Sunday, Jan 27, 2008
When falling supply meets rising demand you get black outs at the London Olympics!
BBC: Britain 'facing energy shortfall'
More poor planning by the government. Britain is likely to face a shortfall in electricity generation within five to seven years. The number of nuclear and coal plants coming out of service over the period makes shortages likely. Demand overtakes supply somewhere between 2012 and 2015, creating a serious 'generation gap'. In the extreme case, shortages could materialise around the time of the London Olympics in 2012 - Cool that should get Northern Crock off the front pages! One expert who dismissed the report said "For black-outs to occur, pretty much everything would have to go wrong," err isn't that something this government is good at! He then went on to say perhaps this is a 'wake up call, err and to the FTB who cannot afford the house let alone the heating!
6 Comments
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1. Whalewatcher said...
What's happening in South Africa right now is a dire warning. See the SA Sunday Times.
2. Mark Wadsworth said...
The coal fired power stations are only going out of service because the EU says they have to (read the article!!), no doubt so that the French can win some juicy contracts to build nukes over here. As to nukes going out of service, good riddance, is all I can say, as long as we don't replace them.
3. Safffer said...
Let me give you a glimpse at the Ghost of Christmas Future, and let me do it quickly while my PC's still got power.
I live in South Africa, current world capital of "load-shedding", which is what our euphemists in government have decided to call rolling blackouts that cripple our country up to three times a day, five days a week.
In 1995 our new democratic government was told by the nasty old white racists, who had been supplying nasty racist electricity to most of sub-Saharan Africa, that they would need to stop giving each other high-fives and start building power stations. The government decided to carry on high-fiving.
In 2004, a secret report was handed to the cabinet stating that demand would outstrip supply in late 2006. Well, we made it into early 2007, but now the wheels have come off in a big way. Still no power stations near completions, still multi-million Rand bonuses (I think that's about 56 British quid at the current exchange rate...) to the power company bosses; and still plenty of high-fives in government. The solution? We're going to be rationed. Business must cut consumption 15% (ALL our gold and platinum mines shut down on Friday and are still shut), the hospitality industry must reduce by 20%, and the rest of us are supposed to go solar, in a country in which most people don't have a roof. Go figure.
So here's the way it goes, Britain. 1) Your government says it's all under control 2) They say they have a plan 3) The lights go off 4) They say they have a plan 5) The economy shuts down 6) The plan turns out to be hamsters on treadmills
London Olympics? Watch and learn from the Football World Cup here in 2010...
(Oh, and in case this was way off topic - we've still got serious VI figures in the property market here telling us that blackouts will give major upward impetus to property prices because, er, well, people want security when the lights go off, and, er... You know the rest.)
Saffer.
4. planning4acrash said...
Nah, the interconnected nature of the national grid means that one power station outage or a blown transformer can black out a whole region, as other power sources over stretch to compensate for outages elsewhere. We need decentralised energy, as per the proposals put forward by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to avoid that frailty of an interconnected system.
5. Who Stole My Pension? said...
Good point. Local energy sources will cut out the large transmission losses. However, I am afraid that there is no new green technology that can fill the gap in time. So I will be taking candles to the Olympics!
6. Cristiano Barbaro said...
Sure decentralized energy... that 10% of the population can actually afford to put in place. Right... neeext environmentalist freak pleeeze!