OT - Lights going out in three years

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risks running out of energy generating capacity in the winter of

2015-16, according to the energy regulator Ofgem.

It predicted that the amount of spare capacity could fall from 14% now to only

4% in three years."

Can't understand why Ofgem took so long as someone here predicted a couple of years ago such a scenario for around 2016.

So 25 years later we reap the legacy of Thatcher - energy sector privatisation, a 'free market' perpetual short termism while the consumer gets robbed to support solar panels and wind turbines.

Judgment day rapidly approaches for those currently in receipt of FIT payments.

Is there going to be am ice axe Valentines day massacre in 2016?

Reply to
The Other Mike
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The generating capacity reduction by 2015 has a lot more to do with the LCPD than with Maggie.

Reply to
Andy Burns

OFGEM report

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Reply to
The Other Mike

But that wouldn't have been a problem with a nuclear programme to replace 1960's build coal and oil generation rather than piss away nearly a 100 years worth of indigenous gas (at 1990 usage) in a decade and a half - all in the name of quick profit

Reply to
The Other Mike

Quite. The problems we face are due to the lack of will to have nukes built, combined with a shortage of companies willing to build them. And these are problems that'll be there whoever "owns" the electricity supply system.

Reply to
Tim Streater

So when would this nuclear build programme have taken place? I've seen no appetite on anyone's part to do that until recently (although anytime after the early 90s would have been a good time).

Reply to
Tim Streater

The people I knew in the CEGB would have been very willing to build nuclear plants, had they been allowed to. They found the political decisions to rely on coal very frustrating. Of course, that was well before Thatcher and had more to do with how much money the mining unions contributed to the Labour party. Perversely, those coal fired stations were more likely to buy their coal from Australia.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

Grow up.

Reply to
Huge

Far more to do with the burgeoning population, same with the NHS, schools, etc. The best green measure would be to stop paying people to have babies.

Andy C

Reply to
Andy Cap

When you say "The people I knew in the CEGB would have been very willing to build nuclear plants", how much of the process would have been done by the CEGB itself (and its staff)? Design and procurement? Fitting out? Pouring concrete? I'm assuming that private cpys would have done much of the work, but would the boundary then between the "government" part and the "private sector" part have been any different then from now?

I'd like to understand that part better.

Reply to
Tim Streater

Oh, do f**k off. If Tory B Liar and his cronies had been any better they would have realised the problem 12 years ago and done something about it.

MBQ

Reply to
Man at B&Q

Probably me - It's been obvious to me for years.

You're mixing up two different things. Thatcher was burning off cheap gas, mostly rather inefficiently. Solar panels and wind turbines fiasco is much more recent - last two governments. It was Blair who was duped into CO2 targets and pie-in- the-sky renewables, and this government has perpetuated it.

The whole energy security thing is something all governments for decades have failed to tackle. It's been bloody obvious for years what would happen when the existing coal and nuclear plants would retire, at the same time our own gas ran out. We needed to start building replacement plant 10 years ago. The lack of almost any MPs/ministers over this period with science backgrounds who can understand the issue beggers belief, but matches the dumbing down of those skills across the whole country.

Even the threat of power shortage is a very significant disincentive for industry to invest here. Unreliable energy supply such as power cuts cost industry an astonishing amount. We have historically had a reliable supply since the CEGB was originally tasked with designing the system with that in mind, but lack of design with this in mind over the last few decades means this has now unraveled.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

For all practical purposes the last four projects that were commenced under a nationalised regime were the following.

Labour

Drax extension circa 1977 Torness circa 1978

Tories Heysham 2 circa 1979 Sizewell B circa 1987

Sizewell being a bit of a kick in the teeth for the UK nuclear industry because it was deemed 'better' to use an imported technology than build any more AGR's which had an extremely long gestation period - Dungeness B, Hartlepool and Heysham 1 taking about 15 years from groundworks to commercial operation. But Torness and Heysham 2 were significantly quicker to build.

Hansard from December 1979 is quite revealing

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"Looking ahead, the electricity supply industry has advised that even on cautious assumptions it would need to order at least one new nuclear power station a year in the decade from 1982, or a programme of the order of 15,000 megawatts over 10 years. The precise level of future ordering will depend upon the development of electricity demand and the performance of the industry, but we consider this is a reasonable prospect against which the nuclear and power plant industries can plan. Decisions about the choice of reactor for later orders will be taken in due course."

15GW over 10 years! If only. From 1979 the total new nuclear build in the UK has been 2.5GW. The total conventionally fuelled new build from 1979 to 1990 was zero. A decade of riches from north sea oil revenues lost forever when a new generation of infrastructure could have been built, employing UK workers rather than paying them dole to piss away down the pub. But the bitch never ever considered employing miners as construction workers.

Of course things went even more downhill in 1990, gas being burnt like no tomorrow. Coal generation being shut, zero investment in anything but gas. Then came wind and solar. Both a licence to print money.

The rot set in on May 4th 1979 and still hasn't been fixed despite numerous regimes.

Reply to
The Other Mike

No we reap the lagy of Labour with its insanerenewebales policy that makes it uneconomic to compete with wind that can steal your power station from under you every time the wind blows, and the legacy of Clegg whose attitude to nuclear is 'over my dead body' which someone should take him up on an a weak minded Camerom who says 'you have to close coal' when in fact Germany who put all this sit in place is bulding new coal fired power stations.

Note that two limp dims in succession heading the department of Energy (and climate change) have been so obstructive and incompetent that nothing has happened at all. We have no energy policy that is being actively pursued because the limp dims want something that simply wont work, and wont admit they know f*ck all about energy, and neither does cameron.

They will keep the old coal burners going, mark my words.. I saw one of our gas guzzling OCGT stations fire up for the first time ever for 4 hours this week.

The thing about renewable energy is it alwasy sems toresult in burtning more fuel.

As with most Labour policies the headline grabbing benefit turns out in tle real world to achieve the exact opposite effect.

All tshose graduates who were going to get higher salaries are now unemployable because they have ideas above their station.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Or tell people to shut up and eat their Greens.

If they are not too bitter and stringy.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I worked for an Electricity Board, rather than the CEGB, but I think our processes were very similar.

For a major project, we would start with a meeting of all department heads (engineering, commercial, accountancy and secretariat) where the departmental needs were discussed and incorporated into a design outline. The Chief Engineer's department would then go away and produce a specification, which would be presented to another meeting of department heads, usually including members of their senior staff, for discussion and, if necessary, modification. This could continue for some time or be completed within a couple of meetings. As a general rule, the more senior the people involved, the quicker things got done.

Because of government rules on transparency of process in nationalised industries, where possible, the design of the project would be put out to tender. However, small projects and those that required a great deal of specialist knowledge, could be designed in-house. I suspect that there were not many architects with the knowledge necessary to tender for designing a nuclear power plant. The design would then be discussed at further meetings.

Once the design had been accepted, been through the planning process and got planning permission, most of the actual building work would be put out to tender. The project manager would be a member of the Chief Engineer's department, so everything stayed under the Board's direct control, and the Board would invariably do the electrical work.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

I talked with someone who was there at the time of the nuclear execution 'one day they said 'the interest rate has gone up: nuclear power is no longer viable' and that was the end of it.

The interest rate today has never been lower... At an effective interest rate of zero, nuclear power domes in around

5p a unit..even with cost overruns and all the other s**te.

If ever there was something to use a 'green bank' for this would be it.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Hear, hear. Odd that hardly anyone ever talks about that. If it were up to me, I'd scrap all child related benefits.

Reply to
Huge

I'd taper em off after the first child for sure.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

The greens or the people?

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