{"id":17660,"date":"2016-02-11T13:08:51","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T18:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17660"},"modified":"2016-02-11T13:08:51","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T18:08:51","slug":"uk-blackout-risk-amber-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17660","title":{"rendered":"UK Blackout Risk \u2013 Amber Warning"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/euanmearns.com\/uk-blackout-risk-amber-warning\/\" target=\"_blank\">UK Blackout Risk \u2013 Amber Warning<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-meta\">In recent months, three companies have announced closure of 4 large coal-fired power stations in the UK representing a total loss of 6.671 GW base load capacity*. Combined with closure of 1 nuclear station and the pending closure of two CCGTs, total capacity loss in 2016 will amount to 8.726 GW. If there was a blackout risk this winter, then things will obviously be much worse next winter.<\/div>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>In effect traditional generators are throwing in the towel confronted with a neo-Marxist system of production quotas, targets, subsidies, levies and regulation\u00a0that 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\u00a0and sort this situation out.<\/p>\n<p>[* Note that this is a fluid situation with other announcements made since I wrote these words]<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/euanmearns.com\/the-changing-face-of-uk-power-supply\/\" target=\"blank\">The last time I visited this topic was in October 2015<\/a>\u00a0and at that time I saw little risk of UK blackouts this winter. The lights have thus far stayed on! But in the five\u00a0months 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\u00a0statistics\u00a0should 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.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UK Blackout Risk \u2013 Amber Warning In recent months, three companies have announced closure of 4 large coal-fired power stations in the UK representing a total loss of 6.671 GW base load capacity*. Combined with closure of 1 nuclear station and the pending closure of two CCGTs, total capacity loss in 2016 will amount to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[78,11260,11842,389,820,2080],"class_list":["post-17660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-blackout","tag-energy-matters","tag-euan-mearns","tag-grid-failure","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17661,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17660\/revisions\/17661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}