Yesterday, National Grid, the Electricity System Operator, was forced to pay over £20m to “balance” the system and avoid blackouts, ten times more than normal.
The entire UK wind fleet was in effect completely absent for much of the day, only rising above a few percent of its theoretical output late in the day when the crisis was over.
As a result, conventional gas- and coal-fired generators had to be fired up. The UK’s creaking grid was, therefore, effectively being propped up by fossil fuels.
The cost of these actions was very high, with some units being paid as much as £4,000 per megawatt-hour to switch on, an exceptional price by any standard.
The balancing cost of avoiding blackouts has been increasing rapidly and is expected to hit 1-2 billion pounds this year, burdening consumers with ever more expensive electricity bills.
For a country claiming to be “Powering Past Coal” this is a disgrace. Worse still, in the run-up to COP26, it gives the lie to any UK government claim to leadership in the delivery of Net Zero and leaves the Prime Minister no plausible platform from which to urge other countries to decarbonize.
None of this should come as a surprise. Power systems engineers and other analysts have known for decades that wind and solar power would make the UK electricity grid increasingly fragile and extremely costly.
However, their warnings were ignored, and the government and the British public are now reaping the whirlwind.
More information:
The GWPF has published numerous studies and comments drawing attention to the onset of system fragility and high operation costs in the UK electricity system. This is a selection:
- Dr. Capel Aris, A Cheaper Cleaner Electricity System (2019)
- Dr. Capel Aris and Colin Gibson, The Future of GB Electricity Supply Security: Cost and Emissions in a Net-zero System (2020)
- Dr. John Constable, The Brink of Darkness: Britain’s Fragile Power Grid (2020)
They need to put wind mills in this guy’s yard … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4LOL27PbwA
I would suggest that they go to ‘rolling’ blackouts. The general public isn’t really aware of the money being spent to prop up the ‘renewables’.
Being without power for a few hours a day -I think they just might notice that.
Most all the Democrats plans is for World Government why else did Biden steal the election for them and the Globalists the UN,CFR, Etc
Australia is heading in the same direction as the UK.
Coal plants are closing with no new ones being built, while many subsidised wind and solar farms appear all over the place. It’s “illegal” to have nuclear power in this country. In the state of Victoria, government royalties were increased on brown coal to force the 2017 closure of the large Hazelwood power station.
We took delivery of a 13kva back-up generator last month, because it is only a matter of time before blackouts will be a part of our day.
The same price increases are happening here to gas as well and that’s because our stupid politicians didn’t think to impose a requirement on gas exporters to hold back gas for Australian consumption. Our domestic price is calculated from the international price.
What really astounds me, we are supposed to be intelligent and really clever human beings, but this nonsense all stems from the “belief” (there’s no proof) that humans are causing the planet to warm by emitting too much CO2. Yep – there are fairies at the bottom of my garden and I belief in Santa Clause.