The black-outs could come within three years, the energy watchdog has said.
“In its strongest ever warning, Ofgem predicts Britain will face power shortages because old coal and oil plants are being forced to shut down under the European Union’s environmental regulations,” says this article in the Telegraph. “This will partly be replaced by wind farms, but they are less reliable and can only generate electricity in the right weather conditions.”
“The regulator’s new analysis reveals the risk of power-cuts is almost 50 per cent in 2015 if a very cold winter causes high demand for electricity.”
Great! Millions of people left shivering in the dark right when they need the energy the most.
Ofgem, which regulates the electricity and gas markets in Great Britain, believes the lack of spare power generation “could lead to higher bills”, which are already at record high of £1,300 per year.
With Obama’s continued attacks on the coal industry, I fear that the same thing could happen in the United States. Again, millions of people would be left shivering in the dark right when they need the energy the most.
Why do I have this fear? Because Obama has said very clearly that he will bankrupt our coal industry and cause electricity rates to soar ( See video )
What kind of President would want to destroy his own country’s energy-producing capabilities?
“If a foreign nation was doing this to America, we would be at war with them,” says Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)
See entire article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/9590135/Millions-of-British-households-face-blackout-warns-Ofgem.html
Thanks to Sonya Porter for this link
See also:
http://iceagenow.info/2012/06/killing-coal-america/
Link to Obama’s promise that he will bankrupt our coal industry and cause electricity rates to soar – Video
http://iceagenow.info/2011/11/obama-plan-electricity-rates-skyrocket-video/
21 Responses to Millions of British households face black-outs because coal stations are being replaced with wind farms, warns Ofgem
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11 May - 4 sunspots
Credit: landscheidt.infoGood news! A publisher in Italy has now translated Not by Fire but by Ice into Italian.
La Prossima Era Glaciale
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I recommend this DVD
Warmer during most of
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“What king of President would want to destroy his own country’s energy-producing capabilties?”
Answer: An anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist, anti-American whose sole purpose is to level the playing field of world countries by cutting the energy legs out from underneath his own (?) country to accomplish this.
This is a very interesting article but it does beg the question: Is your website set up to question ‘Global Warming’ or is it for the benefit of traditional energy sources?
The name of the website – Ice Age Now – says it all. If alternative energy sources would help us survive the coming ice age, then I’d be recommending them highly. So far, I see no evidence that that is the case.
If you had seen the articles from the UK for the last 2 winters you would know that their wind generators failed during the coldest part of the year – once due to freezing and once due to the extreme cold being accompanied by very still air. Dependence on wind power or solar in deep snow or serious overcast conditions or no wind causes people to freeze. That has already happened two years in a row.
There are NO untraditional energy sources! None that work anyway.
Hi. Interesting informations. But then I guess, if the actual wind power plants in that country aren’t producing enough energy in some poor weather conditions (even though those farms are supposed to be located in adequate areas for wind energy production), then why not considering building even more of those farms in more adequated areas, so in order to compensate the other farms suffering bad conditions? I’m not a specialist, but it seems logical.
Okay, I’ll bite.
On one hand, I could be completely sarcastic, and say, you mean, like cover the country with windmills, ignoring the capital cost, maintenance, human impact and so on.
But really, those are serious ramifications of wind power. The Extremely Low Frequency sound coming from the windmills is actually pretty tough to live near.
As well, to do that, you wind up with expansive network of electrical power lines, which of course consumes even more land, affects the standard of living of land owners and so on.
And realistically, England, is not that big to expect substantially different weather patterns from one end to the other in those extremes where the air is still in the winter.
Further, all of the alternative energy completely ignores exceedingly safe advanced nuclear power, such as Thorium.
For which at any given time, there is very little highly radioactive material, it makes the fissionable material on the fly, uses it up to create waste that is not much worse than standard medial waste.
And, has a nameplate cost a tenth that of wind or solar. IOW, if you would need $1B for a wind farm, and equivalent Thorium power plant(s) would cost $100M.
But it gets worse, often wind farms produce under 30% of their nameplate capacity. So when you hear about a 1GW wind warm, read 300MW (at best).
So not only does a Thorium plant, take up much less land, cost a tenth of the wind farm, it produces 3 times as much energy.
Glauco, I have just checked the figures at NETA. The entire array of UK wind turbines( about 4,000) are currently producing 717Mw( 1.7%). Over the last 24 hours it was 1% of supply. Coal is currently producing 45% with 18,549 Mw. The UK is about the size of Colorado and Scotland, the windiest part of Britain has an area about the size of Maine. Once again Scotland, being the most mountainous part has, the greatest potential for hydro power, but the hills are half the height of Norwegian hills and in any case, the main glacial lakes suitable for hydro have already been dammed. We have on the other hand centuries of supply of low sulphur coal, next door to the unemployment-ridden demand centres where just a handful of traditional thermal stations are already producing a SURPLUS of electricity. This electricity production accounts for only 0.05% of world anthropogenic CO2. So we are irrelevant to climate change. Oh and whilst talking about irrelevancy, at noon on the Solstice of 2010, the coldest such day for 100 years, the entire UK wind industry produced the sum toptal of ZERO to the national grid.
I am amazed that we allow wind turbines to be built when you look at the cost, what they produce, the amount of land they consume, the number of birds they kill, and the health effects of living near these giant blenders. How many have been abandoned in the US? 14-15,000?
On an side note if you want to see the effects of not investing in energy infrastructure, look at California’s gas situation. We have seen our gas prices rise by at least a dollar in less than 5 days. Some stations have had to shut down because they either can’t get gas, or the gas they can get they can’t sell at a profit. All because of two refineries being shut down. Investors have been trying for years to get refineries built in California but the environmentalist block them at every turn.
Global Warming codenamed Climate Change is a LIE. There is NO runaway greenhouse warming, only Global cooling so the point should be a moot one. Coal production should be going full-steam but the LIE persists and fools listen.
I find it extremely disturbing that leaders so willingly deny their constituents(or should I say serfs)access to a 100% proven and reliable source of energy. All to meet the requirements of a new faith, every bit as dogmatic as the Church of Rome was back in the day.
If wind and sunshine can’t cut it in the free market then they should not be part of a nation’s energy policy.
correct John. Germany is planning up to 23 new coal-fired power stations and India is going for 400. Here we are in Bonny Scotland worrying about less than 5.
Anyone knows Nathan Stubblefield and his earth battery? It was patented at the end of 1800. The principle is quite simple: a buried coil generates electricity using geomagnetic field (USP #600,457).
Take a look:
http://www.rexresearch.com/erthbatry/erthbatry.htm
Thank you very much for this link. I was scrolling down this webside. This is a treasury “with many gold coins” for me. E.g., a superficial reading of the work of Thomas Townsend et al, some of it fits in what Wlliam Lyne describes in his book, “Pentagon Aliens”, and also to mention, some bits fit in from the investigation of Henry Stevens, refering to his three books, that cover what they were working on in Germany before and during WW2.I have to go deeper into this. I am, or we are living in interesting times.
And thank you Robert that you allow different opinions and ideas to pop up on this blog.
All the Best “over there”, Dag.
A outstanding comment from WrinklyOldGit in the linked telegraph article:
I have been posting comments about the lack of initiative in ordering new base load generation stations for many years, the eco fascists and tree hugging loonies said I was in denial of green house global warming – well you simpletons, the boot is on the other foot now – you can see just how true my statements about forthcoming power cuts and brown-outs were, based on 30 years working in power systems generation projects.
Building gas turbine plants is fine if you have reliable gas supplies – but our North Sea gas fields are rapidly depleting, and gas supplies
from Russia, the Middle East and North Africa are at the mercy of others, and will become ever more expensive.
It has been known in the industry for more than a decade that closing coal fired power stations and running down our nuclear plants as they reached the end of the design lives with out building new plants was stupid beyond belief. It takes 5 years from scratch to build a gas turbine plant, 10 years to build a new coal fired plant, 15 years to build a nuclear plant – assuming the eco fascists don’t stop them with violent protests.
Anyone who thinks we can use wind turbines for base load generation is seriously deluded,. The biggest wind turbine (still only in the design stage) will only produce 10 MW, and on average only produces that power one day in three, and then only if the wind is not too strong or too weak. The UK base load electrical power requirement today is around 90 GW – by 2020 it could be as high as 105-110 GW – you do the maths to see that wind farms are only equivalent to a drop in Pacific Ocean.
I said years ago that blackouts and brownouts could come by 2020, the latest thinking in the industry is that they will be here by 2015 – welcome back to the Three Day Week, mass layoffs and closing factories being relocated overseas.
Here’s my take on the Obama/Liberal Left policy on energy and how it will only hurt the most vulnerable in our society.
http://logicversusemotion.blogspot.com/2012/09/obamas-energy-policy-and-possible.html
In Washington State the liberal (Democrat)Legislature passed a law requiring all coal fired electric plants to close within 10 years. They are idiots with no understanding of what they are doing. Thousands of foolish bird choppers only work on windy days, and don’t produce enough total energy to pay for their own maintenance.
I didn’t know there were any coal fired plant in Wa. Thought it was all hydro.
I never understand people who live in climates where interior heating is needed – certainly desirable anyway – fear a little bit of warming.
I never have heating – never !
I use air conditioners occasionally – mainly at night due to high humidity but the last few years have been so cool as to mitigate even that use.
You would have to be insane to choose freezing to death over a bit of extra CO2 – especially when the so called “greenhouse effect” has NEVER been demonstrated to exist by reproducible experiment !!
Intermittent power surges or sharp reductions are a NIGHTMARE for electricity grids and can cause huge damage and costs.
Imagine your local hospitals running on backup power for weeks because brownouts have seriously damaged grid equipment – enjoy the clean energy future !!
When it happens everyone will become so angry at the devastation caused by these renewables no-one will admit to being a supporter.
Interestingly I work in a coal fired power station over here in the UK.
I know EU legislation is killing our energy capacity but that does not tell the full story.
The EU legislation only applies to generating sets without FDG (Removes most of the sulphur from the emmisions)from what I’m aware….
Unit’s that are opted out of this are given a 2015 deadline or 20,000 hours to close… and that is whichever comes first. So that’s 2000MW where I work, 2000MW gone nearby. So 4000MW, which accounts for only four generating sets… is replaced by 717MW or something in Wind Power? No.
The other problem is that face generating capacity here is simple. Nobody wants to pay. Most power stations are privately owned and they do not want to shell out the cash to upgrade their generating units with the required FDG…. at the same time, the government does not want to pay either and nothing happens as a result. The generating capacity would be mothballed until the british government got down on their knees and gave them the money to turn them back on….
Finally is the operating life of these power stations…. Surprisingly, every coal fired power station in the country is well past it’s design life. In the case of the power station I work on, it’s almost 30 years past it’s operating life. It shows too, they are in such a bad state that they are always blowing holes in pipe work, in a state were you can barely bodge a repair job on them. The newest power station is Drax, and even that is getting on… in poor state, but in better state than the rest.
We face the same insane. Farce in Australia. Where economic advantage should be huge supplies of high quality coal. Wind mills are to energy creation what the 8 track cartridge was to the sound recording industry. They are monuments to folly and deception.