium that they removed from Saddam Insane’s Iraq after the last Gulf War, and maybe the UK can talk Canada into giving them some or selling them some cheap.
Speaking of Candu nuclear reactors: They don’t require enriched uranium to operate. This is the only kind of nuclear reactor that the Mad Mullahs of Iran should be allowed to have. The Mad Mullahs claim they are enriching uranium for use in nuclear reactors but they are lying, they are building nuclear weapons. Candu nuclear reactors would eliminate this problem/argument while still supplying electricity to the Iranian people.
Trump ought to tell the Mad Mullahs to hand over all the enriched uranium they have created and in return we will build them some Candu reactors.
If they don’t turn over the enriched uranium, then it’s war, and the United States will destroy their stockpile and ability to make more by military force.
UK Citizens are greatly concerned about the winner of ‘Strictly’ [a televised dancing competition, m’lud].
We’ve had neuro-diverse, an amputee, and now a blind winner.
I am happy for them – but I omitted to watch it as I had a bowl of soup cooling that simply had to be urgently supervised, so I will not comment on the dancing.
Auto
Maybe WUWT’s resident cartoonist could draw a cartoon of Ed Milliband frantically building more wind turbines as the wind drops to zero.
Who would he borrow money from and at what usury interest rates?
And what would he build them from?
Petrochemicals, steel and concrete? Which all need fossil fuels.
Ahhh!
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In Stokes’ vision of a Net Zero Britain electricity will only be available when the wind blows or when the Sun shines.
Get used to it, peasants!
It’s worse than that Cat. Wind and solar cannot restart a black wind/solar grid. Once the power is gone, it stays gone until the planning engineers figure out a way to get it back up. That will take days or weeks, if ever without rotating machines.
It is part of the plan.
Wind and solar power cannot support a black restart of a grid because neither has any momentum to stabilize frequency and voltage as is essential on a grid when restarting or even simply operating when wind and solar are a major part of a grids power supply. In short they do not and cannot work. To use wind and solar at all, a full rotating machine backup is essential and that is very expensive as British and Aussie experience is clearly showing us all.
They will try to avoid that by simply imposing power cuts until the inertia remaining is sufficient to support the remaining demand.
If only Thomas Edison had won out for a DC grid, wind and sun could be used without converting to AC.
DC is still not a good choice. To avoid I²R losses, HVDC must be used. Say 500 kV. With HVAC transformers can push up to this at the far end of a transmission line and bring it back down at the end. HVDC requires electronics to do the conversion at both ends.
You can’t just run HVDC all the way to houses. Multiple conversions are needed which means more and more electronics.
Transformers are a mature technology. Their failure rate is miniscule with proper maintenance. Electronic inverters, not so much. Scattering inverters throughout the grid magnifies the instabilities and the difficulty in management.
The instabilities is the coming thing. There have been several frequency incidents on the UK grid where they have contributed significantly to the problems, including the August 2019 blackout and the nearly incident on 22nd December 2023. Batteries fail to perform as advertised and inverter supplied generation gets tripped off line by the harmonics and resonances.
The future of Miliband is a life in jail, or immediately drawn and quartered
If only…
More gormlessly idiotic tosh from Nick.
Doesn’t matter how many wind turbines you install, destroying all your forests and farmland, and impoverishing the whole nation…
… when there is no wind at night.. THEY PROVIDE ZERO ELECTRICITY.
They ALWAYS have to have that large amount of RELIABLE GAS available and ready to go, and someone has to pay for that availability.
Millibrain has NO FUTURE after the next election.
Ah, but the Nut Zero fanatics have a cunning plan. They are going to build batteries that will take care of the problem. Of course, they don’t tell us where the batteries will be located or how nuch electricity prices will have to rise to pay for the things.
Or how long they will last until needing replacement.
Maths lesson for Stokes: any number multiplied by zero equals ZERO.
Well that’s just not fair! The Labour government will have to change that.
Sorry GTC, you are incorrect. 😉
Copy the following formula into a cell in Excel and hit enter.
=1000000000000000*(0.5-0.4-0.1)
It’s enough to convince Stokes!!
What answer did you get ?
As close to zero as dammit.
If you all live that long.
Not to mention the fact that there is zero reason to do it in the first place.
Well, I suppose the useful and useless idiots have to make a quid or two somehow. Actually doing something real for humanity is a concept well beyond the f-wits with degrees.
Nick
We have a lot of our own gas…
Another of your famous blind spots
According to what I’ve read we spend about £6 billion a year on generating electricity from gas. These free renewables that are going to cost £40 billion a year to create will never save that amount.
So Miliband’s cheap clean energy can never save any money ever.
“We have a lot of our own gas…
Another of your famous blind spots”
I was talking about the future. For now it’s about half, but going down:
Please remember that Miliband has imposed a complete ban on further exploration and consenting of new projects.
in 1999 gas was 37.2% of UK energy consumption
in 2022 gas was 37.2% of UK energy consumption
Not much has changes has it. !
It is just that wokemess and anti-CO2 idiotology has destroyed so much of UK manufacturing, that the total energy usage has dropped a long way this century.
We have a few solar panels on our roof.
Dec 2023 to March 2024 150 kWh
April 2024- June 2024 400 kWh
July – Sept 460 kWh
Oct -Dec 240 kWh
For solar to work at its best during the winter we actually need cold and frosty conditions, which means that there’s likely to be little wind if there’s a blocking high (2017-2018).
Next Sunday is the solstice when the sun rises at 8:16 and sets at 15:52, and not all of those hours of sunlight will be capable of generating at full capacity.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx27wppegddo
I’m impressed – actual data, thanks! That works out to 1250 kW-h per year,
That’s worth about 150 bucks in the US. I’m curious about what such a system might cost, and how many square meters of panels that is, and what your latitude is. Were you able to sell any back to the power company at retail price if you couldn’t use it all?
We had 6 panels installed on our roof in autumn 2011 at a cost of approximately £10000. The panels are about 1.8 by 1.2 metres. The contract we have pays us £0.72 per kWh generated, it then assumes we export 50% for which we get paid £0.05 per kWh.
“building canopies of solar panels on outdoor car parks”
..but see, your 6 panels installed cost way too much, are too small, and outdoor car parks being so big will make up the difference.
It’s simply because you don’t think big enough!
/s
What do you mean that your contract pays you £0.72 per kWh and then exporting pays you £0.05 per kWh. Where does the £0.72 per kWh come from?
It is paid by being added to other people’s bills. It’s a fixed tariff, which retailers pay and claim back via the levelisation arrangements that ensure that every retailer funds a cost share pro rata to the demand they service.
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/levelisation
So the overall cost is spread across bills, much as with other subsidies like CFDs (which are actually funded in advance) and ROCs. Again, they have ways to ensure that retailers contribute relative to demand they service.
Please calculate how much actual energy is produced by these six panels. Oh, and how much is produced at night. Or on cloudy days.
At what angle are your panels inclined, and to what azimuth do they point?
TJ – That’s about $375 here in CT (We’re number 3!!, per EIA), including wire and our delightful ‘Public Benefit’ charges, or about $125 for generation only. Noting (below) that John paid about 10K pounds for his system, it doesn’t seem to make much sense economically.
He is currently being paid about £900 a year (inflation linked, so earlier payments would have been smaller – the average since 2011 is probably around £700 a year, so he is not quite at simple payback. The panels may have output more in earlier years with similar sunshine.
Most of those hours can not be available for full generation under the best conditions for your latitude. You probably know that but maybe some readers don’t
The sorry tale of Broken Hill in Australia seems to indicate that Miliband’s dream is in fact just the pipe variety.
No. It only shows that you can only use the power sources that you have actually connected. W&S were fine, just not connected when the pylons blew down.
Yes, it shows that there are many more costs to get there.
They were not fine or they would have been supplying the local grid, with or without the pylons connecting to the larger grid.
As they do not provide frequency stability, they are useless as stand-alone systems
You are LYING yet again, Nick !!
All the renewable energy out there was still connected, but was INCAPABLE of supplying a single bean !!!.
Here, in the far south of England (Southampton), even in summer, my solar panels generate nothing until 2 hours after sunrise and 2 hours before sunset. In winter, it’s much worse. So, the 7 hours between winter sunrise and sunset is effectively dark.
It’s even worse than that in the North of Scotland. In Aberdeen, I would guess that the solar panel midwinter night lasts several months.
In Estonia, they put the things in – over the last 2-3 yrs.
Most of the populated part of Estonia is around 60N…well north of any place in Bonnie Scotland.
The planned move to EV and Heat pumps increases electricity demand especially when its winter. The old Nuclear fleet has been extended but if the graphite cracks before its game over, the new Nuclear is lower capacity and will be delayed by years. So the reliable backup is being reduced at the same time as being replaced by unreliables while demand increases. Its not if but when the blackouts start, demand management or rationing is a 3rd world solution not a solution for an allegedly fully developed economy.
“if the graphite cracks”
WTF are you on about??
Only RMBK used graphite and zero containment.
Even they were eventually made safe, but despite that they still shut down Ignalina depriving Lithuania of 60% of its electricity.
Graphite core ageing
Over time during reactor operation, the graphite bricks age and their properties change due to interaction with the radiation environment and the reactor coolant. This can lead to the graphite losing weight and the development of cracks in the graphite bricks, both of which are well-known phenomena and have been the subject of significant interest by the industry, academics and the regulators for many decades.
We require the licensee, EDF, to demonstrate through their safety case that they have adequate understanding of the graphite behaviour, to justify safe operation of the core in a clear, evidence-based manner. We require EDF to clearly define conservative limits of operation based on the extent and adequacy of their understanding of graphite core ageing
Be snitty if you like but check your facts. Only one reactor in the UK is a PWR. The rest are graphite moderated and CO2 cooled.
Exactly so, Amos. Over the course of this decade, graphite failures will force all four of Britain’s remaining AGRs to close between 2027 and 2030..It cannot be stopped, and EdF has done pretty much all that is possible to prolong their lifespan.
But it’s over.After 2023, only Sizewell B and the two reactors at Hinkley Point C will be in operation.
You are missing the point. The interesting thing about the Guardian story is that it included this paragraph:
The plans come as low wind and solar power generation forced Britain to rely heavily on burning gas and wood pellets. As of Thursday, about 65% of Britain’s electricity was being generated from gas and biomass, with only 5.3% coming from wind.
The interesting thing about Miliband’s quoted remarks was this:
Speaking on Friday, Miliband denied there was a risk of blackouts in a clean power system if the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.
“That’s why you have a strategic reserve of gas-fired power stations, why you have, for example, long-duration energy storage, why you have batteries, why you have nuclear,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“You have a range of things on the system to absolutely ensure security of supply. And it’s a largely renewables-based system, but it’s not an only renewables-based system.”
I guess maybe you have to be used to deonstructing UK political speak to understand the implications. What this means is that blackouts are a real danger and a subject under urgent Cabinet discussion. As in the British TV series ‘Yes Minister’, the largest indication of a serious problem with X is when a Minister says, unprompted, to the BBC or the Guardian that X is not a problem, no, not at all.
The other significant thing is that the Guardian even has the para quoted above. This is an indication. Its the most they could get away with, but the fact that they included it in such an otherwise triumphal story tells you that there is some agonizing going on in the editorial suite.
Another indication of this was a Charles Moore column in the UK Telegraph which said, casually and in passing, that of course there is no climate crisis or emergency.
The problem Miliband has is that reality is becoming apparent to lots of people who will be accountable for the results of his policies, and they are getting cold feet. You notice that he has abandoned climate as a justification, now its all about the merits of wind and solar generation as energy solutions.
But he is having to plan for demand of 45-50GW in winter, when there is no sun, and for calms which can last for a week or two with average supply under 10% of installed capacity in wind. And he has no idea and no plans for how to keep the lights on during these periods.
The only way, which he is inching towards, is to have 60GW+ of gas, at least half of it rapid start, so very fuel inefficient. You say this:
The plan may not succeed in totally eliminating gas usage, but it should be greatly reduced. Since gas will mostly be imported, that will save a lot of money, and of course, will reduce emissions.
Show us, with some numbers. Get your raw data from http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
which provides free downloads. Tell us how you would meet 50GW peak demand in 2030, when wind does 10% and solar pretty much nothing for two weeks. How much gas would you have installed, how much solar, how much wind? And how much storage? And how much gas would you save versus running it all on CCGT?
Then we can send your answers to Ed. Because right now, what he is planning is nothing like 60GW of gas. The last I had heard was 90GW of wind and 40GW of solar. This would obviously lead to blackouts. So the latest solar plans he has spoken about are very impressive. From the Telegraph:
Up to a billion solar panels will be fitted across Britain by 2035 under Ed Miliband’s plan to hit net zero targets, data suggest.
The Energy Secretary’s proposals will carpet the country with panels covering an estimated 750 sq miles, a bigger area than Greater London. Assuming the average solar panel is two square metres, this would mean as many as a billion are needed. Up to 5,000 wind turbines will also be built.
Mr Miliband is plotting a massive expansion of solar voltaics – where solar energy is used to generate low carbon electricity – from 15 gigawatts (GW) today to about 70GW in a decade’s time.
This is simple madness in the latitude of the UK. No serious provision for storage, and building something at huge expense which will be useless in the period of high winter demand.
Prediction (not a scenario or a projection!): UK Net Zero, and the resulting energy catastrophe, is going to turn into the leading election issue in the UK. Reform will be the beneficiary. The Labour Government is going to see early on that Ed is taking them into a train wreck, but they will not be able to make up their minds to reverse direction and fire him. The next election will see a Reform landslide.
You think it can’t happen? Look at what happened in the UK with the Cass report on gender. One week you either toed the line or got ostracized. Next week all of a sudden puberty blockers were banned and there were opinion pieces in the UK broadsheets attacking the trans orthodoxy.
Can turn on a dime, the UK.
What Milliband never explains is why it is necessary to produce “low carbon” electricity. Or even what he means by “low carbon”. Presumably he means low (or no) carbon dioxide but I fear that bird has flown. All the known effects of increased atmospheric CO2 over the last century have been positive in terms of increased crop yields and a general ‘greening’ of the planet — by an area greater than the USA according to some experts.
And atmospheric pollution is increasingly the result of finding and mining the materials — some of them poisonous in their own right — which are needed to produce this allegedly ‘clean’ electric power.
As the old lady ages, it becomes more difficult for her to turn enough tricks to afford electricity.
“What Milliband never explains is why it is necessary to produce “low carbon” electricity”
I’m sure he does. But since it has been seen as necessary by UK governments for at least twenty years, he probably thinks most people have twigged.
Most people have twigged that most people do not think it is necessary, which is why net zero is now only being pursued in a tiny minority of countries, slated to get fewer as they discover the cost. The only ones who will come close are the ones fortunate to be endowed with the right natural resources like Iceland (geothermal) and Norway (hydro).
Canada will no longer be pursuing net zero next year after Justin Trudeau gets thrown out of office by the infuriated voters.
If you’re sure, then tell us where he did actually explain it. You of all people know what a crock of sh!te it is. The UK changing the climate? Why do these people and you talk like you’re fkin idiots. Please explain.
Michel, you said
“The interesting thing about Miliband’s quoted remarks was this:
Speaking on Friday, Miliband denied there was a risk of blackouts in a clean power system if the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.
“That’s why you have a strategic reserve of gas-fired power stations, why you have, for example, long-duration energy storage, why you have batteries, why you have nuclear,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“You have a range of things on the system to absolutely ensure security of supply. And it’s a largely renewables-based system, but it’s not an only renewables-based system.”
I guess maybe you have to be used to deonstructing UK political speak to understand the implications.”
You only need to speak English to understand. He is saying they want to increase the ratio of wind and sun, but despite the ridiculous talk here, they will do so only as far as reliable supply can be guaranteed. That will always be the position of government. You may not think they can go far with that constraint; Ed thinks they can. We’ll see. But the electricity will remain on, as it has so far.
You may think that, but I have experienced some lengthy power cuts in recent days for no obvious reason other than supply was tight: the storm passed with no more that interruptions of up to a couple of minutes, so we were not hit by local compromised infrastructure. Power cuts have been quite widespread, enough to cull a significant percentage of demand relative to the schemes for paid for power cuts. I think they’re trying to see what they can get away with.
No, that is not what he and they are saying. They started out saying total decarbonization of electricity generation by 2030. Now they have backed off to 95%%. This is not just ‘increasing the ratio’. And you are not considering two important trends in the background. The first is that the nukes are closing. There is a small extension, but they will almost all be closed by 2030. The second is that the gas plant is at end of life. It will mostly be gone by 2030, and they have no plans to build enough replacements and additions to cover the inevitable winter calms.
Something is going to have to give. Either there will be a big gas building program, in which case goodbye to the 95%, in fact goodbye to raising the amount of wind and solar much above today’s averages. Or blackouts. There is no way around it, given the UK weather and latitude. And there is no sign of the building of gas
You say they will only go as far as can be done while keeping reliable supplies. No, you’re wrong about that. Miliband is a a fanatic, out of touch with reality, surrounded by people who are going along to get along. His plans are almost certainly going to be attempted, and the result will almost certainly be blackouts.
You also dismiss questions about why the country should be doing this at all. Yes, everyone in all political parties has been paying at least lip service to its importance for 20 years. But now its crunch time, its only five years to 2030, and no-one has any sensible account of the point of it. And there are increasing numbers of people in government and politics and the media who are getting so nervous they are losing their fear of speaking out.
There is no reason to be doing this. Apart from the fact that success is impossible, and that there is no proper account of what it will take to do it, it can have no effect on the total of global emissions no matter if it does work. The UK is doing a bit over 1% of global emissions. Say that by moving to wind and solar you can cut this in half. Who cares? China will eat the savings in a matter of days or weeks. They are not going to change, neither are any of the others. Its totally pointless.
Millibrain can DENY all he wants. Doesn’t make him correct
Like you, he is a known gormless idiot, so is almost certainly WRONG.
Seriously, Nick? Are you just a masochist, or what?
These lovely, pie-in-the-sky plans come at the point when Wind and Solar power generation are blatantly failing to deliver.
You say that if course reliable energy generation is required as backup, now. But obviously Wind and Solar power will work perfectly well in the future!
Or is it just slightly possible that Wind and Solar will always require backup because they will never be reliable enough to deliver what’s promised? That’s what’s happening now, so I suspect it’s going to be the same in the future.
Another tangled web being attempted to be woven…
‘Backup’ is a misnomer. What is really going on is that there is a basic power system powered by conventional or nuclear or hydro, and it is supplemented by wind and solar.
You always have to be able to meet peak demand without the wind and solar, because there will always be cold calm nights, often going on for a week or ten days, with less than 10% of wind capacity on average and zero solar.
Anyone can see this happening in real time in the UK on gridwatch.co.uk, and anyone can download the numbers, free, from gridwatch.templar,co.uk.
A typical scenario is a blocking high to the south west, demand at about 4pm somewhere north of 40GW, 30GW of wind producing under 5GW, sometimes falling under 1GW for a few hours. Solar is producing nothing from about 18GW. The only thing that gets the UK through these episodes is gas and imports from Europe. And a small amount of nuclear, usually around 5GW.
People should just look at the charts, and gridwatch helpfully records the minimum, average and max by day month and year. This month there has been a two day wind drought, which the UK media is writing about as if it were an unusual event. But look at wind production for last summer. Look at November from the 2nd to the 10th.
If the UK loses the ability to supply from gas on and from its small amount of nuclear, the consequence will be blackouts.
You notice that Nick when he offers his vague generalities about how everything will be fine and wind and solar will provide more and more never talks actual historical numbers. Despite their being only a couple of clicks away, and despite him having a quantitative background. They just do not show what he wants to believe.
For heaven ‘s sake, Nick, talk sense once in a while! Natural gas (of which there is still an abundance worldwide) is probably the cleanest/cheapest means of generating electricity currently widely available. Next up, nuclear, provided the lifetime of the plant is enough to make the pollution involved in construction acceptable. Which is not difficult.
And there’s the crunch, because the intermittency of wind effectively means that the pollution (real genuinely dirty stuff; not that mythical pollutant CO2) caused by the construction and installation of the kit means that the trade-off never happens.
The only difference between wind and gas (or even coal) is that we are trading a relatively dirty but 100% reliable, as near as possible, generating fuel for one which despoils the face of the planet, kills birds by the thousand, cannot be relied on to provide energy on demand, and in reality is about as polluting as the system it is supposed to be replacing.
To what purpose precisely?
Who are “we”?
True fact.
So long as the UK is full of Nick clones who vote for incompetent clowns like Milliband.
Sadly it is the UK ‘first past the post’ voting system that needs reform but neither of the three major parties will support that. Why ?
Because with just 34% of the vote Labour got 63% of the seats (412), with 12% of the vote the Lib Dems got 71 seats whereas with 14% of the vote Reform got only 6 seats.
The Conservatives will not want to change things because at the next election they could possibly do the same as Labour did this time
Both main parties are happy to let the other lot have 3 election wins in exchange for their 3
The US also has first past the post voting though. The difference is that US voters seem to recognize that third parties are spoilers, so we almost never see them get more than a few percentage points. The Democrats are a coalition of center-left and far-left. Republicans are a coalition of center-right and far-right.
What reform would you have in mind? In some US jurisdictions, a run-off election between the top two vote-getters is required to ensure that the victor always has an absolute majority.
In other jurisdictions, ranked choice voting is used. With ranked choice, the process is overly complex and often poorly understood, but in theory it would allow someone to vote Libertarian and second choice Republican, signaling their actual preference but still effectively voting as they would under first past the post. In rare cases, a third party could win because their supporters might not be afraid of ‘wasting their vote’.
If either of these reforms were to be implemented in the UK, how do you see that altering the outcome?
I could see ranked choice voting being a benefit to both the Conservatives and Reform in that Conservatives could win by allowing their disaffected voters to ‘protest harmlessly’, casting a ballot for Reform, while Reform could hope that actually they could win if none of their supporters were afraid of being spoilers.
On the other hand, adding together Labour, Lib Dem, Greens, and SNP as would be the most likely case in ranked choice, could Conservatives + Reform compete?
Is there some other option that you think would help such as proportional representation?
The US also suffers from democratic bypass. Who could honestly say that Biden or Harris were remotely competent enough to stand in 2020 and 2024? Who has really been running the White House? Money in the shadows determines the nominal candidate, but there is no real choice offered to the electorate. The Republicans are little better. The problem extends right the way down through Congress and state legislatures and many other elected positions. When was the last deserving mayor of Chicago?
Define “Far Right”.
What are Far Right policies?
I’m far Right. Err on the side of not enough government. A general policy that there shouldn’t be any government policy on anything unless it is overwhelmingly clear that only government power can protect the rights of the innocent.
But to be fair, it’s a flawed model to imagine that there’s a one-dimensional spectrum of political views.
My point is the “Far Right” is a small group of people who have no influence over the mainstream Right. The “Far Right” is a fringe group that the Leftists pretend represents all people on the Right.
The Right is the common-sense political organization. The Radicals are on the Left.
I doubt you could fill a football stadium with those on the “Far Right”. They have no influence on the Republican Party or its policies.
It’s not the election system that needs reform, it’s the party selection system that imposes ignorant lobby fodder on most seats, and allows parties to be run by narrow dictatorships.
Governments are formed by corruptible men and so they are prone to be corrupt. Therefore the less government, the less corruption.
The government that governs least governs best.
The government that has the power to give you everything you want has the power to take everything you have.
No. The reform that’s needed is the exit of all political parties. Something only the voters can achieve when they wake up.
Indeed. Political parties (all of them) are only put there to distract you from the slavery and theft that are going on under your nose…
“First past the post” is actually the perfect system but it is presently soiled by political parties, which have no place in a democracy. Yeah, I know, the parties are inserted by the voters, so you get what you voted for. How ironic?
The only real solution for all the problems caused by government mismanagement is to dramatically constrain government. It shouldn’t be our knee-jerk reaction to try to manage society through government programs. Give everyone freedom. Limit government, especially centralized government far from the people!
If the government protects us from enemies foreign and domestic, it’s enough.
And what about the cost of maintaining that backup which is massive even when it’s not used and operating?
And exactly how does importing gas save money and reduce emissions?
And how do you ensure that the gas that you will need in the future will be available when you need it? I don’t think that anyone stores enough gas to supply the UK for a couple of weeks at a time. The people who own those facilities will not want to drill the holes to get it out, and build all the infrastructure to transport it, but then just sit there waiting to be summoned to serve. The LNG carriers will not just sit in port with crews ready to set sail, on the chance that they might be needed. Someone will have to pay all the overhead costs for that fuel. Just like the people in the UK end up paying for all the times when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
Still haven’t reached peak insanity….
Have you totally lost the plot Nick? When there’s no wind either now or in the future it doesn’t matter how many windmills you have they generate bugger all.
Agreed. The arithmetic is quite simple: (any number) x 0 = 0
Lost the plot? I haven’t seen any evidence that he ever had it.
How this all working out for Germany, Nick? Why can they not learn from Germany’s de-industrialization? Or, perhaps that’s the point.
Stokes you are as stupid as Miliband. The entire UK has suffered Dunkelflautes of 8 and 4 days in the last 6 weeks. The UK has over 30GW of installed wind. Output never exceeded 5GW for 3 days and was at or below 2GW most of the time. The peak demand is over 40GW at 18:00 sunset where I am is 15:50 just now. So on the glorious day in 2030 when Net Zero is achieved and wind is like it was this week and we’ve got 15GW of Nukes, Wood, Hydro and anything else, then wind will have to supply about 30GW. That means 450GW installed, and more as what little wind there is in these situations tends to move around the country as weather systems move. Say 600GW. You cannot make them produce electricity when there’s no wind no matter what you and Miliband think.
What numbers are you using?
“The entire UK has suffered Dunkelflautes of 8 and 4 days in the last 6 weeks.”
And the power stayed on.
There were significant power cuts, and industry was forced to switch off due to high prices.
It’s called “rationing”. Socialists like NIck always prefer rationing as means of controlling people and the economy. And restricting travel. This is Stalinism 101, and we’ve seen how this movie turns out many times before.
It is even worse when you remember UK’s strike price, contract for difference, and constraint payments habit. When that 600GW installed capacity is, on a perfect wind day, producing all 600GW, but demand is just 40GW, guess what the UK bill-payer is paying for? It’s not for 40GW of that power. It is in effect all 600GW of it.
In that relatively near future, when we are not allowed to use gas for heating our homes and businesses, and running our transport, a massive new demand will be placed on that electricity generation. And during dull or dark hours, and when there is no wind, there will be no generation. And don’t say “but batteries!” Because what kind of battery will be needed to heat and power and move the U.K. for (say) the 5 cold and dark and windless days in each of December to March?
I think you don’t understand the plan, which is to hope that CCUS can be made to work, even though it will use say 30% more gas per MWh generated, and then claim that this is carbon neutral generation, and therefore is not gas generation – some of which will be retained, because it will be impossible to justify investing in CCUS on low utilisation rates given the overall backup capacity that will be required. The UK could actually end up using even more gas as nuclear output declines to be replaced by gas and renewables. Moreover, the other part of the solution is simply to impose power cuts to make the target. Those in the know are already talking of at least 10GW of “flexibility”.
LOL, but Coal, Gas, and Nuclear doesn’t need back up support.
Ooops…….
Who’s “We”?
We do not need to reduce emissions as Co2 does not and is not the cause of global warming/climate change.
Nick gazed into his crystal ball and foretold “gas will mostly be imported”
Ah, so you are calling Miliband a liar for claiming that his plan would “protect working people from the ravages of global energy markets” ?
”Is that all you have to justify the headline?”
Not really much else needed, Nick. It’s time to stop denying that wind and/or solar, are not fit for purpose.
Flywheel Miliband is convinced he is right.
The Guardian is wobbling badly under Katherine dying on the Viner
All in all a right dog’s dinner
Katherine Viner is the wife of David Viner of the famous UK snow prediction.
Actually it’s worse than that!
Viner married broadcaster, documentary maker and writer and self-confessed ‘recovering’ alcoholic Adrian Chiles in 2022. Yes him. Not only, but also… Viner gave him a column in the Guardian. Probably keeps him off the street.
I didn’t know that. I stand corrected.
Here’s what sane people in Oklahoma are doing about renewable energy: They are fighting back against it, and winning!
https://www.okenergytoday.com/2024/12/ag-says-cancellation-of-power-line-corridor-means-oklahomans-no-longer-face-tyrannical-threat-of-federal-eminent-domain/
“Drummond hailed the decision and thanked Speaker-elect Hilbert for his leadership on the issue.
“I am very thankful that countless Oklahoma landowners no longer live under the tyrannical threat of federal eminent domain,” said the Attorney General. “Speaker Hilbert’s leadership in this issue was truly impactful, and the property owners in his district and all along the proposed corridor should be grateful for his efforts.”
end excerpt
This new powerline corridor has been cancelled (it would have run across Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas) and Oklahomans are actively resisting the building of more windmills in Oklahoma.
https://www.okenergytoday.com/2024/11/tribe-fights-proposed-wind-farm-in-oklahomas-mcintosh-county/
https://www.newson6.com/story/672d8949f7b1b7094d9ad791/were-concerned:-mcintosh-county-residents-frustrated-with-proposed-wind-turbine-building-near-lake
“People in McIntosh County are beyond frustrated after a Canadian company announced its plans to build dozens of wind turbines near Lake Eufaula and homes.
So many people showed up at the County Commissioners’ meeting Monday that many of them had to stand outside.
The commissioners held a second meeting Thursday night, this time at the McIntosh County Fairgrounds.
The commissioners did not take any action at the meeting, but listened to concerns from residents.
Many people say they feel like they were left in the dark on this project and they want answers to their questions. More than 100 people showed at Thursday’s meeting to voice their concerns about the proposed wind turbines around Eufaula Lake.”
end excerpt
Of course Nick wind and solar are wonderful and cheap – except you do need something in reserve when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesnt shine.. It is something that Milliband thought about realy deeply and told us all about the recent NESO paper what he wrote . It is something he called
“Energy Storage”. Now most of his references to storage were expressed in power units – GW – strangely not GW hrs which are Energy units. But Nick Since you have read the report and are obviously more erudite and numerate than some of the skeptic whingers on this site, please tell me how many GWhr of ENERGY storage is envisioned in teh Halcyon days of 2030, and how long will that keep our shiny and not that expensive grid of the future running.
Milliband, and NIck, expect you to do without when there’s no wind or sun.Restricting energy availability is a prime method of population control.
The Royal Society has already answered this question. You need storage amounting to about one third of annual electricity consumption.
Batteries are impossible for this amount, not affordable, not available. So the Royal Society proposed to excavate and seal 900 caverns and fill them with hydrogen, which would store the hydrogen for decades against a wind drought season. Where the hydrogen would come from is not specified.
Those familiar with British politics will understand that this is the scientific equivalent of Yes Minister, when Bernard and Sir Humphrey have a sharp intake of breath and exclaim in approval that Hacker’s latest idea is innovative,, controversial, creative, and even courageous.
“Is it that bad?”, thinks Hacker.
The RS plan is also likely infeasible and certainly unaffordable. It’s in fantasy land.
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/lcoe-cost-wind-solar-renewables-plus-hydrogen
Miliband is an idiot fanatic who will plunge the UK population into abject poverty.
And will claim the credit, too.
An unexpected development for Flywheel…
“”During Thursday’s BBC Question Time, Mr Streeting said the UK’s “hesitation” to intervene in Syria after the use of chemical weapons in 2013 kept Bashar al-Assad in power longer. Such “hesitation” was down to Mr Miliband, then the Labour leader, flipping his position at the last moment and voting against air strikes, which forced defeat upon Lord Cameron, prime minister at the time, and blocked Barack Obama, the former US president, from policing his self-declared “red line”.
Mr Miliband hit back on Friday during a morning media round, saying it was “just wrong” to claim as Mr Streeting had that Assad would have gone if the Western air strikes had been carried out.””
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/12/13/wes-streeting-ed-miliband-clash-assad-syria-labour-weak/
Flywheel certainly has form.
Meanwhile, in Australia
Battery storage in Australia will increase by 7200% over the next 2 years
Weird how 100% of the comments to that YouTube video are pro green energy.
The Viking stays away from discussing costs and he’s technically deluded. A 100% renewable grid could go down for a very long time.
I suspect that 72 times the current amount of storage is still just a drop in the bucket compared to what would be required, and how much would all that cost?!
much wealth destroyed
“Mr. Miliband, there’s not enough wind to power all the wind turbines, if we don’t do something soon we’ll be facing blackouts.”
“Get James Dyson on the line. He built those amazing bladeless fans, right? Tell him to build some, only 100 feet tall and put them facing the wind turbines. Do I have to think of everything around here!?”
The promises…
1: Labour will get the British economy growing faster than any other in the G7.
2: Labour will decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030.
Promise number 1 has already gone under the bus:
“”Rachel Reeves has given her reaction to the UK’s GDP contracting for the second month in a row.
…
Rachel Reeves admitted the figures are “disappointing”, but pivoted to attacking the Tories””
https://news.sky.com/story/politics-starmer-labour-badenoch-tories-housing-budget-live-latest-sky-news-12593360?postid=8775645
It was her budget….
Promise 2? Watch this space.
Promise 2 is gone already.
We’re now going to be “on track” by 2030, which is about as meaningless a phrase as it is possible to utter.
Only to the tune of 95% now.
In a year or two that will be 90, 85 etc
It doesn’t matter, the phrase “on track” is so meaningless that it renders any possible target irrelevant.
By 2030 all references to Miliband and 2030 will be disappeared just like the ‘Edstone’
The other side of this is what do we do with the electricity when the wind is blowing in mid-summer?
Mad Ed’s plan is for 80 GW wind and another 50 GW solar, so 130 GW to meet 30 GW average demand, are we going to end up making constraint payments for 100 GW? How much is that going to cost?
Madness.
No, no that would cost billions!
Nick will explain it to you. Instead of billions, the UK should spend trillions on
incendiary deviceser, batteries.Now mind you, those batteries still won’t be able to store summertime wind and solar through to February, but you’ll just need to dress appropriately if you can’t run your heat pump.
Or warm yourself by some vigorous bike riding when you can’t charge your EV that you can’t afford to buy in the first place because you lost your job when all the industries shut down.
UK electricity bill payers already have had £1bn added to their bills over the last year to curtail wind when it was producing electricity the grid didn’t need!
It’s worse, it’s not that the grid didn’t need the electricity, it’s that we don’t have the infrastructure in place to transmit it from where it’s generated to where it’s needed.
Genius.
Good point
Already we have the Seagreen windfarm curtailing 60% of its output. It must earn sufficient from those payments and the 40% of of its generation potential that is getting used to pay for itself. Curtailment payments per MWh (an average of just £28/MWh for Seagreen) are falling because of competition as more windfarms come on stream. That means that the price of the useful output will have to increase.
What’s all this. ‘Clean’ stuff? Had he realised the CO2 argument is dead? Are we very dirty today? How many dying from power station effluent? Nobody?
Well we can all breathe a sigh of relief.
Miliband pledges no blackouts under Labour’s ‘unstoppable’ renewable energy shake-up
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/13/miliband-pledges-no-blackouts-under-labours-unstoppable-renewable-energy-shake-up
What could go wrong !!!
Well not going to find out as I have a generator and a set of batteries.
Story Tip as well
I found out just how useless batteries become just in a caravan with a hi power 24V UPS and some large car batteries..
The thing became a nightmare after only 2hrs use.
Being as in that part of Wales it pours constantly with rain, I don’t think even that system would be any good with solar panels on the roof, – and that was summertime with long days and plenty of daylight.
The inane Labor regime is standing downstream of the fan fed by wind/solar bull manure, and the Guardian can no longer make up more sugar-coated lies to disinform the UK public, which has finally realized the Labor regime is even more woke-nuts then the Tory regime.
Huge demonstrations, lasting for as long as it takes, are needed to demand new elections and install Farage with a Make England Great Again, MEGA, program
MAGA, Make Albion Great Again, will do nicely.
The Scots can think of it as Alba…
Not sure what the Welsh and Irish can do
“The clean power sprint is the national security, economic security, and social justice fight of our time – and this plan gives us the tools we need to win this fight for the British people.”
*********
National and economic security? Social justice fight of our time? The tools we need to win this fight for the British people?
Jeesh, that guy really does sound like a Marxist. Energy issues should be scientific and engineering matters, not ideological ones.
The guy is in his own bubble disconnected from the real world. For the next 4 years, it looks like the U.S. and the U.K. are going to be going down two very different roads.
Don’t be so negative. Ed knows exactly what he is doing together with his SS boss Ernst kaltenbrunner Steimer. The only thing I can say is you better stop this idiot because if he is busy trying to realize his erotic dream the way back is very costly keep that in mind. How is everything going with the EV market? Already at the 22% sales of evs? Or are the car retailers fucking around with the numbers?
you’re on the right track England to a bright future and the sun will never stop shining. NEVER!
Miliband is clearly deranged, must be sacked and given suitable treatment.
Death Cult running UK.
I have a little glimmer of hope that this
Ed Miliband accused of ‘not declaring’ £4m party donation And
£40K missing from office refurbishment.
Actually cause his political demise.
I wonder if the dingbat is aware that 100% of the UK is, in terms of latitude, north of Winnipeg, Manitoba which is a hell of a cold place in winter.
Supposedly the UK has at least several hundred years worth of energy supply in known coal deposits. Use, problem solved while other reliable technologies are discovered and developed.
Its supply of sun is far less than its coal, and much less than some other parts of the globe that are trying to depend on the sun. Plus it is necessary to ignore the major problems that everywhere else has run into from too much solar on the grid, most especially when it comes from millions of independent, very hard to control, sources.
“…This can only happen with big, bold change…”
Compare to committing suicide: using a .44 magnum rather than a .38 Special. Similar result, but a lot more mess for the survivor(s) to clean up.
Settled science? Bah humbug.
Miliband is a liar. If renewables were cheaper the UK would be paying less for energy today than they were before renewables. They aren’t, they are paying way more and are not getting the energy they need when they need it. Renewables are a lose lose deal. Time for him to go.
Anyone else notice a rather striking resemblance ?
Wallace is numerate, unlike Miliband.
Is Miliband from Yorkshire?
Looking at Ed’s picture, I thought no one could look more retarded than Trudeau, but I was wrong.
Have you looked at Albosleazy and Bow-wow from Australia… !!!