From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Just to confirm this comment about interconnectors, yesterday we were exporting our gas power to Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands, because of the same shortage of wind power we were experiencing. (Gas and biomass power are the marginal power on the grid, so are the only generators that can be easily switched up and down to meet variations in demand):
What will happen when our gas plants are shut down?
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What will happen when our gas plants are shut down?
Green jobs….
Danish wind giant Ørsted plans to remove about 2,000 positions from its 8,000-strong workforce by the end of 2027 through a combination of redundancies, natural attrition and selling off parts of its business.
The company, which is headquartered in Fredericia, Denmark, and employs more than 1,200 workers in the UK, plans to make 500 redundancies by the end of the year, including 235 in its home market.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/09/worlds-biggest-offshore-wind-company-to-cut-a-quarter-of-its-workforce-as
The subsidy bonanza is over. Oh dear, never mind!
Not all of it…
The appointment of Imperial’s Dr Friederike Otto to the IPCC shows that climate ‘science’ is now pure politics, says Ben Pile. Unable to produce actual evidence of ‘extreme’ weather, they resort to ‘attribution studies’. – Daily Sceptic
Attribution studies = Pseudoscience
tea leaf reading (digital)
bone rolling. (digital)
augury. (wind turbine adjacent)
Perhaps they should start reading the future through End Trails…Wind Turbine Ends Trails that it
Substituting punch cards with Tarot cards !!
Suggestion for Josh. Green jobs when the grid fails. 10000 men running in hamster wheels generating electricity to charge their mobiles. Their wives are working the washing boards in the kitchen because no washing machine will work.
I trust we are charging at least £10,000 per MWhr! That would reduce our bills substantially.
A lot of cold and dark, if it were to happen. I doubt it will, but there will be terrible damage to the economy just because the idea is in play.
Who would buy a vehicle when the only vehicles are EVs? Who would fit a heat-pump? Who would build a data-centre?
I can put on thick socks and eat cold beans from the tin. I won’t like it but I’ll live. What sort of socks will keep an economy warm? And will it be warm enough to pay for the 50% of GDP that is government spending?
(As I write, gas is providing just shy of 60% of our electricity and nuclear is providing just shy of 10%. Wind and solar are generating just under 4GW, a smidge more than 10%.)
What we need in these windless days as we enter into winter with its endless cold sunless dark days, Is more solar industrial landscapes to replace our prims agricultural lands in the East Anglian bread basket of the U.K.
Our Ed Miliband has just signed off 3000
acres of prime growing land to build a solar park that will produce for less than 20% of the installed time.
thank goodness we have our Ed to look after us…..
Reform council leader vows to ‘lie in front of bulldozers’ to stop Ed Miliband’s net zero projects
Lets hope he proves true to his word.
Like Boris (“I will lie down with you in front of those bulldozers“ ) & Heathrow,
He conveniently travelled on the day of a crucial vote regarding the expansion of Heathrow Airport, which he missed due to his apparent “urgent business” in Kabul.
Boris Johnson’s trip to Afghanistan in June 2018 lasted less than a day.
But the trip was significant in that it allowed him to avoid making a choice between supporting the government or resigning based on his previous commitments against the runway expansion.
Boris was in Kabul for approximately four hours. This short visit primarily involved discussions with military personnel and officials rather than being a substantive diplomatic mission.
The cost of this trip to taxpayers was reported to be over £20,000, (to prevent him losing face), highlighting the financial implications alongside the political context.
Current UK solar generating installed capacity is 20.99GW.
Over the last 12 months, these facilities provided 2.01GW.
So these magnificent facilities, which will provide us with cheap clean energy independence and security, operated at a load factor – efficiency – of . . . 9.57%!!
You’ll agree that’s somewhat lower than the ~20% you imply.
My array gets just over 9%, so its in the right ballpark. PV panels can work but only if you use others off casts ie cheap and DIY the installation as a ground mount. Even US made PV panels are made from Chinese PV wafers so also beware of the slave labour aspect.
“Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
Ah. Insanity.
Biomass means the Drax station which was converted from fossil to wood pellets – cut trees in North America, grind them to sawdust, dry the dust and press into pellets then ship the pellets across an ocean.
Together Biomass and Gas represent 75% of the UK’s generating capacity. In what world is 75% considered “marginal”?
I know – “marginal” in the technical sense of being dispatched to fill in the margin when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun isn’t shining.
Using a technical sense to obfuscate the commonly understood meaning is dishonest.
In the atrophied brains of Eco-Nazis.
“What will happen when our gas plants are shut down?”
We’ll live in a green Utopia, be powered by ruinables, our glorious leader, Mad Ed, said so … in the cold & dark just like the good old days … 8,000 yrs ago.
I live on Anglesey, North Wales (laughingly called ‘Energy Island’ as we get lots of power outages),
We have lots of wind & over 100 onshore wind turbines (I can see 31 from my place) plus a big offshore Wind Farm (576 MW) ‘Gwynt y Môr ‘ 15 miles away, & 100s of acres of solar panels on prime agricultural land.
It’s 10:40 am, the wind is 8 MPH, with a gray, overcast, cloudy sky, and a temperature of 9°C.
‘Gwynt y Môr ‘ Wind Farm is producing just 2% of its capacity,
see – https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/#5.82/53.453/-3.576
& my 4kW solar panels are giving 346W = 8.6% of capacity, so we can assume the same for the big boys.
In other words, we’ll be up shit creek without a paddle & sinking.!!!
The UK needs to change direction on energy policy, and fast!
Ed Miliband is on the record: “‘I’m sorry, but that’s my policy. I’m not prepared to talk about it’.”
Starmer couldn’t fire him at the reshuffle; Ed refused to go. No change of direction is forecast.
They need the movie Prime Minister.
“I could have him murdered. SAS are charming. Ruthless, trained killers just a phone call away.”
Tis most unfortunate… Just outside the goldilocks zone for wind.
Most wind turbines operate at wind speeds between 9mph and 55mph.
Below 9mph and inertia (friction) prevents most turbine blades from spinning.
Above 55mph and the automatic breaking system kicks in to protect the bearings from damage.
Some turbines can begin operating at 7mph winds but auto break above 50mph winds.
Those that don’t auto break will self terminate.
Had to laugh ! sir fon! Energy island!
Seems we have the same weather as you EXCEPT …we have working NPP here and expanding it soon.
You only have promises based on decades of sweet zilch turning one NPP off BEFORE perhaps building another.
It sounds now so familiar – just like Ignalina in LT.
“Lithuania closed its last nuclear reactor, which had been generating 70% of its electricity, at the end of 2009, due to European Union pressure. Electricity was a major export until the closure of Lithuania’s nuclear plant. A new nuclear plant was planned to be built by GE Hitachi, but has not proceeded.” WUNDER WHY huh!
WYLFA lunacy.
“In 2012, Reactor 2 was shut down. Reactor 1 was switched off on 30 December 2015, ending 44 years of operation at the site.”
Following the closure of Trawsfynydd in 1991, Wylfa became Wales’ only nuclear power station.
An application to build two ABWR was submitted by HNP 4 April 2017.
In September 2020, parent company Hitachi withdrew from the project. In 2022, the UK gov expressed interest in the construction of a possible set of two EPR reactors on the site, and in 2024 announced it would purchase the site from Hitachi…..(haha!)
WTF? so you have another decade of unreliables ahead of you before someone thinks of actually building the darn thing!!!
We live 10 miles from Wylfa.
Hitachi withdrew from the project because they’d spent £2 billion jumping through ever-changing bureaucratic hoops & complied with everything. Then, in January 2019, the government moved the goalposts yet again, so Hitachi said goodbye.
Your picture is not Wylfa.
This is Wylfa.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%2Fid%2FOIP.1aA1ujDsCOKie0lT0L8AbQHaE8%3Fcb%3D12%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=54ce0203d08254b885e4979c178a73c28e7fafdb0d9cfafc305cc14b88ab8d0d&ipo=images
So most of Europe dreams of green energy- while Ukraine and Russia has their fossil fuel power plants and refineries being blown up daily. All of Europe will soon be a basket case like at the end of WWII.
Europe is a slow-motion energy/economy trainwreck.
Trump says only stupid people build windmills.
Europe should listen to Trump.
“Trump says only stupid people build windmills.”
Agreed.
“Europe should listen to Trump ”
… maybe /
On April 23, 2020 Trump also suggested the idea of injecting disinfectant as a potential treatment for COVID-19, which was met with widespread criticism from medical professionals who warned that such actions would be dangerous and even fatal.
… / maybe not !!
I’m not sure Clint Eastwood was right. “Deserve” has something to do with it.
What will happen when our gas plants are shut down?
Blackouts. Its inevitable if you just look at the numbers. Ed wants to have 90GW wind and 45GW solar. Peak demand in January will be around 45-50GW at present, more with heat pumps and EVs if they achieve their plans. At 5pm there will be no solar. 90GW of wind will be delivering somewhere around 5GW. Maybe 10GW if you are lucky. Gas and Nuclear will have been closed because end of life. Or ideology.
Any way you look at it there is a 20GW+ gap. it means blackouts.
Meanwhile the latest poll shows, if an election were held tomorrow:
Reform 445 seats (out of 650)
Labour 73
Lib Dem 42
SNP 41 (Scottish Independence)
Your Party 13 (Corbyn, the member for Gaza)
Conservative 7
Green 7
Plaid 5 (Welsh independence)
The ghost of Charlie Kirk
Prior to the Labour conference, Starmer had Farage’s security detail “secretly” reduced by 75%.
Starmer then made his incendiary racist and the enemy declarations on Reform and Farage.
Fortunately Reform donors picked up the tab for security.
Politics is dirty business
Trouble is, we will just replace a bunch of corrupt, ill-educated, blinkered zealots,
with another bunch of corrupt, ill-educated, blinkered zealots.
Politics is a revolving door to get your nose in the trough.
News tip
U.S. Army Plans to Power Bases With Tiny Nuclear ReactorsThe Janus Program fulfills a Trump order to start powering military installations with state-of-the-art nuclear technology
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-army-plans-to-power-bases-with-tiny-nuclear-reactors-c41c1383?st=RburUL&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
The Canadian Defence Dept has also specified SMRs for its Arctic circle NORAD installations and remote Inuit communities.
The only things missing in this plan are the actual SMRs and the $$$$$$$$s to pay for them.
But the “Official Announcements” were impressively written and delivered.
all they need to do now is start reprocessing nuclear fuel in the USA and stop buying it from Russia who use all those profits to keep killing civilians in UKR.
Why doesn’t the USA do this? And yes, stop financing Putler.
Is biomass seen as a marginal, dispatch able source of energy like gas? Or is it a green base load which we are all proud of?
Biomass operates according to subsidy/tax inclusive commercial economics. As there is now a limit on some subsidised volumes the optimisation has become more complex as they don’t want to waste subsidy on low margin hours only to be wallied on better margin conditions.
Although there is a portion of biomass on CFDs, the economic calculations are broadly similar because the CFD margin is constant for six months at a time corresponding to winter/summer. During the energy crisis the margin went sharply negative so the CFD plants shut down except for extreme stress high price opportunities. ROCs pay an inflation indexed subsidy currently worth around £75/MWh.
Just to confirm my original comment was correct: at times we were also exporting to Belgium.
Just as England became the world’s leading recycler of small boats.
According to the Independent, there were 175K ‘unauthorized’ arrivals in the UK from 2020 to 2024. Not sure how many of these came in by boat, but it seems like small beer compared to the overland influx of illegals into the US during the Biden puppet show. Be grateful for the Channel – aside from the Normans in 1066, it’s been a very effective deterrent to invasion.
It’s the greater than 1 million per year “legal” immigrants (a significant portion of whom are economic migrants abusing the asylum system) that are the real problem. UK population growth is driven entirely by immigration. We have the same population density as Japan and increasing rapidly.
Illegal entry is also very conservatively estimated. The real numbers are much higher.
IIRC, in the midst of COVID there were shortages of PPE, and vaccine when it was developed. Nations did not play well with each other and some companies were threatened by countries.
It will be interesting when country A has a contract with power suppliers in country B, and country B starts having power shortages. Any bets whether the power suppliers will be allowed to export power to country A per their contract? I bet things could get ugly real fast.
It’ll be a Cold Dark day in Britain when Gas and Nuclear Generation are shut down for
goodbad.The Angel of Death will be busy on the isles that winter.
What will happen when the gas plants are shut down?
The plebeians will freeze in the dark. Which was the plan all along.
You left out the words ‘to death’. Cheers!
Torches and pitchforks will arrive en masse.
That’ll be too late, we need them now !! … before the deaths happen.
BLACKOUTS.
Trump is better, but Trump is out of office in 2028. Milktoast and Stormy will be still throwing grandmothers into jail for having an opinion. It is the same for ‘leaders’ on on the continent. Thatcher was correct to point out that when you have finished spending other peoples money, the party is over. The ‘poor’ will then include all except the elite who have designed your enslavement. Be happy, eat bugs (if you can get them) and own nothing.
It couldn’t be any more clear, government interference in the energy production and transmission business is like a death sentence. It is becoming impossible to sympathize with these people. I fear only a mass human die off (freezing to death) will wake these people up.
I am not sure. There is a nagging suspicion that a mass human die off is the plan.
We shall see. If they celebrate, those who are left will have the answer.
That’s the Britain that could spare even more if fracing had not been banned in England.
(France had been exporting power from its nuclear plants, but had some trouble with reliability of them.
Finland finally got it newest nuke plant going, so may be exporting electricity.)