Gone With The Wind: Power Shortages The ‘New Normal’
If it wasn’t miserable enough being told that I have to spend the next month at home, now I have ‘Pete’ from Octopus Energy emailing me and asking if I would mind terribly turning off a few appliances between 4.30 pm and 6.30 pm. If fact, he says, if I can halve my energy usage during those hours he’ll give me a half-price deal on the rest.
Apparently, it’s because the National Grid has issued an ‘electricity margin notice’ for those hours – basically a plea for Britain’s remaining coal and gas power stations to turn up the power and squeeze a little more energy out of their plants.
That’s not going to be easy, admits Pete, and so electricity companies like his are going to be paying through the nose for the power – ten times as much as normal, he says. Hence the plea for me to switch off the TV, or whatever.
That is a ‘smart’ electricity grid for you: balancing supply and demand through price management. And within reason, there is nothing wrong with it. We do, after all, pay more for train tickets during the rush hour (or used to, when we traveled on trains).
Trouble is, I don’t think Pete is going to be so gentle in the future. Give it a few years and he’ll be writing to me that he’ll be jacking up my bill and charging me ten times the usual price for any energy I use when supply is short.
We are heading for periodic supply crunches in the National Grid because we are building ever more wind and solar plants without the storage capacity required to cope with the intermittent nature of these sources of energy.
At least, for the moment, we still have gas and coal plants to pick up the slack. But by 2024 the last coal power station will be gone and by 2030 the Prime Minister says he wants all our electricity to be generated by wind.
That’s going to be a pretty tall order. This afternoon’s electricity supply crunch – the National Grid’s equivalent of leaves on the line – is down to a shortage of wind.
There is a large anticyclone sitting over Britain, which has becalmed the nation’s wind farms, or certainly those south of the border. We are lucky that Scotland is drawing in winds from the Atlantic, which enabled wind farms still to generate 7 percent of our power at 3 pm.
We are also lucky that it has been sunny for much of the day. But it is November, and by 4.30 pm we will have lost 5 percent of the energy that was being generated by solar power earlier in the afternoon.
The government and electricity industry have, of course, been aware for years of the problem of intermittent renewable energy. That is why the government set up things called ‘capacity auctions’ where companies bid to build electricity storage capacity.
Initially, it was imagined that much of this would come in the form of giant batteries. Indeed, some battery installations have popped up across the country, hidden in shipping containers.
But those installed so far are only capable of providing 1 GW of power, and only then for an hour or so before the batteries are drained. To put this into context, this afternoon the country was using 40 GW of power.
Building batteries and other forms of energy storage like pumped-storage reservoirs are expensive. As a result, capacity auctions are starting to be replaced by something called Demand Side Response.
Which is exactly what Pete is trying to do: it involves electricity companies begging us to use less electricity when supply is tight, and using variable pricing to encourage us.
That is the whole point of smart meters: to allow electricity companies to vary the price in order to match supply with demand.
Managing demand might work at the moment, but it is hardly a long-term solution. Imagine a time when we no longer have any gas and electricity plants – sources of power which between them accounted for 55 percent of electricity being fed into the national grid at 3 pm this afternoon.
How will we cope then with a calm winter’s evening when electricity demand is at its peak and no wind or solar energy is being generated?
Electricity suppliers are going to have to impose huge financial penalties on consumers to turn the lights off – or face forced blackouts.
I’m all for clean energy. But without storage capacity, wind and solar cannot power the country on their own.
We shouldn’t be building ever more wind and solar farms until we have a sensible policy as to how we are going to store the energy they produce.
Read more at Spectator AU
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Alan
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What is astonishing about this development is that we had a nationalised industry that took its responsibility to run a reliable electricity supply system serious, perhaps costing us more because the industry was risk adverse. It was successfully privatised but once our politicians passed laws and regulations to deal with climate change the entire industry changed. It is no longer a privatised industry run by engineers who understood the requirements of running a reliable system. It is a privatised industry in name only controlled by government regulation aimed not at a cheap, reliable electricity system, but one that is being operated with the ridiculous aim of saving the planet.
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Chris
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I think that once it affects the young people the whining will change. Their voices will change from protect the environment at all costs to maybe we over reacted and now we cannot use our phones. When they are affected then they will listen to those that they have been censoring. Nothing teaches better than hitting bottom, it’s just a question of what is the bottom.
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Tom O
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The only system that a “Pete the Octopus” and a demand side control can function in at all is one that simply has residential use. It can’t function in a society that has even realistic commercial function, and certainly not at all with a manufacturing function. A system where “energy users” can have their prices changed by the need to cut consumption can only work in residential usage, and that under limited circumstances. In a deep winter “freeze,” there really is no way to reduce demand short of turning out a few lights.
“Pete” can’t contact a store and say cut your usage or I have to double your price,” because the likelihood is that the store isn’t using more electricity than it actually needs to in order to maintain proper storage requirements and safety, and it can’t operate at all if it can’t project its costs.
Even worse, would be for manufacturers since they would have labor requirements as well as the potential of considerable “spoilage” in production if they suddenly had to cut demand. They, too, need a reliable source of energy, or they need to go where they can get one.
There is no way any modern society can function on wind and solar power alone unless you reduced that population by at least 70%, and probably more. But then would you have the skilled personnel to even hope to maintain that level of population? After all, you do need to manufacturer the replacement parts as well as maintain the grid infrastructure, including the wiring.
You would need to have ALL underground, but accessible, wiring to insure no storm damage, and with a little more imagination, I am sure anyone can end up seeing that such a system might only be manageable in small, new “cities” designed and built with that in mind. You could not maintain it in our traditional towns and cities. Trying to retro engineer such a system would be extraordinarily expensive.
Cheaper to raze London, put 90% of the population in incinerators, and rebuild it according to a plan designed for the required infrastructure for the remaining 10% than it would be to try to re-engineer the city to meet those needs, if that was even possible. Then you could have the regained space to build even more wind mills and solar panels and, of course, battery storage.
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ЯΞ√ΩLUT↑☼N
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Schoolkids will be taught blackouts are the fault of capitalists building ever more factories and infrastructure, instead of the destruction of baseload power. It’s when we’re forced to stop drilling for oil it’ll finally hit them where it hurts – no more plastic! Daddy’s little girl will have to wear scratchy woolen clothes, not have a dozen plastic bottles full of shampoos, body washes and makeup all containing petroleum distillates in the bathroom. Her bed will be straw and she’ll have to walk to work because there’s not enough power to charge daddy’s car or the electric bus. No phone, laptop or drink mixer unless it’s carved from wood, or we reverted back to 1907 and the era of Bakelite. No more paraffin for her candles, she’ll have to revert back to whale oil.
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Dean Michael Jackson
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For the benefit of those non-Marxists on the thread….
The astronomical cost of shifting to non-carbon based energy sources would literally send humanity back to the Stone Age, with consequent population decline; annihilation of the species, per the Satanic purpose for destroying the globe’s economies. Let’s make this abundantly clear by noting the shocking cost for just one critical component of the United State’s energy needs:
STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE
The United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve is currently at 635.2 million barrels of oil. 635 million barrels of oil equals 1,079,123,092,000 megawatts. 1,079,123,092,000/100 = 10,791,230,920; 10,791,230,920 X $3.6 billion[1] = $3,884,831,310,000,000,000,000,000,000 (octillion).
The United States’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2017 was $19,390,000,000,000 (trillion). Battery storage to replace the strategic petroleum reserve would cost more than 100,000 GDPs!
THERMODYNAMICS AWOL
Climate change mechanics conspires to do away with the physics of the atmosphere, where action and reaction is abandoned. When a new gas molecule is introduced into the dense troposphere, dislocation takes place, where if the new molecule is denser than the atmosphere (contains less heat energy), such as carbon dioxide, the gas molecule sinks displacing upwards the warmer nitrogen and oxygen molecules, thereby cooling the area of dislocation. Conversely, if the new gas molecule has more heat energy than the nitrogen-oxygen based atmosphere (such as methane), the new molecule rises, displacing relatively cooler nitrogen and oxygen molecules downwards, which displaces upwards relatively more heat retaining nitrogen and oxygen molecules, thereby cooling the area of dislocation. Thermodynamics in action in the atmosphere that keeps the Earth cool when increased radiation isn’t the new variable introduced.
SOCIOPATHS IDENTIFIED
The identity of the mass murderers that have co-opted the globe’s institutions identify themselves as Marxists, most being unaware that they are, in fact, manipulated by a top level leadership cadre composed of humanity’s arch enemy’s combatants, Satanists.
Troubled by a personal moral breakdown once freed from parental constraints (a libertine), the man the world knows as a racist and callous and domineering psychopath was formerly a devout and lovely young follower of Christ. Then Marx’s personality changed for the worse, seeking not atheism, but revenge against God and His children on Earth:
“Thus Heaven I’ve forfeited,
I know it full well,
My soul, once true
to God, Is chosen for hell.”
…and…
“With disdain I will throw my gauntlet
Full in the face
of the world,
And see the collapse
of this pygmy giant
Whose fall will
not stifle my ardour.
Then will I wander
godlike and victorious
Through the ruins
of the world
And, giving my
words an active force,
I will feel equal
to the Creator.”
Marx wrote those poems AFTER he transferred university from Bonn to Berlin, telling us (1) Marx always remained a theist, feigning atheism; and (2) that we were lied to when told that once Marx entered university that’s when he became an atheist. As for the rank and file Marxists, they’re marionettes, whose strings are pulled by the Marxist leadership class who are actually Satanists; Satanists have been active within our institutions for millennia, as Jesus warned us.
At my blog, read the articles…
SINKHOLE: THE GREEN NEW DEAL’S RENEWABLE ENERGY COSTS ON LOCAL GOVERNMENTS’ BUDGETS
‘House of Cards: The Collapse of the ‘Collapse’ of the USSR’
‘Playing Hide And Seek In Yugoslavia’
Then read the article, ‘The Marxist Co-Option Of History And The Use Of The Scissors Strategy To Manipulate History Towards The Goal Of Marxist Liberation’
Solution
The West will form new political parties where candidates are vetted for Marxist ideology/blackmail, the use of the polygraph to be an important tool for such vetting. Then the West can finally liberate the globe of vanguard Communism.
My blog…
https://djdnotice.blogspot.com/2018/09/d-notice-articles-article-55-7418.html
[1] $3.6 billion is the cost for a 100 megawatts battery. In 2006, during peak power in the summer, Washington, DC used approximately 6,888 MW of power: 6,888/100 MW = 68 MW; 68MW X $3.6 billion = $244.8 billion for Washington, DC to switch from petroleum to renewable energy sources. Washington, DC’s annual budget is $12.8 billion.
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Dean Michael Jackson
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Greater than 94% of the energy contained within nitrogen and oxygen are unaccounted for by the ‘climate change’ narrative, informing us of the massive scientific fraud taking place, the purpose of the fraud to further weaken the West’s economies.
[On March 16 Trump directed the nation to stay home for 15 days(!), his Marxist economic sabotage directive still in play. Immediately following Trump’s directive, governors/mayors declared illegal Executive Orders to lockdown the nation, thereby proving Marxist coordination between Federal/State/Local governments.
No new investments will be taking place because investments require recouping the investments, and with the spectre of the fake COVID-19 returning, or equally fake new pandemics, future lockdowns are in the future, therefore no investments are on the horizon. In short, the United States has been turned into a Banana Republic overnight.]
Nitrogen and oxygen constitute, by volume, 99.03% of the atmosphere’s gasses, while the trace gases account for 0.97%, or just under 1% of the atmosphere’s gasses. If we include water vapor (H2O) in the atmosphere, which accounts for, on average, 2% of the atmosphere’s gases by volume, we therefore subtract this 2% from the atmosphere’s gasses, where nitrogen and oxygen will constitute 97.0494%, and the trace gasses will constitute 0.9506%.
Nitrogen and oxygen don’t absorb much infrared radiation (IR) emitted from the ground, and assuming they absorb 100% of thermal energy from the surface, constituting approximately 5% of Earth’s energy budget, we’re left with a massive energy deficit for nitrogen and oxygen, confirming that those two molecules derive their energy from thermal ground/ocean emissions instead, but since the ‘climate change’ narrative identifies such emissions as not thermal but IR, we have proof that the energy being emitted isn’t IR but thermal because nitrogen and oxygen absorb a miniscule amount of IR.
We’re told that Nitrogen and oxygen obtain 5.1% of their heat energy from thermal energy emanating from the surface…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/The-NASA-Earth%27s-Energy-Budget-Poster-Radiant-Energy-System-satellite-infrared-radiation-fluxes.jpg/1200px-The-NASA-Earth%27s-Energy-Budget-Poster-Radiant-Energy-System-satellite-infrared-radiation-fluxes.jpg
…and another .078% of their heat energy from outgoing infrared radiation, leaving an energy deficit of approximately 94.8%.
Since nitrogen and oxygen constitute by volume 97.0494% of the atmosphere’s gasses (when water vapor is included in the calculations making for a more precise calculation), they must therefore retain that volume amount of heat energy, but 18.4 Wm2 only constitutes 5.1% of the Earth’s Energy Budget of 358.2 Wm2. Nitrogen and oxygen’s absorption of infrared radiation would only infinitesimally affect this missing heat energy.
The missing energy levels for nitrogen and oxygen direct our attention to another aspect of the scientific fraud taking place: Misidentified outgoing energy types. IR is assigned an energy magnitude of 358.2 Wm2, and thermals 18.4 Wm2. The opposite is closer to the truth, where IR is assigned 18.4 Wm2, and thermals 358.2 Wm2.
Hence why:
THERMODYNAMICS IS AWOL
Climate change mechanics conspires to do away with the physics of the atmosphere, where action and reaction is abandoned. When a new gas molecule is introduced into the dense troposphere, dislocation takes place, where if the new molecule is denser than the atmosphere (contains less heat energy), such as carbon dioxide, the gas molecule sinks displacing upwards the warmer nitrogen and oxygen molecules, thereby cooling the area of dislocation. Conversely, if the new gas molecule has more heat energy than the nitrogen-oxygen based atmosphere (such as methane), the new molecule rises, displacing relatively cooler nitrogen and oxygen molecules downwards, which displaces upwards relatively more heat retaining nitrogen and oxygen molecules, thereby cooling the area of dislocation. Thermodynamics in action in the atmosphere that keeps the Earth cool when increased radiation isn’t the new variable introduced.
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Charles Higley
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So, if you are already one who works to keep the electric bill down, not leaving lights on and such when not in the room, they would expect me to use even less electricity. That’s not gonna happen. They are telling us that being frugal will be pressured just as those who are wasteful.
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Ken Hughes
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I have one question. Given that the controllers of this climate change policy are not stupid, then they must see these problems. So, I ask, “Is there a separate sub system of power distribution that could supply a few “chosen ones” while the rest of us is denied electricity?
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Roger Higgs
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Ken, the chosen ones, our future controllers, are unimaginably rich. Each of them surely already has private generators (diesel, presumably) at his various homes.
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Brian James
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November 4, 2020 Wind and solar energy are ruining the planet
This is a get rich quick scheme for the utilities and their investors and a disaster for ratepayers, the people, and the environment. Rates are skyrocketing wherever industrial wind and solar build-out have occurred.
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2020/11/04/wind-and-solar-energy-are-ruining-the-planet/
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