UK Blackout Risk – Amber Warning
In effect traditional generators are throwing in the towel confronted with a neo-Marxist system of production quotas, targets, subsidies, levies and regulation that places their superior technology at an impossible disadvantage to inferior wind and solar power, both of which are useless in averting a blackout risk when it is highest during a calm winter evening. UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Amber Rudd, needs to re-discover her Tory credentials and sort this situation out.
[* Note that this is a fluid situation with other announcements made since I wrote these words]
The last time I visited this topic was in October 2015 and at that time I saw little risk of UK blackouts this winter. The lights have thus far stayed on! But in the five months since, a lot has changed. The main variable is on-going closure of legacy base load power stations. But I have also learned a bit more about system operation and how the statistics should be interpreted. Mainly I have learned that power stations located in Northern Ireland should not be counted in UK generating statistics since National Grid does not include Northern Ireland in UK demand figures. And plant availability is never 100% and needs to be de-rated by approximately 15% to represent the real world of fires, boiler leaks and vibrations that are common place in the world of electricity generation and maintenance schedules.
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