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UK Supermarket Builds Own Power Plants In Fear of Blackouts

Published on May 5, 2016 by sunshinehours1Leave a comment

Wow. Isn’t one of the signs of a first world economy a stable reliable electrical grid?

Not anymore. Green stupidity is amazing.

Sainsbury’s has cast doubt on the UK’s ability to keep the lights on, revealing it has built a string of new power plants for its supermarkets in part due to fears of a looming energy crunch.

Paul Crewe, a senior executive at the supermarket giant, said he had sleepless nights over energy security and feared UK electricity demand could soon outstrip supply.

The new gas-fired power generators – already supplying electricity for 10 supermarkets, and due to be built at a further six this year – would enable the stores to keep trading even in the event of a blackout, he said.

“It gives us energy security,” Mr Crewe said. “Energy security is extremely important, it keeps me awake at night if I’m honest thinking about it – especially as we use just under one per cent of power in the UK. We know UK grid infrastructure is at an extremely stretching period of time.”

He raised concerns about the UK being “reliant on interconnectors from Europe and gas from the Baltic and Russia”.

“Having the ability to generate our own power at a local level gives us surety of supply at these locations as the availability of electricity becomes more stretched across the national grid infrastructure, with demand potentially outstripping supply in the near future,” he said.

– See more at: http://www.thegwpf.com/sainsburys-builds-its-own-power-plants-amid-energy-shortage-fears

UK Blackout Emergency Plan Costs Soar

Published on April 18, 2016April 18, 2016 by sunshinehours1Leave a comment

Coal will come to the rescue in the UK at a cost.

The cost of ensuring Britain could turn its lights back on after a catastrophic nationwide blackout has soared by at least £12m this year, as National Grid is forced to pay struggling old coal plants to “keep warm” in case of an emergency.

Britain’s so-called “black start” plans are designed to ensure that electricity supplies could be swiftly restored in the event of an unprecedented power failure plunging all or part of the country into darkness.

As most power plants need to draw some electricity from the grid to start generating, National Grid has to ensure the UK retains a certain number of black start plants that are able to fire up independently using their own generators.

Historically, several of the UK’s coal plants have been relied upon to form part of the black start plan.

But rising green taxes, cheap gas prices and the growth of renewables are together rendering the coal plants increasingly uneconomic, with some closing down for good and most others now only running for parts of the day.

This poses a threat to Britain’s emergency plans because if the plants are not generating when a catastrophic power failure hits, they will take far longer to start up.

Energy regulator Ofgem has now given National Grid permission to pay the plants millions of pounds to keep “warm”, so that they would be ready to start up quickly in an emergency.

UK at Risk of Blackouts For Next Four Years

Published on March 31, 2016March 31, 2016 by sunshinehours11 Comment

This is what “green” means. No more security of energy supply. Blackouts. 100s of thousands of jobs gone (transferred to China/India so they can use cheap energy from coal)

The former boss of one of Britain’s biggest energy suppliers has warned that the safety buffer separating Britain from power cuts will be uncomfortably slim for up to four years.

Experts had already warned this winter that Britain was at its highest risk of blackouts in more than a decade before the announcement of a succession of closures of coal-fired power stations.

Paul Massara, a former chief executive of npower, warned yesterday that the tight supply would last for up to four winters, in contrast with rosier forecasts from the regulator that the safety buffer between capacity and peak electricity

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/britain-on-the-brink-of-blackouts-for-four-winters-h55qpbv3z