Will We Have Power Cuts?

[BroadAmbition]

I'm currently toiling daily in a Holiday Inn Express.  Fitting Bifold glass shower screens about ninety odd in total, only another seven to fit

Anyroadup yesterday morning I found mysen at breakfast chatting to a guest who was very interesting to listen to, he works on major power stations.  He was talking in megawatts, really big stuff.

For example - Drax power station is currently burning wood pellets to keep the green brigade happy.  BUT it consumes eighteen thousand tons daily, yes you read that correct - Eighteen thousand tons daily when you consider that the wood pellets themselves don't weigh much at all then imagine the volume required to make up just one ton never mind eighteen thousand of em 

The trees are Felled in the USA, cut / dried / processed into pellets, transported over the Atlantic, trained into Drax constantly.  Just how 'Green' is that - NOT - and of course felling trees is not good for the lungs of the planet so we are lead to believe.  The costs involved are eye watering, far more expensive than using locally mined coal - Oh we can't as they have all been shut down

He also predicted that UK governments have been totally short sighted and he too considered that unless some sort of large scaling up is achieved right now, then we are indeed facing selective nationwide power cuts in the not too distant future  especially if france has any sort of generating issues

Griff

[Vaughan]

5 hours ago, BroadAmbition said:

especially if france has any sort of generating issues

Which it does!

We had a power cut for 4 hours yesterday, but I think that was a breakdown.  We have been told to expect rolling, planned power cuts in January of about 2 hours each and all in peak times, such as 0600 to 0800 and 1800 to 2000.

I have wired up the house for a generator, so that I can still run the gas central heating and keep the fridges going.  At the moment it is only a small one and I don't think the voltage is steady enough for the electronics to settle down in the gas boiler.  Maybe I shall have to fork out for something bigger, or go for a pure sine wave inverter?

I see from one of the Euro News websites that the Swiss intend to ban the use of non essential electric vehicles, if the power shortages get any worse.  Now there's "one in the eye" for the greens!

[ChrisB]

I get confused. I recently saw a report concerning wood pellet that said it was a direct replacement for coal with regards to calorific value/volume.

But when we looked into alternatives to heat large industrial installations admittedly long ago, I have been retired over 17 years. Wood and it's derivatives was 1/3rd to 1/2 of coal and the best wood only 1/3 of anthracite in regards to it's calorific value.

There is still 1.8 Billion tons of coal left in South Wales mostly pure anthracire in the upper Eastern Valleys.

This came from the forestry research group.

 

 

[ChrisB]

So looking at the above you need 3x the volume of pellet to anthracite.

[grendel]

7 hours ago, BroadAmbition said:

especially if france has any sort of generating issues

currently we are exporting more to france than we are producing from our remaining coal fired power stations, in fact looking at the graph, since the end of March this year we have been consistently sending power to the country. so its probably safer to say if we experience problems their problems will get worse.

if ayone wants to see the exact combination of energy we are generating  this is a good place to go see - https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

 

[grendel]

in fact if you look at all the other import options Holland ireland, norway etc, we are importing from them about the same as we are exporting to france.

[SteveO]

7 minutes ago, grendel said:

currently we are exporting more to france than we are producing from our remaining coal fired power stations, in fact looking at the graph, since the end of March this year we have been consistently sending power to the country. so its probably safer to say if we experience problems their problems will get worse.

if ayone wants to see the exact combination of energy we are generating  this is a good place to go see - https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

 

Love the dashboard Grendel and was particularly tickled to see that the various gauges puport to come from Smiths Industries - my old employer. Sadly, Smiths haven't made gauges for many, many years but it is a very nice touch and the overall is very informative. 

[Meantime]

8 hours ago, BroadAmbition said:

He also predicted that UK governments have been totally short sighted and he too considered that unless some sort of large scaling up is achieved right now, then we are indeed facing selective nationwide power cuts in the not too distant future  especially if france has any sort of generating issues

Now factor in that by 2030 we will not be selling any new diesel or petrol powered cars!!!! Where is the generating capacity to supply the replacement electric vehicles going to come from.

Drax gets a huge subsidy because it is considered renewable energy. Yes apparently trees can be regrown so its green!!!!

[ChrisB]

But if you burn wood you release carbon! Or am I missing a trick.

[marshman]

More wind about tomorrow so that will help a lot!

[floydraser]

These days we talk about fake news and misinformation. Nothing new there; it's what killed off our nuclear industry and now we're paying for it in many ways.

[Meantime]

54 minutes ago, ChrisB said:

But if you burn wood you release carbon! Or am I missing a trick.

Absurd isn't! It is renewable because you can grow more trees, sustainable no! But they do get huge subsidies because it is "renewable" energy. I guess taking the argument further you release carbon producing the solar panels, or wind turbines, including the transport and assembly so no renewable is carbon free.

I still reckon they are burning trees faster than they can regrow them though!

[Woodie]

Think the train of thought is trees are carbon neutral because of the carbon they captured whilst a tree, before becoming a fuel.

There’s probably some exact figures out there somewhere.

[Bikertov]

41 minutes ago, Woodie said:

Think the train of thought is trees are carbon neutral because of the carbon they captured whilst a tree, before becoming a fuel.

There’s probably some exact figures out there somewhere.

Yeah - notwithstanding all the carbon used to fell them, process them and then ship the pellets half way round the world.

Conveniently "Carbon Neutral" when it suits those who preach on these things.

A bit like the climate protesters with their carbon un-neutral mobile phones, using the internet and other lifestyle stuff, causing more pollution when they blockade everything and grind the country to a halt.

Just saying ...

[FlyingFortress]

Quite a few years ago now, the last remaining Coal Power Station on The Thames was Tilbury. They had done just about everything they could to reduce emissions but The Carbon Tax was making the plant unviable.

They came up with a Whizz Bang idea to burn biomass instead. I had no idea what biomass was so as usual I made myself look dumb and asked the question. Well biomass turned out to be something very similar to what Drax is doing on Griff's post earlier. Oh that sounds great I said and asked if there would be any impact on Port trade. Now when Tilbury was burning coal we would get one Bulk Carrier around once a month coming from generally Russia or Poland onto the Power Station berth. To supply the amount of biomass we would need 3 bulkers a week coming from Canada and these would have to discharge constantly to keep the furnaces burning as there was no dry storage facilities.

So three large ships a week crossing The Atlantic plus the utilisation of 3 large tugs to dock and 2 to sail plus the deployment of a medium sized bulker anchored off Southend as a stand by just in case there was any disruption to the supply chain to keep the power station green.

Makes sense to me this green washing .... NOT

Must say it kept us busy for a while 🙂

[HEM]

9 hours ago, ChrisB said:

So looking at the above you need 3x the volume of pellet to anthracite.

Some little while ago there was a TV program over 'ere about one of the Swiss mountain cog railways.  The locomotives are either powered by coal or oil.  Apparently they are under pressure (or even ordered?) to use wood pellets instead.

Trouble is that they would need 4x the amount of pellets by volume & the bunkers just have enough space for coal for one trip.  So there is a problem...

[BroadAmbition]

So France has been informed to expect power outages (Vaughan)

We have relatives residing in Germany they have informed us that they too have been told to expect something similar come January onwards.

This begs the question over here - are we to expect the same?

Our leaders tell us it's all in hand and 'Unlikely' to happen.

Do we believe them?

Or do we believe the experts on the ground at the 'Coal' (Biomass / Gas) face?

Griff

[Wonderwall]

2 hours ago, BroadAmbition said:

So France has been informed to expect power outages (Vaughan)

We have relatives residing in Germany they have informed us that they too have been told to expect something similar come January onwards.

This begs the question over here - are we to expect the same?

Our leaders tell us it's all in hand and 'Unlikely' to happen.

Do we believe them?

Or do we believe the experts on the ground at the 'Coal' (Biomass / Gas) face?

Griff

If our leaders told me it was raining, I would look out the window to check.

[floydraser]

I asked my contact who works in the industry for an opinion on this. He said we have a connection with France to import electricity but the French have said, "Non!" for this winter. He referred to Gridwatch too but couldn't say whether or not there would be cuts.

So my conclusion is that if anyone knows for sure, they're not telling us.

[grendel]

well I have heard nothing about plans to do so, so either nobody is working out how to do it, or they dont need the cooperation of the energy distributors.

that said, if the network people are not involved the only other way of achieving it is through all those smart meters that they have been pushing at people- now thats a possibility, its already been stated that they can control the charging of EV's via the smart meters, not allowing charging at peak hours.

this is one reason I have been highly resistant to having a smart meter (the other being them telling me I can save energy with one as I will know what each device is using- (I can already do that, so dont sing its praises to me on that score)

[BroadAmbition]

this is one reason I have been highly resistant to having a smart meter

Ditto at our hovel, we are more than capable of monitoring our consumption without handing over control and 'Big Brother' to the energy suppliers

Griff

[webntweb]

Would it not be dangerous to switch gas supply off temporarily? Thinking of gas CH boilers that haven't been serviced regularly and more specifically gas fires whose flame failure or auto ignition may be suspect.

No use for this winter, but if the Viking Link comes on line on schedule by the end of next year maybe that will help with electric supplies.

[floydraser]

We have two smart meters, not because we believe in them but because we never heard anything to put us off the idea. And they were free. We had the electric one first and it was a novelty to see what everything used; it made us think but that's all.

Since the gas price went through the roof I have used the gas one to monitor actual usage and then the reaction to any changes I make to boiler and theromstat settings. We are now (according to the meter) using 50% of the amount of gas we were using 12 months ago, month to month.

We don't have the meter remote screens on all the time, most of the time they're chucked in the cupboard. Are we saving money? Probably not, but then it's hard not to get political.

Oh and another thing: Every month I have to submit my own gas meter readings because they can't collect the information themselves??? 

If I hadn't got them I wouldn't go out of my way to get them.

[Wussername]

It is all a bit confusing. For me.

I am fairly computer literate. Many in my community here in Norfolk in the middle of the Broads are not. They are country folk. Vulnerable.

I fear for them.

As are those who have decided to move here and now sadly left on their own.