Steve Hollliday is the UK’s power czar, basically. He’s the CEO of National Grid. He is predicting that, because the UK is moving to more wind-generated electricity to meet government emissions targets, residents will end up with less access to electricity. And they’d better learn to like it!
The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030,” he told BBC’s Radio 4. “We keep thinking that we want it to be there and provide power when we need it. It’s going to be much smarter than that.
By which he actually means that First World UK will get a barely functional, and hideously expensive, Third World power grid. Win the future!
“We are going to change our own behaviour and consume it when it is available and available cheaply.”
Holliday has for several years been predicting that blackouts could become a feature of power systems that replace reliable coal plants with wind turbines in order to meet greenhouse gas targets. Wind-based power systems are necessary to meet the government’s targets, he has explained, but they will require lifestyle changes.
This is all because of global warming. It will produce a kind of energy-based fascism.
[T]he government-regulated utility will be able to decide when and where power should be delivered, to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose. Governments may, for example, decide that the needs of key industries take precedence over others, or that the needs of industry trump that of residential consumers. Governments would also be able to price power prohibitively if it is used for non-essential purposes.
And how are citizens going to feel when their power is artificially off because they’re deemed unworthy of having electricity, when the industry across the street, which just happens to be a major donor to whatever party is in power, has all of its lights brightly shining?
I doubt Mr. Holliday has thought through all the implications of his scheme. This grid of the future is an open invitation to corruption, resentment and revolution. Or maybe he has thought of all that, and will build in a way for the government to cut off electricity to all who dissent.
Frankly, I suspect that’s not a bug, but a feature.
The most charitable spin on this is that the “smart grid” will make your appliances use power when they want you to use it rather than when you want to. The problem with this is that black swan events happen, and there are going to be frozen bodies by the thousands when they do.
A few issues to consider:
1. The metre will be on the premises. Metre readers no longer will police the connection as they currently do unanounced.
2. Whilst there is the old method of simply routing around it, the metre will be hacked in no time, it’s probably easier and cheaper than messing with the cables.
3. Without computers the country won’t function, in fact, nothing will work.
4. Hacking into other people’s metre or into the central server will become ‘interesting’ for all sorts of kiddies and spooks.
5. Granny’s 02 supply most likely runs on a oxycon. No lecki, no breathing. Oops.
6. Without refrigeration, things will get dire in the UK, this local food thing isn’t all that scalable beyond hippy dreams.
7. How long before a company brings out a master switchboard to run your appliances off that masks the real purpose and feeds the official metre a completely different usage pattern than is used in reality, so your fridge cannot be turned off to save lecki on a hot day? (I’ll give it a week!)
8. Privacy… How long will it take before burglars get access to your real-time usage patterns to see if you’re worth robbing and when the best time to do it is?
This is as idiotic a scheme as what is currently happening in Germany with Ethanol(google E10) — the stuff is bad for the engines as it has water and thins out the oil, the car companies are saying it’s not safe, the petrol companies can’t sell the stuff as everyone tries to buy Super(which is fast running out) and the silly minister will not back down from his 10% Ethanol goal for the ‘normal’ fuel and will apply the fines with the petrol companies don’t sell the unsalable.
For now, the storage tanks are full with E10 that is not shifting, and Super is at most 30% of the plant output for technical reasons, and it cannot be used in Diesel, which is why the petrol has to take 10% instead of 5%.
I’d simply call it deliberate malice and sabotage, and no, I’m not prepared to assume this is merely incompetence, no-one is *that* stupid.
- And -
If this scheme is implemented, and some unfriendly terrorist org or nation state manages to splode an EMP bomb and take out the electronics, the entire affected area will be without power until the entire system can be fixed, which might be weeks or even months. Old school bypasses won’t work, because there won’t be enough electricity to go around.
This is beyond dumb; it’s dangerous.
Your number 8 would be considered a feature not a bug. Helps the disadvantaged to redistribute the wealth don’cha know.
Nothing to see here folks, the kiddies that will endure third world conditions, have been “conditioned” through all the Al Gore type propaganda in schools. They will gladly accept the rationing knowing that by doing so, no polar bear will fall out of the sky and no one will point to them and order them blown up.
snork, no need to freeze. Just burn Parliament and a few of those castles the Queen and other Royals hole up in.
You read all sorts of idiotic things coming out of the mouths of politicians. Sometimes they don’t survive contact with democracy. When things get bad enough, voters will get a clue as to the source of their problems. It’s too bad that things have to get that bad before people wake up.
In the US when gasoline gets expensive enough we will start drilling offshore and more in Alaska. The only question is how high does gasoline have to go before the voters will wake up.
I doubt Mr. Holliday has thought through all the implications of his scheme
I think this could be said of most liberal’s schemes.
They are just a few years ahead of us. I have seen the future, and it doesn’t work at all.
Well the good news is that they won’t have to waste any excess energy in England on premature babies, because yesterday Dr Daphne Austin, who advises what treatments and care should be funded by the NHS, said babies who are born at 23 weeks should be left to die.
The UK Daily Mail story is here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1363637/Babies-born-23-weeks-left-die-says-NHS-chief.html
To see Dr Austin say it in person please watch her upcoming BBC2 documentary, 23 Week Babies: “The Price of Life,” to be screened on Wednesday 9 March, at 9pm GMT.
This is what is called a “failure of nerve”. There have been some who have linked this concept to the decline of nations/civilizations. Obviously there is a deep ignorance of what energy is and where it comes from. A modern country can not exist without it.
In some sense this a victory of the Luddite faction of any society that longs for a simpler time. Windmills and solar farms sound very pastoral. Everyone from Jane Fonda on just knows that nuclear is bad. So there can be only one outcome with the no nuke, no coal, no oil crowd….and that is a lifestyle that is cold, brutish and short.
…to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose.
Good God.
Seems to me this would be more than enough reason to sack the headquarters of this government agency and string up the “CEO”, with a warning that it’ll get worse if the government continues on its current course.
Did that fix it?
Just in case anyone thinks this can’t happen in the US, be advised that National Grid owns several utilities in the northeast. In fact, I am a customer in upstate New York.
What remains to be seen is whether US customers will put up with this shit as meekly as the British do. Given the direction our electorate is heading, they probably will.
Well good news everyone!
Westinghouse, an American Company, is currently building 5 Nuclear Plants:)
Unfortunately they’re in China:(
http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFTOE66J07820100720
Hmmmm.
Let’s not forget:
1. If you contribute to the right political party … you get electricity.
2. If you know the right people … you get electricity.
3. If you’re one of the right people … you get electricity.
“[T]he government-regulated utility will be able to decide when and where power should be delivered, to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose.”
That sums up the whole Raison d’être of the Global Warming hysteria that began a couple decades ago.
Blacque Jacques Shellacque said
“Seems to me this would be more than enough reason to sack the headquarters of this government agency and string up the “CEO”, with a warning that it’ll get worse if the government continues on its current course.”
Good luck with that Britain, the same schmucks already took away all your guns.
I doubt Mr. Holliday has thought through all the implications of his scheme.
I suspect Mr. Holliday understands full well the implications. But, it isn’t his scheme — it’s the government’s. He’s merely, perhaps for the first time, exposing it for what it is.
[/i] What’s going to happen is folks will find ways to generate their own power. Companies will spring up with new products for personal and local generation. In a pinch, people will burn garbage for heat if need be. Government inspectors? They can be bribed just like their political bosses are bought. The end result will be MORE pollution and MORE carbon emissions. Unintended consequences are the usual result of all crackpot liberal (excuse the repetition) schemes.
Energy is the ultimate market. Only air, food, and water have higher demands. I feel many will die before our energy production meets demand. When power fails, parts of hospitals go black, schools close, and factories send employees home. The liberals believe that wind and solar will cure our energy needs. Any physics student can tell you otherwise. The technology for electricity storage is just not there. When the winds stop or night comes then there will be no electricity. There is never enough solar and wind energy to run a government motors manufacturing plant. Robotic welder demand power every hour, something solar or wind cannot produce.
Oxygen generators, cell towers, traffic signals, lights deep within buildings, refrigerators, and yes your monitor will fall, causing for some frustration, but others death. Our current short term gains, (belief in green energy) will lead to long term pain (third world energy supply). New generations and electrical transmission lines (the grid) needs to be a reality and not some governmental or utility president’s future plan. I believe the best designs for investment are nuclear, 1600 megawatts or greater, and the development of new direct current technology for transmissions. The government needs to step aside and let these industries grow; else the political winds will begin to blow hard, very hard.
This is coming to America. In fact, for people in Texas during the last cold snap, it has arrived in a slightly different form: intermittent natural gas service. Even electric utilities rely on gas to run peaking plants, which must be available to be spun up at a moment’s notice to pick up power generation when the wind suddenly stops blowing.
Our socialist government is attempting to force us to drive electric cars that are powered by recharging batteries from the electric utility. As with all socialist central planning ideas, this one has expensive failure built right in. Picture an all-electric future, but where supplies of electricity are intermittent and thus when you plug your car in for the necessary nightly recharge, you cannot know if it will get a sufficient recharge for your daily commute.
This is not a vision of prosperous future in the Land of the Free. Instead, it is the vision of the socialist/progressive Utopia in the land of the subservient and dependent.
So basically, the grid of the future already exists in North Korea.
Good to know.
They may go back to live in caves or under trees, considering that a house with all utilities is a great danger to the planet.
England lost wind power in zero temptures this past winter….millions suffered the cold. Why are people allowing wind power”Only” …….next winter is going to be worse, we are going into much colder winters for many years to come.
when it comes to the described electical grid, the future’s in doubt. Because, “if in doubt, use C4.”