Somewhere in the country that led the Industrial Revolution, hundreds of the best and brightest most-productive workers work full time at predicting, gaming, marketing and compensating for the complex modern laws of electricity. And during winter months, thousands of other productive workers have to stop work because the electricity they need might be too expensive. With the UK’s spare electrical generation capacity down to a razor thin 4% this winter, UK manufacturers are warning they will have to shut down even more often than they already do.
Someone thought it would be a good idea to use the UK electricity grid to control global weather, which turned out to be expensive. In a plan to contain electricity costs, someone else had the bright idea to trim back electricity peaks by charging a lot lot more during the worst three half hour periods of energy demand, known as triads. The mysterious triad spikes are subject to the weather and human circadian timetables and hit a bit randomly, though most often on a Monday to Thursday from 5 – 5.30pm. By definition they occur in winter months, and must be separated from the last triad by 10 days (though I didn’t think the weather worked like that?).
No one is exactly sure when the next dreaded triad will hit and contractor services and online calculators have sprung up to try to predict them. Even after they’ve hit, no one can be sure they had a triad, because they won’t officially find out ’til the end of February when those peakiest of peak winter days can be identified. When businesses guess that a triad might be about to happen they can shut down or crank up the spare diesel generators. By doing this a large corporation might save £50,000 of its electricity bill.
In a mild winter, when electricity demand is flatish, the expensive triad times are only little spikes and are very hard to predict. So, this genius of bureaucratic planning creates a situation where mild winters with lower electricity demand may mean more shutdowns. Go figure.
Green Britain: UK Manufacturers Warn Of Shutdowns Amid Energy Emergency Measures
Date: 23/11/14 Tanya Powley, Financial Times
Britain’s heavy manufacturers have warned they may be forced to shut down more often this winter to avoid high power costs because of emergency measures to cut demand.
The National Grid launched its Demand Side Balancing Reserve [DBSR] scheme – which pays participating companies to reduce their demand during peak winter weekday evenings – to combat the risk of blackouts.
The DBSR scheme would work on top of the current “triad” system (which is a way of figuring out which big-user pays what). Sounds fiendishly complicated.
According to Npower, the energy company, the DSBR could make triads more difficult to predict by effectively “flattening” demand – making it harder to pinpoint when they will occurred. […] Richard Warren, senior energy and environmental policy adviser at the EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation, agrees the initiative could result in more production reduction and shutdowns. “Last winter’s mild weather had a noticeable impact on triad predictability, and likewise we can expect increased demand reduction activity to contribute to uncertainty,” he said. Last year, Celsa UK, a steel manufacturer, shut down daily for up to three hours at peak times to avoid a triad.
—Financial Times via GWPF
When is your modern electricity supply not modern? — When it’s post-modern.
UK readers — Do help me make sense of it if I’ve got it wrong. None of it seemed very sensible to me this afternoon.
They must be hoping for Global Warming this winter.
260
;They must be hoping for Global Warming this winter.’ we’ve just had the warmest October on record!
054
Codswallop!
370
‘The UK is on course to witness the warmest year since records began more than a century ago.’
Early indications suggest 2014 will see the mildest January to October since records began in 1910, the Met Office has said.’
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-weather-2014-is-on-course-to-be-the-warmest-year-on-record-9828853.html
Such is codswallop!
023
Everyone knows to take what the MET says about ‘mild winters’ with a grain of salt (especially as the UK has in the past run out of salt to grit winter roads due to forecasts of ‘mild winters’…’)
200
BA4th
“Such is codswallop!”
That will of course be “homoginised” data not the raw data AND who said records only began in 1910, why?, could it be the MET theselves. They expunge all data prior to 1910 as if it didn’t exist same as Australia’s BoM.
R-COO- K+
200
The UK Met Office gets it so wrong you can reasonably expect the exact opposite of what they forecast.
The winter of 2009-2010 was to be `warm and mild.’ Instead the UK wasw hite from Land’s End to John O’ Groats as seen in this NASA satellite photo
And that wasn’t just once, they got it badly wrong three winters in a row!
When they say `warm and mild’ you should book a six month stay in the South Pacific.
When they say `Barbeque Summer’ you buy a rubber Zodiac with outboard motor and chest high waders.
Yeah, the UK Met Office has developed quite a reputation. Globally.
140
Hey, don’t you worry..
With Gavin’s hand on the GISS tiller, its likely that this November will be the warmest ever in the US !!
Hot enough to melt snow ??
Time will tell !
20
Snow chance.
00
That’s the same organization that missed the past 5 winters by a mile. Yea, you bet the farm on their stuff. LOL
20
Go easy on him. BA^4 is recording the highest temperatures, each month. on a calendar on his wall.
Then, of course, he will throw that calendar away in January, when he gets a new one; and that way, every month will always be the warmest on record.
190
He just isn’t bright enough to realize that regardless of whatever is actually taking place the media doesn’t know how to write anything but “this ________ will be the warmest since ________.”
Just as BA4 incapable of commenting using any other methodology that that which he has been using for years now, the media is incapable of reporting anything but “the warmest evah!!!!!!” in their articles.
Rational people stopped listening to what the media says and used their own senses to determine what really is.
BA4 is one of those that would rush madly about looking for his rubbers because the media said it was raining while the rest of us would actually look outside first before worrying about it.
130
Interesting comment, which planet are you talking about?
The UK’s energy policy is exactly why you alarmists are so dangerous. Destroying industry and the economy by advocating a deliberate policy of phasing out cheap reliable energy and phasing in unreliable and/or expensive energy in an utterly futile attempt to solve a non-problem.
The problem is there are far too many idiot who politicians believe the nonsense peddled by the disingenuous and/or lying, and/or manipulative purveyors of ‘climate science’.
360
Their ‘belief’ while under the influence of the intoxicating lure of taxation and bureaucratic control.
As predicted many years ago, fatuous green planetary salvation would lead to power impoverishment, power shortages and an escalation of winter cold deaths.
Between burning the furniture and waiting for the power to come on lies only revolution born of punch drunk propaganda weariness and frank cold.
80
Well we need to consider the link between the Occult and the Green Agenda.
I’m sure some will think “theres OriginalSteve off on one of his tangents again” – the issue is trying to understand the green mind.
The green mind is a pagan occult mind, which is why the Occult ( witchcraft, satanism, earth-based paganism, wicca etc ).
England is heavily Occult driven. The powers that be are linked to the Occult very heavily and its no conincidence that many forms of witchcraft flourish in the UK. Its the home of the bizarre occult themed 2012 olympics and the home of harry potter and much paganism. Its also home of many forms of satanic human sacrifice, if you know how to look at things correctly.
There is an old Intel maxim that says “if at first it doesnt make sense, you must get a different sense” – or translated into english it means previously “weird” things make sense when viewed through the right interpretive lens.
Which brings u back to the “hysterical” green approach to things like destroying the UK power grid in winter etc etc. If you view the greens as being the barely visible protrusion of occult paganism poking through into the mainstreanm of society, if you consider Occultists as viewing the earth as a living pagan “goddess”, then destroying the muggles world by protecting their “goddess” makes a lot of sense.
People also have to get past the idea that those in power actually care about the people of a country – especially those at the top. So if a few million die from massive pwoer prioces- who cares, right? Worse still of those who would cut power to the vulnerable would consider the deaths as “benevolent” and an “offering” to their god/goddess.
Now understanding starts to snap into focus. You need to view this who green nonsense through occult eyes – humans are parasites to be sacrificed to their goddess, or god ( lucifer ) and there is no higher sacrifice than a human.
You also need to understand this is all run through the many UK based occult secret societies. The greenies are just useful idiots, they have no idea of the l;arger agenda at play. This also cotrresponds with an unrelenting attack on Christinity, as Christians ca see clearly whats going on, which is why they are being muzzled more and more.
Things are culminating – they occutists will become more and more bold as time goes on. The UN Agenda 21 is the ultimate occult human culling and control plan.
It is what it is.
31
Many years ago while teaching in state primary school in QLD I was amazed at how many mothers were involved in Wicca. And it concerned me to see girls especially making occult signs with chalk on concrete. When approached they would give every indication my interest was not welcome and to ‘get lost’. My guess it would be worse now.
00
Today, on the Morning Report news, here in New Zealand, there was a news item reporting that the Greens were upset, because beneficiaries and the lowest paid workers, could not afford to pay their electricity bills.
Well, they wanted the windmills, and they lobbied until they got the windmills, and now people have to pay for the windmills, they are going all vaporous over the cost. What part of “prudent management” do they not understand? Don’t answer, it is to obvious.
301
BA4,
I believe that was Australia and it was the:
Hottest October evvvvaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!(since 2009 * may not portray actual events))
210
James Bradley,
You sceptics are all the same.
You refuse to understand the point we are trying to make.
It’s not the warming that alarms us – it’s the pause!!!!!!!!
224
Oh Back Ladder
That’s not quite impersonation. Took me a while.
30
BA4,
See that, Alarmist Blackadderthe4th.
That’s satire.
Now for satire to be trully affective it should only be used on ideas and concepts that are manifestly wrong – like yor belief in the ” …warmest October on record!”.
That’s why it’s so f#cken pi$$ funny… unless you were really being serious then I’m just gonna f#cken sh#t a spleen.
100
Who has? And how will that effect the winter temperatures? An unusually incoherent reply even by your standards.
100
1. The world has been warming since the Little Ice Age. Therefore temperatures SHOULD be higher.
2. The temperature records are probably not accurate enough to start squawking about ‘hottest eva!!!’
3. Weather, as we are repeatedly told (with great dudgeon) is NOT climate.
4. There has been no global warming for 18 years despite continued and increasing outputs of anthropogenic co2.
5. There has been no co2 induced ‘climate change’.
220
I still smile when I recall a television news journalist interviewing a resident in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney recently, she was asking him about the snow that had fallen in that area. She mentioned that only last year there had been bushfires there, and asked him when he had last experienced snow. He said: “the year before last” !
150
Idiot. October is not winter in the UK.
00
Phillip, Winter is not winter in the UK.
00
For the sale of discussion, let’s ignore how much colder your ‘warmest October’ is than the forecasts. Let’s also ignore how tragic a failure those have already proven to be.
Likewise, let’s ignore how minuscule the increase in the temperature ‘record’ is.
Disregarding all that, how does it escape your attention that warm Octobers in the Northern hemisphere are a good thing? They mean fewer deaths, reduced heating costs, and reduced winter damage.
The childlike ‘erk perk, it’s a change, I can’t cope’ of the rabid Greens should be replaced by a mature adult’s appreciation of the actual nature of the change. Even if you wish to claim this is a harbinger of bad things in the future, you should at least have the maturity to acknowledge the actual benefits of the situation as it is.
TdeF’s point ‘They must be hoping for Global Warming this winter’ is quite accurate. Given the damage done to the English electrical infrastructure by the Greens’ believers, increased winter temperature is definitely something for the ordinary person to desire.
90
I’m a tad worried.. a good friend of mine is going over to the UK for Christmas,
and she hates the cold !!!
I’m sure she will take her whole winter wardrobe with her though….
…assuming she is flying jumbo jet !!
130
Me too. Going to UK for xmas. Fingers crossed. Make sure your friends is aware of the new dartford crossing payement methods. Their site is amateurish and totally incompetent.
100
Just got back from the UK about 4 weeks ago temps were mostly 20 – 22 deg C. rather warmish for Autumn.
R-COO- K+
10
Very pleasant; somewhat like 1978 when I was living in an English Cathedral city. It remained mild until the 25th of November. That day it poured with rain and the following morning there was bright sunshine with the first frost of the season. I remember it well as it was a time of significant family celebration. There are other years of sunny warm autumns that I remember too, during the 1980s.
I believe the panic of the time, in the 1970s, was a new ice age!
30
‘assuming she is flying jumbo jet !!”
She won’t be taking her winter wardrobe with her……….
You obviously have no idea of the excess baggage charges!!!!!!
90
Where there’s a will …….. 🙂
110
…. there is a relative…
270
I actually hope the UK power grid goes down this winter. I don’t want anyone to get injured with frost bite or anything but millions of people freezing in the dark. Its going to make a lot of people think and ask questions, the kind of questions that the Green’s won’t want asked or answered. Especially if it happens or than once. But after getting the kind of answers that Jo got to explain whats going on with their Power Grind and its management the UK people mite want to have a say and demand some action. Action I think and it just my thinking here that some of these silly billy itty bitty Greenie idea’s mite just get the treatment they deserve. Here’s hoping ha.
350
So, if the power grid goes down, what does that do to the heating of my house if I’m on a gas fired furnace?
Presumably the steam will still flow through the room heaters?
50
Good point Skeptical Sam about those with Gas heaters but have electric fan’s to blow the heat around their place’s. My point was how are they going to charge their iPhone’s or use the internet or just watch TV or BskyB? How are they going to get to work with the traffic lights down. How are all those police going to do their jobs with no computer’s and no power to run the 3 million CCTV camera’s they have just in London. How will they catch any one. No power to run the pay to drive roads metering machines so no pay to drive traffic taxes. What are they going to do if the power goes down. Their will be a lot of question to ask and as always someone to blame. Just how will they blame for it and what will they do about them. That’s the way I was going with it Sam thanks for pointing that out mate about the gas. I missed that,thank you.
150
How much gas is managed by an electric switch? And how will gas cope with the increased demand for gas?
90
It also depends on what the compressor demands are in the distribution system (if you’re on mains gas.) Line packing is only used to cover surges so if the power goes out so do the compressors pumping the liquified gas. I don’t know much about it but most liquid distribution systems have to have pumps, boilers need water and gas and most central heat needs forced air. All of them need electricity. (Where I grew up in Missouri we had these huge telescoping storage tanks that kept some pressure on the system via gravity, but I don’t know if they would work w/o compressors in the gas main system.)
40
So for most homes let us start with the thermostat. For simplicity we’ll use a non-powered unit that is effectively just a normally open set of contacts that close when the temperature drop below the point the owner chose for the heat to turn on.
Once those contact close, in a typical gas fired, central heating unit, the gas valve is turned on (electrically), the starting element is energized (also electrically) and on ignition the flames begin to warm up a “firebox” which, upon reaching a certain temperature signals the blower for the forced air to turn on.
Short version, no electricity, no heat. Even though it uses gas to create the heat the process cannot get started without electrical power. Same with oil burners, the signals of when to start the pumps, fans, etc. all come from electrical power going into the controller.
No electricity means no heat unless you have a fireplace, wood stove, or some other personal heating unit that requires no external power.
Bought a wick style kerosene heater last winter just in case. I keep a few gallons of kerosene for it on hand in case of emergencies. In a pinch it can burn diesel or lamp oil. It just gets a little smelly and tends to create smoke/soot where the kerosene with a properly adjusted flame burns fairly clean. It is UL approved for indoor use. I’m at work or I’d check and see if it has the CSA or CE certs as well. Not a bad investment if one has concerns over the reliability of their power (or their government) over a cold winter.
50
So many things rely on electricity to function. We used to have a central heating system (Servowarm gas CH) that did not require a pump; it worked by thermosyphon, hence we had heating even when there was a power cut. I think it is sensible to have back up systems for heating, lighting and cooking that do not rely on the power supply.
For the second time in two weeks we have had an unscheduled power cut here. I could go out to the shed and bring in our little camping gas stove to carry on with the cooking, thank goodness.
20
I’m in Australia right now and hope to get home to PA. come January.
I have a 400 gallon oil tank in the basement and the furnace is powered by electricity. The controls and thermostats, oil pump, the furnace forced draft fan, and the hot water pump.
Last winter, the power went off in Bucks County PA, New Jersey around Trenton and all the way down to the Jersey Shore.
Some people were without power for 5 days, I was out for only a day.
TV station WPVI, ABC6 Action News, was running around with portable gas (petrol) powered generators to different central locations so people could charge their Laptops and phones. Free !
I was surprised how quickly the house cooled down. Inside the house after 3 hours, it was freezing. Fortunately I have a wood burning fireplace in the living room and had a stockpile of wood outback.
If and when I get home, I’ll install a little gas generator, exhaust to the outside, to keep the lights on and the furnace working.
Maybe I might stay in Hervey Bay ! Warm here.
60
From my memories of regularly freezing my a*se off during the various miners and power workers strikes of the 70s; UK type gas fired central heating won’t work in a power cut because the electrical pumps which push hot water through radiators and the thermostat controllers all switch off. The only thing that still worked was the gas fire, around which we spent lots of time huddled, trying to read by candlelight.
20
A lot of gas appliances have safety valves that cut off the supply of gas when there is no electricity to reignite it, should the pilot flame go out. You don’t want a house filling up with gas, especially if somebody smokes.
10
The problem is, if (when) something bad does happen, the raving loons will claim that:
a) The number of deaths is statistically insignificant compared to…a cheery-picked date/year which will be somehow fundamentally, and obviously flawed to anyone with a brain.
b) The number of deaths is taken out of context, more reporting has skewed the results compared to previous years.
c) Fearmongering by the MSM caused people to not find warmer places to go, so it’s all Murdoch’s fault (with help from the Kochs and ‘big oil’, of course).
d) If they had been allowed to have more wind turbines, and burn more woodchips, then everything would have been all ok.
e) The unusual cold is a sign of climate change, please donate more money now
f) The deaths are solely the responsibility of the deniers. “look what you’ve done, you should be ashamed of yourselves” etc, etc…
The other thing which does happen, is not so much dying from the cold, as dying from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by poorly ventilated fires – eg, trying to heat a closed room with a charcoal bbq. Sadly I know someone who thought this was a great idea when they were drunk, and their bbq was still hot – but they never woke up to suffer their hangover. These types of deaths will no doubt be attributed, for political reasons, to something other than attempts to get warm.
120
JM
I have just got to follow that up with a quote found in a book “American Betrayal” by Diana West.:
In reference to the Stalin Regime’s Terror Famine which is estimated to have killed millions of citizens of the Ukraine in the early 1930s-
“There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition”.
Got to love Doublethink/Newspeak!
40
Yep! I’m with you on that even tho’ I’ve still got rellies and ol’ school chums over in the UK.
Long live UKIP.
We need a UKIP style party in Oz too. Tony looked like he meant business on AGW/ACC but seems to have wimped out somewhat.
If Labor gets in the weekend, “God help us for nobody else will help us” (to misquote ex PM Whitlam circa 1975).
Ron
R-COO- K+
40
This is meant for Fox From Melbourne way back in the blog.
10
The UK has sown the seeds for its self destruction with its obsession with hopelessly uneconomic giant wind turbines as the major source for its base load energy generation. The Tories deserve to get obliterated in the 2015 UK election and as a consequence UKIP’s stocks will keep rising – will UKIP be the saviour of the UK Economy? Wake up UK voters!!! Germany, for a long time the powerhouse economy of the EU, is going into recession, thanks to its obsession with RE as well, but fortunately has become aware of its plight, and as a consequence is re-commissioning coal fired power stations – for its own economic survival. Remember UK citizens, green is bad, very very bad for the UK’s future prosperity.
480
Would that I could multi-green thumb this!
I have a yearning for the whole monstrous edifice that UK government has become to come crashing down. Most of those in office, now, are not there to represent their electorate – which, one would have thought, should be their primary concern. No; they are there to further their own careers, and voters be damned. That this involves sucking up to other, equally odious and mendacious, characters is a given, and most are more than willing to do that (unfortunately, I can only think of one exception – Dennis Skinner, a.k.a. “The Beast of Bolsover”, who does seem to have his voters interests at heart – which is why he still on the back benches). Many will suffer from the collapse, but, with luck, none more so than those who have chosen politics as a career. Let the likes of UKIP and the Raving Monster Loony Party (I wish!) then sift through the rubble, and create a smaller, less intrusive model.
190
It’s not supposed to make sense, Johanna. It is supposed to hurt. The green-tendency in British politics fondly imagines they can change the world my punishing domestic electricity users. It’s in the plan.
Their nod towards market forces is that they will create the problem, and the market will come up with the solution. The physics of what is actually possible in the real world doesn’t enter into it, not least because of the contempt in which industry is held.
Of course, they also figure that it will not hurt so much that a government loses power because of it. We shall see.
270
A nod to “market forces” — as with carbon trading, this is not a free market in electricity supply. The government sets the arbitrary rules, the complexity is forced, not evolved. Who picked the ten day rule? Why didn’t they settle for an actual absolute limit? If there is a cold spell with three super cold days electricity gets more expensive on one of them, but not on the two either side that were almost as cold? Yet two weeks later — on a day of lower consumption, the “peak” hits again? Have I got that right?
Perhaps there are some efficiencies in electricity supply being hashed out here, but if the UK allowed a totally free market with no subsidies, the outcome would be very different to this one. I wish someone could do a study to do the most extreme form of cost cutting now – pay off the green contracts, sell out of expensive energy, allow cheap coal and gas. What would the $/MW be?
290
I would guess that the regulator, Ofgem, must lie at the heart of it. A few commenters at Bishop Hill probably know the answer to who picked the ten day rule. The whole scam is fixed from above by the government and green-cohabitees. And some of them do quite nicely out of it thank you very much. The prime minister’s father in law farms wind subsidies. Go figure. Of course, it started well before the current government.
220
MH
“The prime minister’s father in law farms wind subsidies.”
The whole CAGW scam is producing mega numbers of people with vestid interest. Hence the need to keep this immoral scam going.
R-COO- K+
60
Is that like a hybrid of “vested” and “putrid”?
50
It’s both!
10
I think a fix is simpler than most people realize – while a bit pricey, putting solar panels on the roof and dumping excess power into a big battery to run some low power heaters and provide enough power to run fans or open and close gas valves at home, would be the go.
That way even when the grid is down or wobbling about, you have some form of energy independence and self sufficiency.
02
Efficient batteries are the problem,nbot to mention the cost.
00
‘not’!
I’d rather have a stack of well seasoned wood and a stove I can use for both heating and cooking. In the UK we had a small but very efficient stove with the flat top option precisely in case of emergency need. (It was the small Villager stove). Here we plan on a Metal Dynamics Thermodynamics ‘Gourmet’ bread oven type. They are brilliant; we had one for years and plan on the updated version to give a few heated radiators too.
10
Having a mental block…stove produced by Metal Dynamics of Albury.
10
Definitely was a bit mentally un with it there. Stove is a Thermalux ‘Gourmet’ bread oven built by Metal Dynamics of Albury. Highly recommended if you have a good source of firewood.
00
Solar panels work just great under 3 feet of snow !
20
Only if your intent is to keep the snow from making direct contact with the roof. 😛
10
I only wish I could post pictures here. I could show you what we had in Newtown PA. last winter. The snowiest in 150 years !
10
“The snowiest in 150 years !’
That’s absolute proof of Global Worming.. didn’t you know that !
10
But Robert, the snow will act as a blanket because its made from green house gases.
Gees.. you guys seriously need to catch up with “the science”. !
30
I just don’t want to see snow on the ground when I get home, especially when I get to Philadelphia International.
Don’t want to skid off into the ditch !
10
Sounds like interesting rules for a post-modern version of snakes & ladders.
30
… and therein is a wonderfully succinct description of the insanity of the eco-loons, well said.
130
That green ideology will kill people this winter.
Those deaths and the suffering it causes to those that are energy poor will not be easily forgotten.
It will still be fresh in the minds of people as their election rolls around.
The main beneficiary’s of that suffering will be UKIP who have clearly stated they want no part of that ideology or the european union.
They are already making huge inroads into the british political status quo.
Just as in Australia, Canada and America have rejected it.
People are starting to see global warming for what it is.
I think that next year in Britain there is going to be a massive shift in where Britain sits in Europe because of these climate charlatans.
250
“That green ideology will kill people this winter.”
“The elderly are useless eaters.” – Henry Kissinger (architect of the New World Order), quoted in the book: The Final Days.
140
I did like this quote I read over at WUWT.
“As so often, Shakespeare said it best: “A tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
50
“The green ideology will kill people this winter”, probably it will happen , unfortunately, but just remember the Gippsland fires when people living in the bush were prevented from taking adequate measures to clean-up their surrounds by green council regulation.
160
R O
Ain’t that the truth. I live in a fire prone area of Melbourne and until the last 2009 devasting fires we were not allowed to remove road side fuel because it might be a native animal habitat. The 2009 fires were a result of too much fuel being allowed to accumulate since local councils were indoctrinated by the UN’s Agenda 21.
Ron
R-Coo- K+
40
I hope that your indoctrinated local council has got it act together this Fire season and has aloud some proper back burning if not get on to your local newspapers about it and do as he greens do and use fear and “catastrophic fires if the Council doesn’t act now to stop it”, stuff to scare the idiots into action.
10
Fox
Don’t know about VIC but in NSW local brigades can theoretically conduct controlled burns on their own initiative, but as a local senior captain complained, the red tape strangles them so they just give up. A senior Rural Fire Service manager interviewed on TV stated that it takes them 2 to 3 YEARS advance work to get all the approvals done to conduct a major burn. Even after all that if the weather isn’t right they miss their chance and have to start all over again. Result = nothing gets done.
10
Even if the worst happens I would not expect any correction to their madness. Governments answer to every one of their failures is always that they did not do enough of what they have been doing and they have not spent enough money on it. Only a clean sweep at the next election by a new party who promises to actually ditch all of the fog of phony BS put out by the extremist greens will alter their course. Hopefully UKIP will succeed and do the right thing.
220
CameronH:
It is not that they don’t know, it is that they didn’t want to know. Disquiet about the electricity supply and the effect of renewables has been on-going since at least 2005, and in electrical engineering circles from around 2000. Chris Booker has been banging the drum since 2006 in the Telegraph, the largest circulation newspaper. Those of green outlook just made snide remarks about “The ToryGraph” and ignored the warnings. A retired grid control engineer Derek Birkett wrote a book in 2010, which I have just reread. The title? WHEN WILL THE LIGHTS GO OUT?
They have got away with their interference for so long that they thought they could continue adding more “renewables” to the system. I have twice said in writing that Ed Davey, the responsible??? minister is a lunatic. Only recently the sole Green Party MP claimed that they had plenty of electricity stored for winter!
It is only in the last year that those in Whitehall have started to panic. They have issued re-assuring statements galore, “not dependent on russian gas” (except that others are and will compete for supplies) “plenty of spare capacity” (only for hot air in Whitehall) “demand management will fix any problems” (i.e. we will shut down industry); while throwing money frantically at the usual piggies to install diesel generators to run for 30 hours or so, just in case. They are also trying to restart mothballed coal fired stations.
These last measures might just see them through. The cost is enormous; they could have built 5 or more new gas stations for the announced sum (real cost unknown).
If Europe has a very cold winter then there will almost certainly be shutdowns of industry, blackouts in country areas and thousands of extra deaths among the poor and elderly. I hope it doesn’t happen, but if it does then every sane person in the UK should vote for UKIP in the coming general election.
140
For some obscure reason, people seem to have got it into their heads that governments can actually do things. History has shown that they usually cannot; they can only enable things to be done. It is more usually an individual who actually makes the advances: Stevenson’s Rocket was not the result of government policy, neither were Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s masterpieces on land and water, nor Joseph Swann’s invention of the light bulb, nor Babbage’s computer. The progress of flight and the infernal combustion engine had very little to do with governments, and everything to do with individuals. The development of the electronic computer was enabled by, not created by, government policy. Unfortunately, this was probably the start of “mission-creep”, as exemplified by Concorde, a hugely over-priced government policy mistake that drowned the far less expensive and far more radical Wild Goose/Swallow project of Barnes Wallis that merely required some government encouragement. Actually, the difference between individual progress and government policy “progress” could be shown even earlier, with the R100 and R101 airships; one was built by a private company, the other as a government project. Guess which one crashed because of bad design, and influenced the legislation that destroyed the other.
Moving somewhat off-topic, but SandyS on the Bishop Hill site has revealed this interesting video from Ice Age Now. View it, and weep at the utter intransigence of the alarmists in their refusal to acknowledge the most basic of facts – they are WRONG! Like the Biblical pharaoh, we should be using the metaphorical fat cows in preparation for the lean cows to come, not putting them on a diet.
210
I’d have to disagree. Governments are only good at stopping things from being done, that’s their function. They labor under the mistaken impression that they can “enable” things to be done by attempting to control society or the economy or behavior via positive feedback, never learning that most basic principle of engineering that you cannot control a machine using positive feedbacks… it will self destruct.
120
Hmmmm…. you could have a good point, there. Perhaps I am being too generous to governments – something they seem rather tardy about in return, nowadays.
60
Radical Rodent
To talk of “government wisdom” IMO would be mostly adding another oxymoron.
But GOVERNMENT ENTHUSIASMS” seems a pretty good description of most such activities
20
King Geo –
don’t be too sure germany has seen sense just yet.
23 Nov: The Local, Germany: AFP: Germany debates scrapping coal power
Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks has said that if Europe’s biggest economy doesn’t reduce coal use, it has no chance of meeting its 2020 target of cutting Earth-warming carbon emissions by 40 percent from three decades earlier.
Hendricks’ cabinet colleague in charge of the economy and energy, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, sees things differently and has argued that coal is here to stay, citing energy security, cost and many thousands of jobs.
***”We can’t simultaneously get out of nuclear and coal,” Gabriel, the leader of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) who co-govern with Merkel’s conservatives, has said…
By mid-century Germany aims to meet 80 percent of its power needs with renewables such as wind, solar and biogas, which now generate around a quarter.
But an unintended consequence of the “Energiewende”, or energy transition has been a rise in the use of coal, which now generates 46 percent of electricity.
The coal boom in Germany is in part an echo of US shale gas boom.
Cheap natural gas in the United States means coal is being exported to Europe where it undercuts expensive Russian gas, making cleaner and more flexible modern gas plants unprofitable, and several have shut down.
***Another factor has been the collapse of the European emissions market, a system meant to factor in the environmental cost of burning fossil fuels. As the penalty for carbon emissions has dropped in price, coal plants have become more lucrative…
Environmental pressure groups have campaigned to shut down Germany’s coal plants, and the opposition Greens party, deprived of its signature anti-nuclear crusade, has been at the forefront of the fight, backed by some research institutes…
But the question is a political hot potato. Germany’s centuries-old coal industry employs some 50,000 people, and mining unions are a traditional voting block for the SPD…
Near the Polish border, in an area where Swedish energy giant Vattenfall runs lignite mines and three coal plants and is the largest employer, the idea of taking coal plants off the grid does not have many fans…
Across the country, in the Ruhr coal and industrial region, resistance is also strong.
“There will still be coal plants in the coming decades in North Rhine-Westphalia,” said the SPD state premier Hannelore Kraft…
Electricity prices have been in fact going up for consumers as the government has ordered the grids to buy renewable power at a higher price to encourage its development.
This is being passed onto German consumers and businesses which pay some of the highest electricity rates in Europe…
http://www.thelocal.de/20141123/germany-debates-scrapping-coal-power
Reuters – as expected – is totally on board with shutting down coal:
23 Nov: Reuters: Germany may shut down eight more coal power plants-document
Germany is working on a new law to force energy companies to shut down several more coal-fired power plants as it tries to reach ambitious climate goals, a document seen by Reuters showed on Sunday.
According to a draft legislation prepared by the economy ministry, energy companies will be asked to reduce carbon emissions by at least 22 million tonnes by 2020.
Some 50 facilities already registered for decommission will not count, however, meaning that a further eight coal-fired power stations may be closed down…
The latest reduction in carbon emissions, if put into effect, would be shared equally between Germany’s power companies, among them major energy firms RWE, E.ON and Vattenfall.
They would be allowed to determine, however, which of their plants to decommission. “With that they are granted a maximum of flexibility,” the document said…
Merkel’s government wants renewables to make up between 40-45 percent of power generation by 2025 and 55-60 percent by 2035 – targets that experts say are ambitious for an industrialised country.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/23/germany-energy-climate-idUSL6N0TD0EG20141123
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***quite frankly, Goldman Sachs should stay right out of this story.
24 Nov: Reuters: Coal plant closures would hurt German industry – BDI
by Vera Eckert and Chris Steitz
Shutting more German coal-fired power plants to meet ambitious climate goals would damage industry and cost jobs without helping the environment, the BDI federation of industries said on Monday.
The BDI was reacting to a document seen by Reuters that showed Germany is working on a new law to force energy companies to shut down eight more coal-fired plants – on top of the 50 already marked for decommission – as it tries to reach ambitious climate goals.
Without further coal plant closures, Germany may miss its 2020 CO2 cutting target by between 5 and 8 percentage points, the environment ministry has already warned
But the BDI, Germany’s main industry lobby, said on Monday a study it had commissioned showed that the closed plants’ output would simply be compensated with imports from mostly coal-fired power stations in neighbouring countries
“Foreign, often less efficient coal-to-power plants would take on 95 percent of the production lost from the switched off German plants,” BDI Managing Director Markus Kerber said in a press release, citing the study.
“Plant closures damage the competitiveness of German industry directly, without a benefit to the climate,” he added…
The study, carried out by Hamburg’s economic institute HWWI and r2b energy consulting, said that switching off 10 gigawatt (GW) of installed coal power generation capacity – close to what eight big plants represent – could cost 24,000 jobs by 2020 in brown coal mining and power production alone.
A further 50,000 jobs could be lost because energy-reliant manufacturers would be hit by rising electricity prices due to the closures. BDI put possible wholesale price hikes at nearly 50 percent.
Year ahead power on Monday cost 35.60 euros/MWh, according to Thomson Reuters data, up 1 percent. Traders said the increase was based on expectations for a cold start to December and the new year, rather than the closure plans…
***Goldman Sachs said in a research note that phasing out coal plants would not severely harm power companies, especially if they could run more expensive gas plants instead.
“As all older coal plants are cash loss making on a forward mark to market basis, we see no material downside risk for earnings of RWE and EON from closing older hard coal facilities,” it said.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/11/24/germany-energy-climate-idUKL6N0TE18320141124
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***the sooner we drop all talk of “carbon” and CAGW the better. merely calling CO2 emissions “carbon” and CAGW “climate change” has turned everyone into idiots, especially the MSM, which continues to mislead people by using such terms. it’s time for some accountability:
24 Nov: Reuters: Vera Eckert: EUROPE POWER-Forward prices at 11-week high on cold winter forecasts
European forward power prices posted 11-week highs early on Monday, boosted by expectations of a cold winter, which would drive up demand, traders said.
“It is about the possibility of cold weather in December and first quarter 2015, that translates into the annual contract,” one said, also citing positive fuel markets trends.
Germany’s Cal ’15 baseload power was at 35.60 euros ($44.1) a megawatt hour, up 35 cents from Friday and at a level last seen on Sept. 8.
The equivalent French Cal ’15 baseload was up 25 cents at 42.45 euros/MWh.
***December expiry carbon was last up 0.7 percent at 7.05 euros a tonne…
A talking point in the German market was a yet-to-be-discussed plan by government to enforce more coal plant closures in a bid to meet ambitious climate goals.
Traders said there was no short term impact on the wholesale market, but the affected utility companies were likely to ask for high compensation for closures, echoing developments in the nuclear plant exit plan…
Consumption in Germany should rise by 1.3 GW up to midweek and by nearly 2 GW in France, according to Point Carbon data.
Point Carbon also predicted a temperature fall of three degrees and one degree in the two countries respectively between Monday and Wednesday, based on 24-hour daily averages….
http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL6N0TE1GX20141124
40
The winding down of coal fired plants and the obvious result in population reduction cannot be excused by political ignorance. It could just be by design.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/29/After-Spending-Billions-On-Green-Technology-Britain-Faces-Blackouts
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/6957501/Wind-farms-produced-practically-no-electricity-during-Britains-cold-snap.html
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/26/The-Green-Blob-Unveiled-How-UK-Energy-Policy-is-Bought-With-American-Billionaires-Cash
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@ Sceptical Sam
You get cold!
Electricity is required to run your gas fired “furnace” – I assume you mean what we call a “boiler” in the UK? It powers the control circuits, operates the solenoid valve to admit gas to the burner, and runs the pump which circulates the heated water round the individual radiators. Unless you have a standby generator or inverter, the only gas heating that will work are simple hearth fires. Even newer versions of those might need electricity, as “balanced flue” designs will probably employ a fan.
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Yes, as said you will have no heat. Regardless of the fuel actually used to create the heat, oil, water, gas, or electric heating elements, the process of starting the heating (opening solenoid valves) and moving the heat (forced air blowers, electrical pumps) uses electricity.
Here in the US many people buy small portable generators and then fashion a double male ended chord that plugs into the generator then into one of the outlets of the house to provide power for the electrical side of their gas furnaces and gas water heaters.
The problem there is if the home does not have a transfer switch to isolate the house circuits from the feed line (or if they forget to open the main breaker prior to starting the generator) they are also feeding back into the grid.
Here our power is typically stepped up to a high voltage for transmission, then stepped down via a transformer outside the home. Back feeding into the grid means power from your home is going backwards through what would be a step down transformer but which is now acting like a step up transformer.
Line workers have been killed while trying to repair what they thought were de-energized lines as a result, homes have caught fire and all sorts of other nastiness.
Electricity is a wonderful and useful thing, but it is also extremely deadly when handled carelessly. What bothers me is the governments are creating circumstances where people will, for their own convenience, do some very stupid things with portable generators, camp heaters, etc. all due to the governments wanting to appease the greens and their whining for “renewables.”
60
The other thing you need to watch with “back-feeding” is the current drawn. If your generator is rated at 220V at 10 Amps, and you end up feeding a 10:1 transformer with it, the transformer will try to draw 100 Amps. In other words it looks like a short circuit to your generator. If you are lucky the fuse will blow. If you are unlucky, the fuse holder will melt, and the generator will catch fire.
I just thought I would brighten your day …
10
Yikes! I am glad for my transfer switch, but also appreciate the information. A gas powered generator catching fire is like having a bomb next to your house!
00
Oh Robert,
A chill went through my body when I read what you are saying people are doing. I can’t think of an easier way to electrocute oneself that what they are doing.
There is of course an isolating switch to isolate the circuit from the incoming mains. It’s the fuse or the circuit breaker for that circuit. But to actually put a male plug on both ends of a wire is just plain stupid.
Rereke, if it’s a step down transformer being fed from the low side, wouldn’t the voltage at the high side be 2200V and the current at 1 Amp (If fed from a 220V 10A generator)? Power in = power out.
10
I work in power generation. One day I was poking around comparing some of our low end backup generators with that of the competition. In the process I ran into various articles involving deaths as a result of back-feeding. A quick search on that topic will get you more than you wanted to know or would believe could happen.
In one case the crew contracted to repair an outage had checked that the lines were not energized and began work. A local resident came home, found his power out, fired up his portable generator which then back fed into the lines the contractors were working on which resulted in an electrocution. It was in Alabama I think, can’t recall right off, apparently the company has lost quite a few linemen due to poor safety practices regarding checking for that sort of thing. Back-feeding is a topic that will definitely bring out the worst in the people that work on power lines and for good reason.
Some of the fires have been caused by issues such as starting the generator, not isolating the home from the mains so that the added load of the surrounding houses which still have numerous items ready to draw power overload the set causing the meltdown Rereke spoke of. As he said, if you are lucky the set trips out, if you are not it catches fire.
Thankfully the sets we sell cannot be hooked up this way, they are meant to be hardwired into the residence with a transfer switch, manual or automatic, that isolates the residence from the grid before allowing the breaker to close to provide power. However, what people do with the little ShopCo or Walmart portables is another matter and some of them just don’t think beyond getting that AC running until the power company fixes things.
10
We’ve had a special generator input fitted but will check exactly how it works before using it. Thanks for the info here.
10
I agree, as an electrician, I’ve always been in awe at the risks and work done by linesmen and firemen. I think the work they do is grossly underrated in our society.
The thought that some “handyman” would/could feed power back to the existing circuit scares the 5#!t out of me. Of course, they would not only be feeding that power back to the transformer, but it would also be energizing the rest of their circuits. Fridges, washing machines etc. Have they considered what would happen when the power comes back on, with a different phase?
Anyone who is not qualified and thinks it’s just a simple matter to put solar cells, inverters or generator sets etc to power one’s home, should be incarcerated. They are putting other people’s lives at risk.
10
No most of them have not. When big generators are paralleling reverse power protection is needed or the alternator on one of the generators can turn into a large AC motor that then tries to drive the engine powering it, the phases need to match, the frequency needs to match, a lot needs to happen in the right sequence before both generators can close to a common bus. With small portables there are no protective circuits or checks that handle any of that, at that point they are just fires waiting to happen.
We tend to take it for granted, the switch on the wall that provides light at a simple flip. In our electrical safety training at work, which we have to do periodic refreshers on, we are always informed that the group with the highest fatalities are the people who work with electrical wiring and power systems regularly and get complacent. The “old hands” who’ve been “doing this for years” that get careless. It doesn’t help the numbers when clueless homeowners add to the risks.
Amber if you had an electrician install a generator input then it should have some provision for isolating your home from the incoming line. It may be that one or two circuits were moved to where they could be powered with the mains along with the rest of the house or switched over to where they become a set of independent circuits that your generator then powers. There are a few legal, safe, and code compliant ways to go about it, that would be one. If it was done by a professional electrician and it doesn’t have provision for isolating the generator powered circuits from the incoming line then whoever did it should be reported to the proper authorities.
10
Oops…
The last part of the comment above was meant to be addressed to Annie. At least the “Who the hell is Annie?” response I received in another “conversation” that was taking place at the same time makes some sense now.
10
It is sad to look back and see creeping socialism and then raging radical leftists driven by lust for power, wealth, through the suffering of some of the weakest in our societies.
The general public knows the solutions but they are subdued by a broken culture, puppet media, and increasing power of big government to physically put them down. Talk about tipping points, when did let all this tip over to the side of irrationality?
170
Don’t forget the trolls here who, as they have no real purpose in their life and cannot deal with the fact that like all of us they are just nobodies in the grand scheme of things, NEED all of this because then they are “trying to save the world.” We then provide them with an enemy, one which they don’t understand, have never tried to understand, and never would understand, that they can feel all superior towards.
They NEED these imagined climate crises and they NEED us. You think they’re lost and clueless now? Just think of how lost they would be without their alarmist religion to cling to and us to attack over it.
Just as it is with the science, we understand them better than they will ever understand us. Which is why they get so shrill. Just like their models we don’t behave the way they think we should. They on the other hand have been stuck on the same page of behavior and thought for almost two decades now if not longer.
20
I can vouch for that. Mrs Whakaaro used to be a model, and she says that I never behave the way she thinks I should.
30
I recommend you to follow the Financial Times energy blog by Nick Butler.
The subject of power failure was on the agenda Oct 28
The commentator Uncle Monty is always worth reading.
http://blogs.ft.com/nick-butler/2014/10/28/power-failure-the-national-grid-blackouts-and-uk-energy/
30
They thought they could use electricity as part of a scheme to control the climate (weather if you prefer) and have now found out their scheme controls them. Sadly they appear to be in denial.
I wonder if the lights ever go out in the halls of government. Probably not. 10 Downing Street will be the last place in England to go dark. 🙁
50
Have you forgotten about 3.5GW in STOR? (Short Term Operating Reserve) That’s a few thousand diesel generators placed out of sight around the country; and other standby generators in e.g. hospitals. Going by last year however (p46), much of STOR may not be despatachable when needed.
The acronymn is likely designed to deceive; there’s no storage involved other than some diesel fuel in the tanks. (I hope that it’s fresh, winterised diesel fuel in case of a cold winter.) Good enough it seems to deceive some government numpties who publically asserted that there was sufficient storage of renewable energy to tide the country over lulls in wind and overnight.
140
Bernd:
Not much more than half the diesel available when needed? That’s ridiculous, especially at what they’re being paid. I worked it out to be about 38% return p.a. – better even than those overpaid wind turbines.
I thought I read somewhere that those diesel generators were fuelled by gas? Supposed to be lower emissions. That’s another weak point esp. if the demand for gas results in the Norwegians directing the supply into Europe for higher prices.
30
I’m not aware of diesel generators being able to run just on gas. They need diesel fuel as the ignition source (compression ignition). Gas can be added to the intake air during induction but I’m not aware of successful compression ignition by a pure gas air-fuel mix.
Besides; ignition of gas requires near-stoichiometric ratio; which is expensive to implement at part load; usually implemented by making the generator less efficient. Far more gas would be burnt to keep the engine operating inefficiently than what is used to generate shaft power.
10
The 4 “diesel” generators at the Roma Gas Plant in Western Queensland are modified Dorman Diesels running on straight LNG. Injectors replaced with spark plugs.
Oxygen analysers in the exhaust control the mixture.
The main compressors are gas powered too. A huge flat 6. Power cylinders, about a meter in diameter, on one side of the crankshaft, compressor cylinders opposite.
20
I think being spark ignition disqualifies it being described as a “diesel”.
00
And the good ? news from the Telegraph in the UK
The Peterhead gas-fired station in northern Scotland was unable to generate power as expected during a test last week, it has emerged. The plant, owned by energy giant SSE, was one of three power stations handed a contract last month by National Grid and paid to guarantee they could fire up if needed, as part of emergency measures to prevent blackouts. The three back-up power plants recruited under the emergency plans were supposed to guarantee they would be available if required between 6am and 8pm on weekdays from November to February.
The plans were drawn up after a series of power plant closures eroded Britain’s spare electricity generation capacity – the safety buffer between peak supply and demand – to wafer-thin levels.
Wafers are OK but you really want the kettle to boil.
50
North is wrong. There isn’t 3.5GW in STOR. It’s only 2.75GW, and some of that isn’t always available.
http://www2.nationalgrid.com/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=34515
2014/15 is Year 8. Check out the charts on page 19/20 that show this as cumulative cost, and as response time. Table 1 on p 6 gives some more detail: the crucial seasons are 8.5 and 8.6. 800-850MW is “flexible” – i.e. only available if declared so for the week ahead (see the Appendix for more description of this). This could be gamed out of the system in order to promote high margin “committed” capacity – though there is some risk of your competitor offers cheaper “flexible” capacity, so your high margin capacity isn’t needed, or if supply is so constrained that you could have cashed in across the board. High stakes gambling in the electricity trading rooms…
00
What to do?
Create “global warming holes.”
Nat Geo, MAY 9, 2014
“Released Tuesday, the third National Climate Assessment is a peer-reviewed, comprehensive look at the impacts of global warming on the United States.
In the section on the Southeast, the report noted that cooling in part of the region between 1991 and 2012 was “unusual compared to the rest of the U.S. and the globe.” The phenomenon has been dubbed the “global warming hole.”
In particular, sulfate particles emitted by coal-fired power plants can serve as reflectors of the sun’s heat, bouncing it back into space, the scientists noted.
The carbon dioxide emitted from the same coal plants is still a potent greenhouse gas that is driving global warming overall, but Leibensperger’s work suggests that the sulfates may have provided some degree of counterbalance on a local level.”
. . .
Conclusion for Britain?
Build more coal fired power stations, because it makes weather colder, whilst making climate warmer, and, humans are toasty warm and safe!
Bonus: summer cooling plus, any summer climate warming offset by air-conditioning.
It’s peer reviewed!
You know it makes sense.
60
“In the section on the Southeast, the report noted that cooling in part of the region between 1991 and 2012 was “unusual compared to the rest of the U.S. and the globe.” The phenomenon has been dubbed the “global warming hole.””
More likely, it was just somewhere that didn’t get “homogenised” properly.
Don’t worry though, now they see it, they’ll fix it pretty darn quick. 🙂
90
Frequented by Al Gore perhaps?
20
Quick! We need to ban all body sprays and hair sprays or the hole in the global warming layer will expand and then we’ll never have the catastrophic warming that will let us say “we told you so!” /sarc
30
What I don’t get from this strange sulphate particle thing is..
how come it only works in this one little area ?
30
“The carbon dioxide emitted from the same coal plants is still a potent greenhouse gas that is driving global warming ”
About as potent as decaffeinated coffee, or alcohol-free wine !!
Certainly hasn’t driven much “Global warming” the last 15 or so years, has it ! 🙂
Do these idiots even think about what they are writing?
And did the pear-reviewers even read it ???? (intentional typo)
10
A very pertinent thread on WUWT.
Quote of the week.
And plagiarising WWS in that thread.
“The answer to his “which comes first” question should be obvious – to left wing latte-sipping inner-city pseudo-intellectuals, the sense of superiority they gain from moral preening ALWAYS comes first – no matter how many poor people have to suffer for it!”
130
The UK is somewhat fortunate. As a relatively rich country they can afford to squander resources on pipe dreams. When the bad news hits, it hits their pocketbook, but that is an inconvenience, not a catastrophe. Most of the rest of the world is not so fortunate.
How many more have to die to satiate this monster of deception?
40
PJ,
Relatively rich?? Relative to what?
They have little if any manufacturing industry similar to Australia but they don’t have the mineral deposits (iron, uranium etc ) that Aust has. After a recent 9 weeks trip to the UK, tourism seems to be their only industry. AND the UK is tied to the EU. Which means bailing out other EU countries to the tune of billions and billions of Pounds.
Everywhere I looked I saw and experienced hopelessness amongst the British people. Thank God, my parents emigrated to Australia 56 years ago.
Also, it’s not all that long ago that England paid off it’s war debts.
Ron
R-COO- K+
10
Jo,
A most interesting post. I was completely unaware about the UK “triad” system of pricing but a quick search brought up this document which explains the process.
My assessment is:
The three peak periods are determined after the three months presumably by overlaying a “template” to select the three highest peaks that satisfy the 10 days apart rule. The peaks are determined on a regional basis – and just look at the kWh prices for energy consumed in the triads! It reads as if most of the cost of running the grid over the year, i.e., as stated the Transmission Network Use of System (TNUoS) charges are recovered from the three triads! In addition to Generators and Electricity Suppliers mentioned in the document, it appears that demand based customers, i.e., those with half-hourly meters, also pay these charges.
The 10 days window is merely a bureaucratic construct. It reminds me once of asking about percentages and the formula in a tariff that had been devised by the then Illawarra County Council: there was no rationale and the tariff formulation was at the complete “discretion” of the designer.
So what a game in trying to predict the time for the triads! However if I mentally construct a 10 day grid template and move it across a three monthly calendar that also includes the historical demand profiles, it is apparent how the triads occur as shown in the document. And of course with a nice dose of Winter weather the “game” would change yet again.
Ironically if enough customers engaged in demand management to lower usage at the estimated time of a triad, then the triad itself would shift. It looks like absolute insanity to me.
20
Hi Ed,
have read through your linked document.
A couple of points that don’t seem to have come though in the many discussions above:
1) the triads are a mechanism for determining the cost of the national grid, i.e. distribution infrastructure;
2) they are charges paid by electricity generators and suppliers;
3) mechanism has been operating since early 1970’s (at least).
Am no engineer but it seems reasonable to say that the electricity grid needs to be sized to accommodate peak loads, whenever they may occur. If grid ownership is separate from generators and suppliers then surely the funding for this must be based on peak, not average demand?
10
Big Dave, (and also everyone else who is interested)
the concept of electrical power consumption is something that is beyond the understanding of green followers, so they just totally ignore it. It is in fact difficult even for the average person to understand, and is also not even all that easy a thing for me to explain effectively.
I have an excellent diagram shown at this link. This shows typical Load Curves for actual power consumption.
The orange curve is for Summer consumption and the blue curve is for Winter.
This is not cherry picked from just one area, as everywhere on Planet Earth where this is a regulated and regular supply of electricity, In other words in the already Developed World, it is basically the same.
The horizontal scale is time across the day from Midnight through the day and back to Midnight.
The vertical scale, here shown with no values, indicates the actual power Demand, consumption. This vertical scale is the only variable, as it is indicative only, as actual totals are different for different areas. These curves are basically the same, for towns, cities, zones, States and Countries, hence the absence of an actual value, but they are similar across all those areas.
The thick black line across the page indicates an absolute requirement for power across the full 24 hours of every day throughout the year, and note this is around 60%, so that’s 60% of ALL consumption is required for the full 24 hours.
Note the difference in the curves for Summer and Winter. Again, this is not cherry picked for just one particular day, but is indicative for the four Months indicating the orange (Summer) curve and also the 4 Months indicating the blue (Winter) curve, and for those periods of Months those curves are virtually the same for every day.
Now, because this Post of Joanne’s is in relation to Winter, look here at the blue curve. Note the times when power consumption starts to rise the first time, around 5.30AM, when people get up in the AM, and ready themselves for school work etc. That peak then drops off as people head off to work, and the first large period of Residential consumption eases back.
Work consumption eases stays similar and slowly rises to the level around the small dip point.
In the afternoon, the evening peak starts at around 4PM, as families arrive home from school and then work, and all the consumption begins again in the homes, and this peak goes through until around 10PM, when everyone slowly goes off to bed.
These are the two Winter peaks on top of what is required absolutely, the Base Load, workplaces and everything else you see around you.
As I mentioned these two peaks are at exactly the same time, every day of Winter, and all that varies is the top of the peak, depending on just how cold it is.
For a power entity charging extra for an alleged extra peak, is a case of their cashing in on something that happens every day, day in day out all across Winter. The power billing entities, (not the generating entities) but the Authorities who bill everyone are quite literally cashing in here, as the generating entity will always get their standard contracted price no matter what. A power company generating electricity only generates what it always generates, at the one price, so they are not the ones getting the extra here.
Now, why is it that the very large Industrial Companies are closing down during those peaks.
Keep in mind here the thinking that what you use in your home, the only power bill you ever see, is in effect, tiny.
The average Industry consumes anything up to 200 times what the average residence consumes, and for very large Industry, that could be higher by a factor of a thousand or even higher.
Any tiny fractional increase in the cost per unit of electricity, translates to a monumental amount of money for a huge Industry, hence the message that they may actually be closing down for certain periods of time.
So when you have a huge industry closing down for a few hours or so, it’s either ONE or a few large Industries, or thousands upon thousands of residences which need to be blacked out.
How many votes here.
A few Industries or thousands upon thousands of angry home owners who lose their power.
This is scandalous that this situation has even arisen in the first place.
Look again at those load curves. Those times of consumption are ….. SET IN STONE. They will not ever change, no matter how much people are coerced into consuming less power.
I hope this was explained in a manner that you can all see.
Tony.
140
Spot on Tony. It’s a well known fact here in the UK that when adverts appear in the middle of an interesting evening TV show, many thousands of people put the kettle on for a cup of tea.
Big surge in power demand.
I’m prepared as much as I can. Multi-fuel stove for heat and cooking, especially boiling water for tea. 2.5Kva generator into which I can switch the ground floor ring main. This runs the fridge and freezer and table lamps in each ground floor room. Oh yes; and the TV. 🙂
10
Hey Tony, nice write up.
Just to add that there is a major difference between shutting down blocks of residential power then restoring power and doing the same to areas with large industrial loads. It is one of the many reasons for automated switch gear and backup generators. The initial current surge in a large factory with a large quantity of electric motors can exceed the capacity of the mains in some locations. So they have backup generators and automated switch gear that will allow them to parallel with the mains long enough to absorb that surge locally rather than placing it upon the grid.
It is expensive to get the equipment to do this, have it setup correctly, keep it maintained etc. so it is not something that all factories will do. It’s late so I know I’m going to miss points I would think of otherwise, but short version is the planning to take large blocks of industry down, then bring their loads back online isn’t something I’d want to do. In the end they may just be shifting the peak from one point to another if too much of what is normally a “static” load is suddenly brought online again.
20
Thanks Tony for all the details. Great work, clearly explained. As always.
is int not simply semi-illegal gouging?
This ‘cashing in’ on the peaks (retrospectively) can only be about looting: very similar to internet suppliers (in Oz) suddenly hitting you with a bill for exceeding the limit, instead of simply cutting off supply at that point (or, as they very politely do in SE Asia, cutting download speed to a snail’s pace so frustration quickly sends you in to pay your bill!).
Of course, in both cases this works marvelously for those who only go a little over the limit …. a million unaware people all paying $10 extra each month is far better than the $20k hits… those people notice and scream blue murder.
Any government worth its salt would make it illegal to gouge the citizens for the sake of corporate profits.
00
Now perhaps some of you can gain just the slightest inkling as to why the introduction of, umm, the euphemistically called smart meters is looked upon as an attractive thing, especially by the retailing entities.
When a power plant generates its electricity, they get a set and contracted price for that electricity they generate. The lowest cost generated electricity is ALWAYS coal fired power, (for places which do not have Nuclear power, which is far and away the cheapest cost electricity to generate) and that coal fired power cost ranges from 2.8 to 3.1 cents per KWH.
Retailers total up all the costs for the electricity they purchase, (at that contracted price, the wholesale cost) average that out, add on all the peripherals, and then their profit margin, and that is the cost they then charge consumers per unit, (KWH) of electricity. There are different charges per unit for the Residential Sector, the Commercial Sector, and the Industrial Sector, and all are , again, contracted to pay that cost to the retailers. The residential sector pays (far and away) the highest retail price per KWH for electricity, Commerce cheaper, and Industry even cheaper again.
Retailers are now designing new billing structures, exhorting people to change their consumption, saying that if you, umm, move your power consumption to times outside of the normal peaks, they will charge you less, the penalty being that during those peak times, they will charge you more, the classic carrot and stick. Now, go back to the load curves I linked to above and note those peak times, around breakfast and when people get home from school and work. So, alter your complete lifestyle to consume your meals and do your regular home living outside of those set in stone times, and they will charge you less.
Say, how easy is that, eh? Tell that to your family. Sorry kids, breakfast and morning consumption from now on is all to be over by 6AM now, and the evening meal and all evening consumption is delayed until after 10PM, and there’s as little as possible consumption during those normal times.
Smart meters will make that actual time related power consumption easier to check, and to bill accordingly.
At the same time, those smart meters can also be isolated by the supplying entities when consumption looks like exceeding the actual supply.
Now, some people say that Peak power consumption only occurs around four or five times a year.
Here’s the link to the AEMO page detailing electricity costs, (that wholesale unit cost) the electricity market regulator for Australia. Look at the text directly above the table of costs there where it says this:
That’s what the controlling body calls peak power.
Tony.
20
You are correct that the charges pay for the required infrastructure, and provide a way of allocating that to producers, retailers and wholesale consumers. There are other charges and credits to cover the costs of grid balancing, where the grid is responsible for ensuring sufficient spinning reserve to meet short term power surges (those TV ad breaks) or to cover for a sudden outage or downturn in wind output etc.
Allocating charges is far from straightforward. Power flows over the grid network in accordance with Kirchoff’s laws, which can produce some unexpected flows as the complexity of the network of generators increases (read adding more wind farms). This paper gives an introduction to some of the issues that arise with alternative allocations mechanisms:
http://www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~oren/pubs/epri-98.pdf
It should be fairly obvious that adding wind farms in Northern Scotland requires a large investment in additional transmission lines – not only to hook up the windmills, but also to beef up the lines South into England – perhaps all the way to the South East, where large chunks of coal fired capacity have been closed down – offering alternative routes to cover for changes in the local supply/demand balance in say the North West around Manchester. These costs are not fully allocated to the Scottish windfarms – they are capped, and the windfarms get a large hidden subsidy, paid for by higher charges allocated to the rest of us, and a much more expensive grid than would be necessary (about twice the cost, looking at projections) if we had kept the coal stations like Didcot and Tilbury running and avoided the wind farms. This subsidy has recently been increased, as reported here:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2631371/Energy-bills-set-rise-order-pay-wind-farms-Scotland.html
An introduction to the legislative and lobbying history is here:
https://www.gov.uk/electricity-network-delivery-and-access
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Fifth columnists have always been at work in the UK, during and after WWII. Ironically James Delingpole’s Watermelons, Green on the outside and Red on the inside are legally succeeding in crippling British Industry in a way which would have seen people arrested as traitors in the war and post war period. Shipbuilding is dead, heavy industry dying and now there deliberately is not enough energy to warm the poor or run the factories in England’s winters. The canals are intentionally clogged and ancient curses like flooding are coming back as the country is dragged slowly back to the Middle Ages. How did it come to this? How has the giant of the Industrial Revolution been brought to such a state by the devious Greens? You can understand the frustration and anger which is driving UKIP as the UK meekly surrenders its premier place in world affairs.
70
TdeF
“How did it come to this? How has the giant of the Industrial Revolution been brought to such a state by the devious Greens?”
UN’s Agenda 21, that’s how and it’s having it’s effect in local councils around australia. Can’t do this, can’t do that because the UN (and the Greens) say so.
Ron
R-COO- K+
40
24 Nov: Reuters: Germany won’t force companies to shut coal-fired plants-minister
German Economy and Energy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Monday the government would not force companies to shut down coal-fired plants with the aim of reaching ambitious climate goals.
“I won’t make a proposal with the aim of decommissioning coal-fired plants,” said Gabriel, who is expected to meet top energy industry executives later on Monday.
***He was reacting to a Reuters report on a ministry document showing the government was working on a new law to force energy companies to reduce their carbon emissions by at least 22 million tonnes by 2020…
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/germany-wont-force-companies-shut-coal-fired-plants-130920353–finance.html
24 Nov: Financial Times: German plea to Sweden over threat to coal mines
Pilita Clark in London, David Crouch in Gothenburg and Jeevan Vasagar in Berlin
Germany has made a dramatic appeal to Sweden to help it out of an energy dilemma that threatens Europe’s biggest economy as it shifts away from nuclear power and fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s vice-chancellor, warned Sweden’s new prime minister Stefan Lofven last month that there would be “serious consequences” for electricity supplies and jobs if Sweden’s state-owned utility Vattenfall ditched plans to expand two coal mines in the northeast of Germany…
Angela Merkel’s cabinet is due to meet next week to discuss mothballing some coal-fired power stations as a means of helping the country reach its carbon goals.
But Berlin’s lobbying of Stockholm underlines a view held by some in the German government that coal-fired generation is vital to the security of the country’s power supply…
Mr Gabriel, who is also Germany’s economy minister, fired off the letter after Mr Löfven’s centre-left coalition government won a September election in which the climate change impact of Vattenfall’s German coal operations was a big issue.
But the intervention did not stop Vattenfall. Magnus Hall, its new chief executive, announced on October 30 that the utility would look at selling off its lignite mining and generation assets in Germany.
“We have a clear strategy to reduce our CO2 exposure and to transform our business into a more renewable-based portfolio,” Mr Hall said in a statement.
Separately, Vattenfall has also filed a lawsuit against Germany seeking €4.7bn in compensation over Berlin’s decision to close the country’s fleet of nuclear power stations…
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5061a3e6-7347-11e4-907b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3JwWqbDUl
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pat,
The first item from Reuters is misleading.
Power station operators would love to shut down their older coal-, oil- and gas-fired power plant but the Federal Grid Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) won’t let them do it; because it has an obligation to ensure supply.
As a result, power station operators are bleeding through operating expenses for plant that is grossly uneconomic to keep operating; and they are inadequately compensated for providing a spinning reserve to take over when the wind stops blowing.
The German power grid is already relatively unstable, now requiring requiring thousands of emergency interventions a year; orders of magnitude more than a couple of decades ago.
10
Despite the skeptic’s angst and gloom and doom about the apparent continuing power and influence of the rapacious Green Blob and despite the increasingly likely but also possibly quite short term pain a lot of folks might unfortunately have to go through over the next year or so, it seems that one of the major centres of Green power and influence, ie; Germany , the German Green meme with all its gross societal and catastrophic excesses is just collapsing in it’s tracks in Germany.
Where Germany goes in the Green stupidity, so goes the global Green cause along with all it’s disastrous anti human, anti development, grossly hypocritical luddite communistic mentality around the world in the times not that far ahead.
____________________
From the NoTricksZone blog
Daily ‘Die Welt’ Reports German Greens Facing Political Extinction…”Apocalyptic Narrative Approaching An End”
[ quoted ]
Germany’s once formidable Green Party just held its annual convention in Hamburg.
Over the past few years Germans in general have grown fatigued of the planet-rescuing Greens and their dire warnings that man’s technology was destroying the planet. So faced with the prospect of slipping into irrelevance, the Greens are now scrambling to find an issue that will re-energize public enthusiasm.
German flagship daily Die Welt here has just published an online analysis of the Green Party’s convention. The piece is dubbed: “Farewell Apocalypse – the Greens are running out of issues“.
Once a party of devout Luddites, Die Welt writes:
The Party Convention shows that the Greens, now in their fourth decade of existence, are hardly needed anymore. The technology that they used to vilify has since solved more problems than it has created.”
One major problem the German Greens face is that the party is divided between the Fundis (fundamentalist greens) and the so-called Realos (hip progressives in business suits) who have taken over the party and adopted issues that other mainstream parties have long had in their platforms. Die Welt calls the German Greens “the children of Lenin and the Club of Rome“, a party whose leaders were “Maoists, Trotskyites and hardcore communists“; with the primary enemy: capitalism and the evils of a technological society, which they viewed would lead to global, ecological demise.
Though popular in the 1980s, Die Welt writes that narrative no longer finds much public appeal today. It’s totally out.
Today’s Green Party is now seeing its old anti-capitalist leaders going into retirement and its new leaders struggling to chart a meaningful course for the party’s future. The old Green zeitgeist is gone. The issues and philosophies that once resonated and brought the Greens huge success in the 1980s and 90s are today worn out, outdated. The appeal is gone, Die Welt writes.
In their fourth decade of existence, the apocalyptic narrative is approaching an end. Failure from fatigue looms. The mantra-like repeated invocation of the apocalypse hardly has any remaining energizing potential.”
[ cont ]
____________________
And it all ties in quite closely with the stages and eventual demise of corporations as outlined in the Adizes Corporate Life Cycle site.
Or as my mother use to quote that old German saying when referring to the newly wealthy and their often spectacular falls from wealth back to something approaching poverty ; “Clogs to Clogs in three generations”.
Applicable in this case to the political scene as the Greens with their entirely emotionally based ideological blackmail used at every turn to gain the green ideology’s demands, gave them an enormous political and public boost in the past.
But now as events move on, technology continues to advance and change allied with the un-ending constant screeching bombardment by the green’s pushing their own self centred political, socialistic and emotionally based causes, the Greens simply no longer can sustain their impact and effects of such strategies with a citizenery that has been constantly exposed to such screeching, emotionally based Green ideology for the past three or four decades.
40
3rd world nations are trying to raise their economies to bring their populations out of poverty and here we have modern nations doing their best to bring their populations closer to poverty and 3rd World conditions.
The way England is going it will soon be a small island nation full of warring hunter/gatherer tribes.
They say that England is only nine meals away from anarchy.
Time to check out your larders,as a sobering thought Melbourne only has about one weeks supply of foodstuffs!
20
pJ –
Since I live alone I’m unfussed about the Melbourne situation. I only ever have about 2 days worth in my larder in case I die tomorrow!
20
I had to green thumb that LG ‘in case I die tomorrow’ LOL love it you miserable bastard. 🙂
10
21 Nov: Bloomberg: Louise Downing: U.K. Green Bank Invests in 110 Million-Pound Wood-to-Power Plant
The U.K. Green Investment will invest in a 110 million-pound ($172 million) plant to generate power and heat from waste wood in the country’s northwest.
The bank will provide 16.9 million pounds of loans and 13.2 million pounds in equity via a fund managed by Foresight LLP, it said today in an e-mailed statement. The plant will have 20 megawatts of power capacity and 7.8 megawatts of heat…
Investec Bank Plc and Eksport Kredit Fonden are providing 42.5 million pounds of debt finance. GCP Infrastructure Investments Ltd. (GCP) is investing another 25.2 million pounds. Stobart Group Ltd. (STOB), which will source the wood, and builder Burmeiser & Wain Scandinavian Contractor AS are taking stakes with investments of 9.8 million pounds and 2.6 million pounds, respectively.
The project is expected to start working in 2016 and will have a life of about 20 years…
“This investment in one of the largest green power plants in the U.K. will create more than 200 local jobs, cut greenhouse gas emissions and generate enough renewable energy to power 35,000 homes a year,” Business Secretary Vince Cable said in the statement.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-21/u-k-green-bank-invests-in-110-million-pound-wood-to-power-plant.html
and our MSM gleefully reports that the US Prez lectured our PM on “climate action”!!!
22 Nov: Bloomberg: Gulf Coast Embraces U.S. Coal Shippers Rejected by West
By Mario Parker and Lynn Doan
While environmental opposition has stymied plans to build terminals in California and the Pacific Northwest, the Mississippi River town of Darrow, Louisiana, has a new $300 million export facility. It’s part of a regional expansion that will increase capacity by 66 percent to 119 million metric tons by 2017, or more than half the national total, according to New York-based Doyle Trading Consultants LLC…
At least $898 million, or 64 percent of the total $1.4 billion companies such as Ambre Energy Ltd. were planning to invest on the West Coast, is being spent on terminals in the Gulf of Mexico. Even as U.S. coal exports have fallen by 23 percent since 2012, producers are betting that foreign sales will rebound because a supply glut means their prices are now below competing cargoes from ***Australia and South Africa…
Exports from Galveston, Texas, surged 29-fold since 2000 while volume at Mobile, Alabama doubled and New Orleans saw a more than 15-fold increase, government data show…
Coal is the country’s most abundant energy resource, with enough reserves to last 180 years. That compares with 87 years for natural gas and 88 years for crude oil, government projections show.
Exports of coal will increase 33 percent to 128 million tons by 2020 and 148 million by 2030, the Energy Department forecast in its 2014 Annual Energy Outlook…
U.S. producers will seek a greater share of an 8 billion ton world market, Kevin Crutchfield, chief executive officer of Alpha Natural Resources Inc. (ANR), the biggest U.S. producer of metallurgical coal, said in a Sept. 30 interview in New York…
Groups including the Sierra Club, the largest U.S. environmental organization, stopped a plan by Bowie Resource Partners LLC for a terminal in Oakland earlier this year, and plans for six new operations in the Pacific Northwest have either been halted or slowed by opposition and litigation. These include Brisbane, Australia-based Ambre Energy’s proposed Coyote Island coal-export terminal on the Columbia River in Oregon…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-21/gulf-coast-embraces-u-s-coal-shippers-rejected-by-west-freight.html?hootPostID=912c0d7c95d30ed110114849be226dea
00
The World Bank, United Nations, has issued another climate change warning.
Desperation?
10
Just advertising, junk mail really.
10
This question needs to be put into perspective by someone familiar with UK electricity market and its pricing regime. On the surface it looks like a way of restricting energy demand on days when the highest cost generators would be needed to meet demand. The sad part is that these high cost generators must be fired up because the CO2 scare campaign has discouraged investment in major base load plant that would otherwise be there to help meet such demand at a reasonable cost.
20
If there arose among the heathen a man like William Wallace, he could so quickly take the country by popular uprising.
And in fact, it is exactly these times that Socialists have taken countries in the past, by a popular uprising. A rebellion of the masses, only to find the cure was worse than the cause.
20
This is how the Hitlers (not a socialist), Stalins (socialist) and Maos (socialist) of this world decieve the populace to gain absolute power.
R-COO- K+
10
Ron Cook: Hitler was a socialist – left.
Stalin and Mao were socialist – just more left.
10
I hate to contradict, Peter, but …
Hitler was a National Socialist, based on the power of the state, and far right of centre – supports private industry ownership, as long as it works for the state.
Stalin was an Communist Socialist, based on the power of the collective, and far left of centre – all assets are owned by the state, and everybody is a state worker.
Mao Tse-tung was a Marxist Socialist, based on the power of the people, and slightly left of centre – supports private production, but assets are owned by the state.
00
Hitler was indeed a “National Socialist”, but not right at all. Stalin called him right because Stalin, like Mao, (and most proclaimed communists) are “International” Socialists. So yes, Hitler was right of Stalin (and Mao), but not right by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, if you look at his party’s platform, they are straight out of any socialists platform (pay careful attention to 11-17).
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm
10
Ezra Levant is not happy!
23 Nov: Sun News, Canada: Ezra Levant: Manning doesn’t speak for conservatives
Preston Manning’s Reform Party was born in part as a reaction to Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Policy and its devastating carbon taxes.
Manning was to make fighting taxes, and the slippery political excuses for them, a hallmark of his political career. When Canada signed Kyoto Protocol, Manning was the leader of the opposition.
His 45-minute speech to Parliament on Nov. 26, 1997, remains the best articulation of why Canada should never have signed that treaty. He pointed out its constitutional and political problems. And he railed against taxes – he used the word 25 times in his speech.
That was classic Manning, the reason why true conservatives loved the Reform Party: It was unafraid to defy the politically correct consensus in Ottawa. Today, skepticism about the science and economics behind the theory of man-made global warming has been largely vindicated.
So it was shocking to read Manning’s editorial, in the Toronto Globe and Mail last week, announcing his support for carbon taxes…
Manning’s change of heart is inexplicable. But it was cheered by NDP, Liberal and Green party members, and left-wing environmentalist groups, including the Tides Foundation.
They know Manning is no longer an MP. But he still has a good reputation amongst conservatives, hosting an annual conference in Ottawa…
Manning’s first piece of advice in the Globe was to “avoid using the word ‘tax’ in conjunction with pricing pollution or greenhouse gas emissions… the public understanding of a tax is government constantly reaching into their pockets to fund services, programs and bureaucracy”…
Normally that kind of spin is strategized behind closed doors. But Manning just put it in a newspaper. He has become the slick political campaigner he railed against in his Reform days. So much for the straight-shooting westerner.
Manning’s second piece of advice was to politicize scientists. “Scientists, such as those on the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change, are seen as much more credible than politicians on environmental issues,” he wrote. Put aside the fact that Manning got the name of that UN panel wrong. Look at what he’s saying: scientists should be co-opted, and turned into tax salesmen. His 1997 Kyoto speech warned against that…
I’m collecting a petition of former Reform and Canadian Alliance supporters, and other conservatives, telling Manning that if he supports a carbon tax, he shouldn’t do it in our name. You can sign too, at http://www.ReformManning.ca.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2014/11/20141123-082434.html
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[…] Nov 25th 2014, 03:45 Green UK: Well deserved shutdowns looming http://joannenova.com.au/2014/11/major-industry-in-uk-plays-guessing-games-with-electricity-warns-of… … Lucky Aust has @TonyAbbottMHR & NOT @David_Cameron @ABCthedrum […]
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The Newsroom Environmentalist Toby Predicts Apocalypse
“Like the man said, it is our collective optimism that will allow us to continue on the path to extinction.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09rAkh5JRVQ&feature=youtu.be
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Off topic but maybe Jo might like to follow this one up as it involves the CSIRO’s utterly useless climate models.
From the BEST project [ Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Project ] via a comment by Nic Lewis on The Bishop Hill blog [ BEST, bad, worse. ] on the comparative performance of climate models when compared to the BEST surface temperature data set
It appears that despite the tens or possibly hundreds of millions of dollars provided to the CSIRO by successive Australian governments for climate modelling research, the CSIRO’s ACCESS1-3 model is the worst of the entire climate model line up.
And there are plenty of those completely useless climate models as one can see in this Berkley Earth project page with e comparisons of the various model’s prediction performances when measured against the real world temperature data as computed by the BEST project.
And all this despite the BEST data set being as usual, homogenised, analysed, bastardised and conformised to meet the beliefs of the climate alarmists who run the global weather data collection centres
The question now comes up; why the hell should we here in Australia continue to pour millions of dollars into a totally useless and totally misleading set of CSIRO climate modelling centres and their equally useless researchers when it appears all they can produce is the worst performing set of climate models when measured against something that approximates the real world temperature changes in the whole vast pantheon of utterly dubious and mostly spurious global climate models?.
re ;Graphics: Model Performance Against Berkeley Earth Data Set
10
And a list from the Uni of WA showing the profound depths of profound incompetency that the wannabe climate scientists plus those with a whole page of incomphrehensible letters after their names which they think in their hubris makes them much smarter and much more important than the rest of us, have all sunk to when it comes to predicting sea level changes.
GLOBAL CLIMATE CORNER
RISING SEA LEVEL FORECASTS: FACT OR FICTION?
Cliff OLLIER
The University of Western Australia
Summary of Sea Level Predictions by N.J. Ford
Actual sea level rises to date, may be somewhere between 1.4mm per year (Sceptic scientists) and 1.7mm per
year (IPCC position). In calculating the prediction errors, the IPCC figure has been used. The errors would
be larger if the sceptical scientists’ figure was used. These figures assume that the natural sea rises are
included in their predictions.
1. IPCC First Report (1990-1992), Summary for Policy Makers, p.52. Sea levels will rise by one metre by the year 2100
(110 years-times). This is 9.1mm per year. Error to date is 535%
2. IPCC Second Report (1995), Summary for Policy Makers, p.23. Sea levels will rise by 95cm by the year 2100 (105
years-times). This is 9.0mm per year. Error to date is 532%
3. IPCC Third Report (2001), Summary for Policy Makers, p.32. Sea levels will rise by 88cm by the year 2100 (99
years-times). This is 8.9mm per year. Error to date is 523%
4. IPCC Fourth Report (2007), Summary for Policy Makers, p.7-8. Sea levels will rise by 59cm by the year 2100 (93
years-times). This is 6.3mm per year. Error to date is 373%
5. United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) in 1988 predicted sea levels would rise two metres by the year 2100
(112 years-time). This is 17.9mm per year. Error to date is 1,050%
6. Al Gore and his NASA scientific advisor James Hansen predicted sea levels would rise six metres by 2050 in 1988, a
metre each decade (62 years-time), with the Florida Keys being one metre under water by the year 2000.. This is
96.8mm per year. Error to date is 5,693%
7. NSW Councils (e.g. Gosford, quoting the best international scientists including CSIRO and ANU) in 1995 was
advising residents with water front properties that by 2015 (20 years-time) sea levels would rise by 6 metres. This is
300mm per year. Error to date is 17,647%
8. NSW Councils (e.g. Gosford, quoting the best international scientists including CSIRO and ANU) in 2011 was
advising residents with water front properties that by 2100 (89 years-time) sea levels would rise by 90cm. This is
10.1mm per year. Error to date is 595%
9. United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) in 1995 predicted sea levels rises would result in 50 million climate
refugees by the year 2010. No climate refugees by that year. Very large Error
10. United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) in 2011 re-predicted sea levels rises would result in 50 million
climate refugees by the year 2020. This is likely to be another – Very large Error
11. For the last twenty years the Greens and their scientists have been telling us the islands of the Tuvalu and Maldives
were sinking into the ocean. In 2011 aerial photographs taken 60 years apart show the land area of all Tuvalu islands
have grown by 5-30%. No discernible change in the Maldives. Very large Error
12. In 2005, Professor Flannery, a climate advisor to the Australian Government, predicted Sydney would be covered by
20 metres of water by the year 2050 (45 years-times). This is 444mm per year. Error to date is 26,144%
10
If you can’t make sense of it Jo. You understand it very well.
20
You have to admire the candour of Elia, the Belgian grid operator, discussing the prospects for winter power cuts:
They’re lining up to pay up to €4,500/MWh to try to keep the lights on. The issue is very serious:
Yes, the whole continent could get blacked out if they mis-manage it.
http://www.elia.be/en/about-elia/questions-about-the-risk-of-shortage-in-Belgium#11
10
“Yes, the whole continent could get blacked out if they mis-manage it.”
OUCH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And its only going to get worse while huge subsidies are paid for unreliable energy sources.
Perhaps a 2 week blackout in the UK and EU is just what’s needed to actually get governments to WAKE UP to the scam of so-called alternative energy….
… which actually provide NO alternative because it often provides NO ENERGY. !!
00