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United Kingdom Businesses Power

UK Grid Operator: Plan For Three-Hour Power Blackouts In Event of Gas Shortages (independent.co.uk) 110

Posted by BeauHD from the worst-case-scenario dept.
Shortages of gas, which generated 40 per cent of UK electricity last year, could mean planned three-hour blackouts in some areas to protect supplies for heating homes and buildings, system operators warned. From a report: The margins between peak demand and power supply are expected to be sufficient and similar to recent years in the National Grid Electricity System Operator's (ESO) base case scenario for this winter. But in the face of the "challenging" winter facing European energy supplies following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the grid operator is also planning for what would happen if there were no imports of electricity from Europe and insufficient gas supplies. To tackle a loss of imports from France, Belgium and the Netherlands, there are two gigawatts of coal-fired power plants on stand-by to fire up if needed to meet demand.

People are being encouraged to sign up with their electricity supplier for a scheme which will give them money back on their bills to shift their use of power away from times of high demand to help prevent blackouts. That could mean putting on the dishwasher or washing machine overnight or charging an EV at off-peak times. In addition, larger businesses will be paid for reducing demand, for example by shifting their times of energy use or switching to batteries or generators in peak times. The "demand flexibility service" will run from November to March, and it is expected to swing into action 12 times whatever happens to ensure people get rewarded for being part of the scheme - with additional use if needed to protect supplies. It is hoped it will deliver 2GW of power savings to balance supply and demand.

Without the scheme, there might be days when it was cold and still â" creating high demand and low levels of wind power -- when there would be a potential need to interrupt supply to some customers for limited periods, National Grid ESO's winter outlook said. The ESO also warned that if there is not enough gas to keep the country's power stations going in January it could force distributors to cut off electricity to households and businesses for three-hour blocks during the day. It said the number of people left without electricity would depend on how many gas power stations would be forced to shut down because there is not enough gas. But this was the worst-case scenario that the grid operator presented. Its base case assumes that when Britain needs more electricity, cables that link the country to its European neighbors will be enough to keep the lights on. It does not assume that there is any "material reduction of consumer demand due to high energy prices."
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UK Grid Operator: Plan For Three-Hour Power Blackouts In Event of Gas Shortages More

UK Grid Operator: Plan For Three-Hour Power Blackouts In Event of Gas Shortages

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  • Gas shorftage (Score:4, Informative)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @03:07AM (#62948613)

    Just a reminder to people who don't speak British, gasoline is called petrol in the UK.

    • Re: Gas shorftage (Score:5, Informative)

      by Fusen ( 841730 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @04:50AM (#62948693)

      Not sure if you're making a joke but this story is about natural gas shortages, which is one of the main fuels used to generate electricity in Britain and is also used to generate hot water in households

      • I just took it as a reminder that a "gas shortage" in the US and a "gas shortage" in the UK are two different things.

        The UK has been experiencing both, though...

        • I just took it as a reminder that a "gas shortage" in the US and a "gas shortage" in the UK are two different things. The UK has been experiencing both, though...

          And as long as refried beans stay on the menu, Mexico will never experience either type.

          • You really don't have to hard fry beans to make them produce stupendous flatulence... I promise.

            Then again, some of us can turn any food into prodigious quantities of gases.

            • Yeah, I worked with two guys like that. They used to, um, compete in the enclosed elevator. We ended up taking the stairs a lot.

        • No, the UK hasnâ(TM)t been experiencing both. There really could be a gas shortage this winter. Petrol and diesel donâ(TM)t and never had a supply shortage: last September/October there was a distribution problem because of lack of drivers, and this past April there was another brief and more limited distribution problem in southern England because groups like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil were blocking oil terminals and bridges.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Not sure if you're making a joke but this story is about natural gas shortages, which is one of the main fuels used to generate electricity in Britain and is also used to generate hot water in households

        We're British, we always make jokes about dire matters. Its a national coping mechanism.

        Now what's happening here is standard tabloid scare mongering (another common past time in the UK) which means that our national grid operator is planning for the worst case scenario which is an unlikely but yet still possible risk of occurring. Unlike Texas, we prefer not to let power failures sneak up on us though lack of planning, nor allow them to go on for several days.

        Now the main reason this is a potential i

        • Interesting, what would getting rid of natural gas storage capacity accomplish? What was the point?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mjwx ( 966435 )

            Interesting, what would getting rid of natural gas storage capacity accomplish? What was the point?

            Presumably it was something that wasn't nailed down enough to avoid being sold off.

            In order to make it look like they're even attempting to balance the books, the Tories will sell off whatever parts of the government they can.

      • Not sure if you're making a joke but this story is about natural gas shortages

        Indeed it is, but in a story about gas shortages on a site that is predominately so American that people get into pissing matches over whether stories should use the "superior" Fahrenheit units it's important to point out what "gas" means since most of the readership here would immediately think we're talking about gasoline.

    • Not to be confused with Diesel either - plenty of cars use that fuel type over here and in Europe - I _believe_ (could be wrong), it isn't that prevalent in the US?

      So, yeah, we either say "Petrol" - which is called "gas" in the US, or we say "Diesel" - you do want to ensure you get the right one when you fill up your tank.

      And sure, Gas is ... hell, what IS that called in the US? - Natural Gas? Propane - guess that'll do.

      • In the US we call gasoline gas, and diesel fuel diesel. We also have propane which is called LP[G] (liquified propane [gas]) and natural gas (which is mostly methane) which is sold as "natural gas" (low pressure), CNG (higher pressure) or LNG (even higher pressure). Only buses and other fleet vehicles really run on CNG or LNG, although people sometimes buy them as surplus and convert them to RVs, and then have to figure out where to fill them.

        It's very common for Americans to have experience with both natur

    • Just a reminder to people who don't speak British, gasoline is called petrol in the UK.

      Hate to ask, but what is a shorftage? Also British, I assume...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Just a reminder to people who don't speak British, gasoline is called petrol in the UK.

        Hate to ask, but what is a shorftage? Also British, I assume...

        Gas as a fuel in everywhere but the US refers to either natural gas or liquified petroleum gas (not to be confused with petrol which is a liquid rather than a gas). In this context it refers to the natural gas we use to produce electricity.

    • Marc Bolan/T-Rex "Life's a gas"
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • The cure may be worse than the disease (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @04:39AM (#62948677)

    It reminds me of a certain country that had a water shortage problem a few decades ago. The water was just turned off fairly randomly and people were sitting without any water for some times.

    So what did people do?

    Well, of course fill every single container whenever they had water. Bathtubs, sinks, pots, pans, even vases. Everything was filled with water because people were worried that they would be without, so they stockpiled. And when the water was turned off, their reserves tided them over.

    As soon as the water returned, they flushed out all the water so it wouldn't go stale and repeat the cycle.

    In the end, the water consumption more than TRIPLED during the shortage periods.

    You might want to ponder whether you want to do that. Because battery packs are cheap. What you will notice with these plans is that the power consumption spikes as soon as the power is back simply because people are recharging their battery packs.

    • Interesting side consequence, but you can't flush your batteries the same way, and batteries aren't that cheap, plus it requires an electrician to install. V2G in EVs are maybe easier to install and use. In any case, they are different scenarios.
      • Perhaps we could charge the batteries in the USA where electric is 2 cents per unit and plug them in in the UK where it is 30 cents per unit. If it can work for woodchip...

      • With batteries, the problem is the sudden spike in use as soon as the power is back, because the first thing people will do is to recharge their batteries, immediately after the power is back, because they don't know when it's gonna cut out again and thus, since everyone is the most important person on the planet, I have to charge my batteries DAMN RIGHT NOW, putting an undue strain on the power grid that it very likely can't just shrug off.

        Not to mention the loss due to self-discharge.

    • Re:The cure may be worse than the disease (Score:5, Funny)

      by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @04:59AM (#62948701)
      Well, I for one have already got all my bathtubs, sinks, pots, pans, & vases ready to fill with electricity when the power cuts begin.

    • There are bigger consequences than people stockpiling when it comes to water supplies being turned off - most water mains delivery networks rely on the water pressure ensuring that nothing leaks into the pipes (water pressure leaks water out, preventing backflow of nasties into the mains).

      Stop supplying water and all of a sudden your pipes are contaminated because of leakage into them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      In the UK most people use electric kettles to heat water for drinking, so after a power cut the first thing they do is boil some water and make tea/coffee. Each kettle pulling 2000-3000W for a few minutes.

      Another big power draw is stuff that is designed to boot up as soon as it is powered. Lots of TV set top boxes do that, for example.

      • In the UK most people use electric kettles to heat water for drinking, so after a power cut the first thing they do is boil some water and make tea/coffee. Each kettle pulling 2000-3000W for a few minutes.

        We're going to get that here in the US as various localities outlaw gas hookups in new construction. They are doing it for a combination of reasons to include emissions and fire hazard. Our typical household outlets only deliver 1500W or so safely though (you can get a bit more but that's pretty much the sustained rating) so either people are going to have to start getting 240V outlets installed in their kitchens or just live with a slow kettle.

        Another big power draw is stuff that is designed to boot up as soon as it is powered. Lots of TV set top boxes do that, for example.

        Yeah, but most of those draw just a few watts today. Luckily HT

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Slower kettles aren't a bad thing. As well as limiting the peak power draw when lots of people use them at once, the high power ones have a higher minimum fill level. I.e. they heat more water than the user actually wants, wasting energy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by suss ( 158993 )

          You forgot about the 2-500 Watt beasts like the Playstation 4/5...

      • In the UK most people use electric kettles to heat water for drinking

        We can also heat water using gas in a pinch.

        I mean, who's going to go three whole hours without a cup of tea?

        • In the UK most people use electric kettles to heat water for drinking

          We can also heat water using gas in a pinch.

          I mean, who's going to go three whole hours without a cup of tea?

          People who don't have a thermos [google.com]?

    • People are going to recharge battery packs when the power returns but it will not create a peak as large as typical peak time demand which is when blackouts are liable to occur. So they will be recharging and at the same time generators will be ramping down just a bit slower than usual.

      It's not going to be the same area's getting powercut either. So if you do lose power due to a shortage of energy in the grid it will likely be somewhere else that loses power the next time. For London, Birmingham Manchester

      • Then the spike will just move about, which makes it even worse because now, power plants know when to expect spikes. Then, when people recharge based on when their power returns, planning this becomes virtually impossible because you have no idea what consumers have what level of battery power to recharge, rendering your carefully created timetables totally useless.

        • That may be true at first, but given time, the operators will learn how big the spikes tend to be when different areas return from a blackout.

        • Frequency response is all about spikes in demand or more often tripping generators. I can't talk too UK figures but for ireland peak demand is around 6000 MW and a large generator is arounf 420 MW and they do trip from time to time.

          The Grid has genrators all in sync and the frequency is aimed to be at 50 Hz. When you lose a large generator the load is transfered to the other generators and they slow down , when they slow down this reduces the power on the grid increasing the load on the generators which s

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      It reminds me of a certain country that had a water shortage problem a few decades ago. The water was just turned off fairly randomly and people were sitting without any water for some times.

      So what did people do?

      Well, of course fill every single container whenever they had water. Bathtubs, sinks, pots, pans, even vases. Everything was filled with water because people were worried that they would be without, so they stockpiled. And when the water was turned off, their reserves tided them over.

      As soon as the water returned, they flushed out all the water so it wouldn't go stale and repeat the cycle.

      In the end, the water consumption more than TRIPLED during the shortage periods.

      You might want to ponder whether you want to do that. Because battery packs are cheap. What you will notice with these plans is that the power consumption spikes as soon as the power is back simply because people are recharging their battery packs.

      I used to live in a cyclone zone, this is second nature to me but the problem in the UK is totally different.

      The UK's major issue is heat. It does get cold here in winter and yes, people who aren't protected will die. Houses and buildings are primarily produced by using electricity or burning natural gas. Gas is preferred as it's more efficient, cleaner and cheaper. So a gas shortage is an issue as gas needs to be prioritised for heating, meaning we may have to take some gas turbines offline if we start

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • The problem is electrical power, not heating. They don't plan to cut off your gas heating, they plan to cut off your power supply.

        • Central heating systems have electrically-powered pumps. You'll be able light some candles, run a hot bath and read a book, but it's not a very efficient way to keep warm.

        • The problem is electrical power, not heating. They don't plan to cut off your gas heating, they plan to cut off your power supply.

          Not sure what they use in the UK, but gas furnaces here generally still need electricity to power the fan.

    • You might want to ponder whether you want to do that.

      It's kind of hard to store electricity in your bathtub. No, battery packs are not cheap. Not even remotely. And unlike a bathtub, 99.99% of households do not have a battery pack system that can store several hours worth of home electricity usage.

      In the end, the water consumption more than TRIPLED during the shortage periods.

      You don't flush out batteries.

    • Battery packs are very expensive. So expensive even that they are hardly in use at all.
      Almost no house owner can afford one, and the legal mechanism to return power from your own solar panels to the grid is so good that there is no reason to spend half a year's wages on a battery.
  • It's just a non-story, typical of The 'Independent'; IF there is a gas shortage in Europe it MAY be necessary conserve gas at peak times which COULD result it in planned (and limited) electricity blackouts. Yes it's a shame that Europe has become reliant on Russia for so much of its gas supply but the fact that people are considering what would need to be done in the event of a shortage is only a good thing.
    • its one of the reasons to ramp up the installation of turbines, solar and storage to become more self-sufficient of despotic countries like Russian and Saudi

    • Or you know, most of Northern and Western European states are sitting on a massive gas and oil field. And perhaps, they shouldâ(TM)ve been building nuclear reactors and not turn them off 10 years into a 100 year operation.

      They could perhaps, you know, extract oil and gas from the ground, like the Saudis do. Germany is going back to lignite (dirty low-energy coal-like substance) anyway, the green revolution is over, and it failed.

      • Please name the reactors which were designed for 100 year life.
      • European nations have indeed exploited gas reserves, particularly UK, Netherlands, Norway which are adjacent to the most easily exploitable reserves. Most EU nations do not have access to domestic gas reserves of an easily exploitable nature, though, mostly relatively expensive and difficult to exploit ones that would take a decade to develop to even a modest degree. Germany is 59th in the world league of gas reserves - it doesn't actually have much.

  • Don’t count on it. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ruddk ( 5153113 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @05:20AM (#62948717)

    All the countries around Europe are saying “we have lines to other countries , they can help by supplying us with power”.
    Meanwhile. Wind farms where I live are shutting down when the winds blows and kWh prices are $1 because some bullshit deal with Germany where German power plants are PAYING danish wind farms not to produce power.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ruddk ( 5153113 )

      Here’s and old and a new link

      https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]

      https://www.modularphonesforum... [modularphonesforum.com]

    • Sometimes it makes sense to do that. If you're running a German power plant, and you need to lower output to balance the grid, but lowering output requires shutting your plant down, costing you a thermal wear cycle and therefore some of your plant's lifespan plus additional maintenance costs, you might find it cheaper to pay somebody else to turn their output down instead.

      Why would you pick the more expensive option rather than the cheaper option?

      (At the risk of stating the obvious, it would help if we acco

      • Fundamentally what it means is really that more grid improvements are needed for the purpose of moving power to where it can be used.

        This is true no matter what kind of generation we add.

        • Fundamentally what it means is really that more grid improvements are needed for the purpose of moving power to where it can be used.

          This is true no matter what kind of generation we add.

          Bingo, very true, except the moment you want to add power lines everybody protests and starts talking about visual/aesthetic pollution and cancer clusters due to magnetic fields from the cables. Then there is the nature of the German bureaucracy, a legion of block headed pencil gnawing paper pushing twats that bought over a hundred Typhoon fighter jets at a price of €109 million each and only managed to have four of them ready for combat at one point. That ratio has now risen to a measly 30%. I'm not h

          • When aircraft are initially introduced few arein operation. Stories of there only been single or low digit numbers of Typhoons in service in Germany or the UK are legion; all have turned out to actually be nonsense.
          • Last I checked for the Typhoon in Germany, which was a year or eighteen months ago when someone said something similar it turned out to be something like 70%, which is the typical rate for advanced fighters given the complexity and the fact that some are always in an upgrade program. The same figure is true in the UK.

    • All the countries around Europe are saying “we have lines to other countries , they can help by supplying us with power”.

      Indeed they can, but this story is about the UK. Their interconnectors are small and they aren't well connected into the rest of the grid.

      Wind farms where I live are shutting down when the winds blows and kWh prices are $1 because some bullshit deal with Germany

      There's nothing bullshit about it. The European grid has a power problem in the north and not enough transmission capacity to get wind energy southwards. We have a glut of power generation in the north which lead to a bidding war as to who gets to keep the turbines running. Be thankful. Germany is keeping your electricity price lower though a tax on their own citizens tha

  • This is down to ban planning around europe (Score:3)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @05:24AM (#62948727) Homepage

    Merkel with her lets use russian gas philosophy and shut down most of the alternatives except renewables, france with not bothering to do maintenance on their nuclear power stations until large numbers of them urgently needed it at the same time and finally the UK for closing its gas storage facility in the north sea and not bothering to build new nukes despite hand waving promises from endless PMs.

    Unfortunately we're reaping what we've sown in europe thanks to complacent and naive politicians of all parties over the last few decades.

    • thanks to complacent and naive politicians of all parties over the last few decades.

      Don't believe for a second that this is about "complacent and naive politicians".

      It's more about politicians who will push ANY problem down the road for their successors to deal with. After all, you don't get reelected by telling your constituents "we have to forgo spending money on YOUR needs/desires in order to pay for things that can get ME reelected..."

      • So stop electing your politicians and get rid of them.

        • So stop electing your politicians and get rid of them.

          And replace them with who? ... corpocrats? ... those fascist morons who blame everything on foreigners? Childishly simple populist talking point based solutions to complex problems are a nice fantasy but that fantasy tends not to survive contact with reality.

    • It's all good and fun to mock policies when they fail, but you would have done no differently given the pressures and socio-economic conditions.

      Merkel didn't want to use Russian gas, she wanted a mix. Unfortunately the Netherlands sitting on the biggest gas field in Europe stopped pumping due causing earthquakes in cities over the gas field. The move to gas was largely to reduce carbon emissions which there was political pressure to get off coal from the entire world, and to compensate for shutting down nuc

  • Peak demand is 4 to 8pm (Score:3)

    by blackest_k ( 761565 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @05:26AM (#62948733) Homepage Journal

    Hi most of the day there shouldnt be a problem, peak demand is around double of the off peak so off peak there are generators either stopped or at minimum production (it's a lot easier to ramp up than start up). The UK and Ireland have a fair amount of wind generation available. For example in Ireland yesterday about 72.5% of the electricity generation was from renewable energy, still about 18% was from gas fired generators.

    So the main problem time will be between 4 to 8pm with low wind generation. So if it looks like its going to be a miserable day chances are you won't be sitting in the dark with no electricity. The colder the day the more power will be needed at a rough guess a 1 degree drop in temperature will require an extra 750 MW of supply in the UK. A typical gas fired power station might be 420 MW.

    There is a daily cycle of power usage with peak demand being about twice that of off peak. so off peak there are a lot of generators sitting idle that can be brought online and the wholesale price will be low at peak its the otherway round and there isn't much to spare. There is some reserve generation it's typically about the size of the 2 largest generators. so if the biggest two have say 1500MW between them there is usually backup of 1500MW this is standard practice in Australia but most grids will be similar.
    Renewable energy is a great thing e.g in ireland yesterday i saw 72.5% of electricity production was renewable but on other days it can be as low as 1% (most typically in the summer when the weather is nice).

    There are going to be days where the supply will be at risk, the industrial users are already looking at reducing usage during peak hours, In Ireland some industrial users will be subject to manditory demand reduction. Individual households can play thier part too by reducing their usage at peak times. Obviously one of the big uses of electricity at peak time is cooking but you could mitigate that by slow cooking during the day meaning you can have a hot meal ready when you walk in the door and avoiding peak electricity usage.

    For computer users we can run laptops on battery over the peak time. Apples introduced smart charging to iPads in IOS 16 for USA initially so your iPad will try to charge when there is more renewable energy on the grid. Little things can help as there are a lot of us.

    If you have a UPS have an Led lamp plugged in at around 6 watts it should easily run for the 3 hours of a black out. You might do the same for your router broadband companies will usually have backup power on thier networks.

    Reductions in peak usage are going to be critical. When demand is high then the less gas fired generators running the better to avoid blackouts. The more we shift demand to off peak when renewable energy is available the better. E.g yesterday when we had that 72.5 % renewable energy on the grid as demand started to pickup so did the amount of Wind generation we were basically using the maximum amount of Wind on the grid that allows for grid stability, which implies there were some curtailments of Wind generation during the earlier hours as Wind generation moved closer to the expected availability. That was essentially energy going to waste.

    It's basically going to be a learning experience for the general public, but the simple answer is reduce your peak hour electricity usage. It doesn't mean you have to wear a hair shirt and shiver but being a little smarter when you choose to use it.

    • For computer users we can run laptops on battery over the peak time.

      We had a power outage recently and I was surprised how much smarphones buffer the effect. Used to be the electricity went off and suddenly you're alone and everything is silent and you can't see anything. (Granted you could still make a landline call to another individual).

      With a smartphone you have a flashlight in your hand so you can get around, you can pull up the news and make sure this isn't the armageddon, and watch a show, and

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      If you have a UPS have an Led lamp plugged in at around 6 watts it should easily run for the 3 hours of a black out. You might do the same for your router broadband companies will usually have backup power on thier networks.

      Common UPSes are not really intended for that sort of operation, but there are big LiFePO4 power stations available now which would be ideal, except that they may not handle operating as a UPS very well.

      As far as emergency lighting, I have gotten very good use out of a Milwaukee M12 lantern.

  • "worst case"... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @05:32AM (#62948741)

    Given that we're currently being bombarded with this news in the UK, my guess is one of two things:

    1. Typical news cycle, it'll never happen - bad news sells, distorted facts etc.
    2. It's going to happen a LOT more than just "worst case"

    But this also means, like so many countries, the UK has been caught napping - "la la la, everything is fine, no problems here..."

    We could have used the last few decades pushing toward renewables at break neck pace - including nuclear reactors.
    We could have kept the home insulation programme running at pace and solar panel incentives going.

    But nope, instead, we decided to just throw our lot in with natural gas as the main driver, in the belief we had plenty of it and the very misguided idea "it will tide us over until we can reach zero emissions."

    That's a ridiculous joke, because new licenses that have been granted for further fossil fuel exploration off the coast of the UK, will take decades to realise.

    It's clear to anyone with half a brain that big energy providers have our current government and previous ones, in their pockets.

    We hear plenty of FUD being thrown around "Renewables can never provide enough power" "We need a mix of renewables and fossil fuels"

    We hear very little of the 100% certain fact that if we continue pumping emissions into the atmosphere at the current rate we are doing, the cost implications massively outweigh those of going carbon neutral - and with each passing year, the implications get worse.

    Planning regulations make a mockery of progress - it is nearly impossible to get large scale wind farms built inland, because wealthy land owners are able to influence planning to prevent it happening.

    The same applies to solar, wealthy rural folk say it is ugly, they don't want fields full of solar panels messing up their lovely countryside.
    So, they are quite happy for emissions to be pumped into the atmosphere and the resulting catastrophe that awaits due to that - but are against solar farms.

    I'm ranting here, because it is massively infuriating.

    Every single climate expert is virtually countries to STOP new fossil fuel projects, yet this government is hell bent on doing more of it - now having the excuse of "Putins war" to ramp up fossil fuel production.

    It is insanity, totally batshit crazy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      We hear very little of the 100% certain fact that if we continue pumping emissions into the atmosphere at the current rate we are doing, the cost implications massively outweigh those of going carbon neutral - and with each passing year, the implications get worse.

      This is essentially technological debt on a global scale. At some point, which clearly is in the past, anything you save by not addressing the problem is something you have to invest several times over in the future. As those investments cannot be done at some point anymore because they are too large, you have to accept regression in comfort, safety and then survival. I also think that point is already in the past. Now, we can probably still save civilization overall and keep a high-tech civilization going

      • It is pretty clear to me, that first nuclear self-annihilation (which we somehow have avoided so far), but second drastic climate-change as a result of unrestrained industrialization, is the source of the Fermi Paradox.

        And indeed, how many opportunities are there for a technologically able species to destroy themselves? You can destroy your climate, you can consume your ready resources before you develop the tech to advance further, you can wipe yourselves out with a war or a virus or a virus war, you can dick around being stupid until a big rock comes and wipes you out... In an infinite universe there must be infinite ways for your civilization to be wiped out, and if you're busy squabbling then they all become more like

    • It's clear to anyone with half a brain that big energy providers have our current government and previous ones, in their pockets.

      Not really. Home insulation scheme aside (which absolutely should have been running in parallel), a large scale build out of natrual gas was the only sensible option during the carbon transition. You can rapidly commission and put in operation a natural gas plant massively cutting more CO2 than building multiple entire wind farms, shutting down coal reactors far faster than any other solution. It was always a stop gap measure as renewables were built up, and more importantly: the ability for gas plants to r

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vyvepe ( 809573 )

      Notice that natural gas and coal serve as a backup for renewables when wind does not blow and sun does not shine. That is the current situation. The fossil fuels are our "battery" as of now. There are few ways to avoid them:

      • Huge renewable overcapacity and continent wide grids. Expensive and huge grids are vulnerable to political instability. Countries like to argue with each other and huge grids will be used as a "weapon". Just the same way as Putin uses natural gas as a "weapon" now.
      • Demand control. Utilit

  • Oh, wait. France has massive problems with nukes down and these problems are expected to be fixed sometime mid of _next_ year. If they are lucky, because these are safety problems and maintenance problems and with nukes these are always a big deal and can turn out to be much worse than expected. So Germany has to bring up coal plants to keep the lights on in France. Of course, EDF (the french nuke operator) is bankrupt by now despite massive subsidies, because nuclear is excessively expensive. Of, and long-

    • Hinkley point will create and absurd amount of electricity. It is just taking ages to finish it, exactly because of all those safety concerns that you so rightly address.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        It will also be absurdly expensive, both directly because the electricity is sold at an absurdly high price they got assured long-term, and in all the other cost. Economically, a completely absurd decision, that causes massive cost to be paid by the taxpayer. The only reason the Brits are building it is because the need a working reactor to keep their nuclear arsenal maintained.

        Incidentally, that "absurd" amount of power is a mere 10% of the UK electricity consumption. If they stay at current levels. I do n

        • It is OK to be expensive, and it is OK to be mostly paid by taxes. It will save six decades of CO2 emissions.
          As that is the biggest crisis the world is facing is now, it justifies all expenses.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            You overlook that investing the same amount of money into renewables would do much more for CO2 emission reduction. Why are you overlooking that?

            Also, this can serve at max 10% of the electricity the UK needs. So not that much of a CO2 effect, actually. That is if it has any effect at all. The CO2 reduction effect of nukes is mostly a myth.

  • The UK government should be encouraging people and businesses to use less energy. They could probably save a significant % of consumption just by telling people to power off devices instead of putting them in standby, put office devices like printers into eco mode, turn off lights, turn the thermostat down (and require it to be down in businesses), require hotels & others to close heated pools, reduce lighting on advertising etc. Given how expensive energy is at the moment, chances people would start do
    • The government is absolutely helping!
      Government buildings have been assigned as 'warm spaces' where Brits can go to to warm up if winter gets really cold.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      The UK government should be encouraging people and businesses to use less energy.

      That is easy but they are refusing to do it; raise prices until demand matches supply.

  • This is the consequence of Net Zero. Close coal fired plants and replace them with a mixture of wind and gas to cover intermittency.

    This increased the demand for gas, but at the same time they closed down their big storage plant, so shortages are now catastrophic whereas before they would have been only inconvenient.

    Having made electricity supply problematic, they then introduced measures to increase demand. No more ICE on sale from 2030, heavy promotion of EVs. Move everyone as fast as possible to heat

    • No, this is not a consequence of net zero. The dash for gas started over three decades ago and was largely complete before net zero became policy.
      • If anything, net zero, with increased investment for wind probably makes it more likely that there will be power as otherwise the 'dash for gas' would still have happened up to this point due to the economics of it, but there would be largely nothing but gas generation. Putting all eggs in one basket, whatever it is, is not sensible.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Budenny ( 888916 )

        No.

        Net Zero is not the reason why the country went to gas in the first place. That is true. But Net Zero is the reason the country closed its coal fired generating plant without having anything fit to replace it with. And this is the problem. The problem is not a shortage of gas. The problem is total dependency on it. It would have been far better to have kept the coal, and the sensible thing to do at the moment is build supercritical coal as fast as possible.

        And no, if you are dependent on wind you d

        • The coal plants were not closed with nothing to replace them, they were replaced with other forms of generating capacity, primarily gas. The process of closure of the last plants was already in progress due to economics before the relatively recent policy of net zero came into force (which was not much more than five years ago). About the only outlier that might fit your theory is Drax that moved to burning wood pellets and is unaffected by the natural gas shortage.
        • You are factually incorrect on wind. It is intermittent, but the fact that it is intermittent doesn't make it not exist at all. It does mean you have to deal with intermittency, but there is a reasonable expectation of power most of the time which can offset the requirement for gas. Where the UK got it badly wrong is simultaneously reducing its natural gas storage capacity to about 1/10 per capita of the rest of Europe which means that if there is a shortage of wind energy and temporarily natural gas you ha
        • Given how polluting coal is, I don't see how building any form of coal would be preferable, not least because it doesn't really solve the gas supply problem as heating in the UK is primarily gas. Better would have been much better insulation standards for homes reducing the heating requirement, freeing up a lot of gas for electricity generation, building the two nuclear plants sooner, and an overabundance of wind, and retaining storage which was problematically low in the UK a decade and a half ago before i
        • In the UK, gas was deployed to replace coal, not to supplement wind. Yes, gas is important to supplement current levels of wind if there is no storage, but that's not the way things happened in the UK, and the 'dash for gas' happened from the 1980s for unrelated reasons. The UK is lucky in that it has a large coastline relative to the interior as offshore wind is more stable. With the latest technology offering over 60% capacity factor and looking at the statistics for generation troughs, the UK could susta

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jabuzz ( 182671 )

            This is the UK, we have at least 18GW of easy tidal power available if we just built it. There is ~1.5GW on a barrage in the Mersey which you couple with another crossing. Then there is around 7-8GW in the Seven estuary and finally anywhere from 10-20GW in the Pentland Firth.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
              The first issue here is how it is exploited and its effect on the ecosystem, and that depends on whether it is using kinetic energy (stream, dynamc) or potential (barrages, lagoons). They can also have different profiles in terms of maximum power, average power, etc., so I am not sure that GW is the best measure as it is not often constant. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      I do not know whether its politically possible to get to Net Zero. But one thing is perfectly clear, they cannot get there at present levels of energy use. The consequence of seriously trying will be to cut down on electricity supply and raise its price. It will mean, if seriously attempted, energy rationing, either by price or supply or a combination.

      Maybe if they had not continuously lied about the costs of Net Zero, we would not be in this situation. Specifically they lied, and continue to lie, about the costs associated with the massive storage systems which will be required.

      Cutting down on demand requires a lower standard of living. What politician is going to commit political suicide by trying to sell that?

  • All the shortages and obeisance to authority of war time, without being at war? I guess Fascism might have scored a partial victory after all.

  • 7lbs (Score:3)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @10:12PM (#62950201)
    They'll be generating in the UK during the blackouts, let's say 7lbs at 2500kcal /lb that's about 20kWhrs. of course delivered 9 months after the power outage.

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