Octopus Energy has said it is struggling to invest £28bn into renewable energy projects because of delays connecting to the National Grid.
Britain’s second largest household energy supplier said it was facing delays of up to 13 years to connect solar farms to the grid in a blow to Rishi Sunak’s net zero ambitions.
Well, cheap if you don’t include the costs of having to rebuild the grid that is…..
They’d better hurry up and rebuild the grid, because it won’t be possible when we have to scrap the evil fossies. Oh. wait…
In related news the Government received no bids for the next batch of offshore wind farms. Apparently this was because the energy price the Government wants to pay for this “cheap” electricity is rather lower than wind farms can achieve.
Nae problem.
The government will quietly sweeten the deal with additional subsidies and tax breaks then increase the green levy. we all pay.
Trebles all round and well-paid non-executive directorships for the soon to be former MPs and senior civil servants involved.
Coal is very cheap, too. No manufacture necessary. All you have to do is dig it out of the ground!
Octopus said three planned solar farms in County Durham, Lincolnshire and another near Birmingham are on hold because of long waits for grid connection.
Let’s “invest” £28,000,000,000 on solar panels in sun-drenched hotspots such as Grimsby. Makes sense.
If you’ve ever thought “hmm, yes… I do want the power cuts, crime, corruption and Third World smells of South Africa, but not the nice weather”, you’re in luck boys.
John – over in the Rishibunker, the last remaining fanatical Orange Bookers are currently trying to convince themselves the unelected grinning midget is about to become popular by deprecating Net Zero or something. Because he didn’t lose a by-election where the voters clearly expressed their frustration at unwanted LEZies.
The jenk fumes of Bharat have likely poisoned their cognitive abilities, because one of the very first priorities of the Infosys coup was to ban fracking again in order to prevent British sovereignty and economic growth. They’ll just cover whatever parts of our former country aren’t earmarked for rapefugee hotels or HS2 with windfarms and call that “common sense”.
But maybe Jeremy Hunt will offer us a penny off income tax or something, you never know.
Small problem with extending the grid: it requires lots of steel and copper. Which require coal, as do the solar panels
Well, cheap if you don’t include the costs of having to rebuild the grid that is…..
…plus the hot-standby necessary to cope with the intermittency, the wasted gas from running the things “at idle” because they don’t cycle-up from cold in an instant and the extra maintenance because they don’t like being run at idle.
Other than that – cheap as chips!
Rupert,
China has lots of copper and solar panels. Since they went off opium all they want from us in return is money.
India has lots of steel and coal. Now if only we had an improved trade agreement with them. A million or so extra visas every couple of years wouldn’t hurt would it? Just don’t expect to read about it anywhere.
@Rupert
“… it requires lots of steel and copper. “
Yes. Which requires lots of copper ore, and there is no scaling up of mining to meet the huge demand for copper wire that will be required to carry and distribute the enormously increased electricity supply needed to replace energy from fossil fuels. Nor is it logistically possible to scale up mining within the timescale declared for Net Doom.
@ Steve – “If you’ve ever thought “hmm, yes… I do want the power cuts, crime, corruption and Third World smells of South Africa, but not the nice weather”, you’re in luck boys”
Can’t say I do want any of the above, but the way things are going I’ll get it anyway…
Actually, the grid wiring is made out of aluminum, not copper. /pendant
I hate the UK and the Westminster twats who sit on the levers of power.
Of course, the ability to operate them lives with the treasonous First Division of the (so called) Civil Service who are fully paid up members of the bonkers leftism woke brigade. And the media who are cut from the same cloth.
ZT: only the high voltage stuff. 33kV and down is all copper, and that’s the largest mass of conductors in the network. No doubt some dim spark pol will say ‘I know, why not use aluminium in the LV part of the network too’. Al uses lots of electrical energy to produce – it’s an electrolytic process – and Al has nasty habits at joints, especially with other metals. GPO/BT found this out to its cost by using Al telephone cables.
@tractor gent: yes, I remember Milton Keynes’s dodgy DSL due to the Al phone lines 🙂
Has anyone asked how long it would take to build a connection to the grid if Octopus paid for it?
If not, why not?
Spongers!
@Tractor Gent
Here in the States almost all wiring including 12kV distribution lines are aluminum clad steel. Even the drops from the transformers to the meters are aluminum. The utilities have gotten really good at making reliable connections to aluminum in the last 50 years.
Aluminum is not used in premises wiring because we have found that the average sparkie is unable to make reliable connections.
Which is greater for new solar?:
the warming effect of the CO2 emissions averted or
the warming effect of their low albedo land coverage
I do hope someone clever has done the engineering maths. TPTB are telling us that it is an emergency after all.