Vocal Voices

We don't have it, we rely on imports - about 13% of our needs..

Overnight an interconnexion between France and the UK was on fire and closed down. This morning wholesale electricity jumped 19% to £475 per megawatt hour (MWh). That interconnect normally supplies 2GW but will be restricted to 1GW, once repaired, this will last over winter.

We should not be in this position. A mature economy such as the UK's should be self-sufficient, and more, in its energy needs and this fire shows us that we are not. The fire also shows us that renewables cannot pick up the slack, we need a mix of generation. We certainly need more nuclear, especially for the future.

Workingman wrote:We should not be in this position.

No we shouldn't. We need more nuclear power stations, pdq.

I couldn't agree more!

Hopefully without the help of China,

The National Grid position paper for 2050 has the UK as a net exporter of electricity to the tune of 100TW/h per year.

It's worth a read.

There is one of those Interconnexion things down here on the Solent

We have seven of them. Two to France, one to the Netherlands, one to Belgium, one to Norway , one to Dublin and one to NI.

Most proponents of an interconnected grid for renewable balancing believe that we need significantly more connectors so we can share our over production and consume others.

I was reading that wind power has been down 12% in 2021 in Germany and the Netherlands. I'd assume it has been similar in the UK. We certainly seem to have burned a lot more gas this year compared to 2020.

https://gridwatch.co.uk/

Re the NG paper: I downloaded it and found it to be a bit 'optimistic'. Not that it matters, we are not in 2050, we are in the now.

And it is the now and the period up to 2050 that we need to concentrate on.

Rolls Royce received grants to develop Small Modular Reactors (SMR) with the hope of installing 16 of them across the country by 2030. They would give us 8GW of baseload power, about 20-25% of current daily needs. These are the sorts of thing we should be looking at.

Workingman wrote:Re the NG paper: I downloaded it and found it to be a bit 'optimistic'. Not that it matters, we are not in 2050, we are in the now.

And it is the now and the period up to 2050 that we need to concentrate on.

Rolls Royce received grants to develop Small Modular Reactors (SMR) with the hope of installing 16 of them across the country by 2030. They would give us 8GW of baseload power, about 20-25% of current daily needs. These are the sorts of thing we should be looking at.

Not only did I find the NG paper optimistic, I found it clearly biased to Blue Hydrogen and totally disingenuous. But I believe they are serious about oversupply.

I'm all for the SMR reactors. Power where we need it as we need it. I would be even happier with an expansion of Nasa Kilopower to a much larger scale and using those too.

Needless to say I'm not too popular with the green painted tree huggers with that view.... They think Wind will solve everything. One of my son's would agree, he spends all day generating wind....

I have been angry for quite some time that we threw all our eggs in the wind and solar baskets to the exclusion of almost all else.

My favourite alternative is Small Scale Hydro - 100kW to 5MW. For centuries just about every village of any size was built on a water course - the country is lattice-work of them - and water was often used to power them. There are thousands of sites suitable for SSH and they are about as environmentally friendly as electricity generation gets. Cheap and quick to install, practical, easy to maintain and power 24/7/365 - GWs of free electricity. Back to the future is the way to go.

Not big ticket items, though. So no cutting of tape in front of the BBC, Sky and ITN cameras with Laura, Beth and Adam on hand for an interview.