Britain is to build more subsea connections to the EU’s power grids, helping ward off dunkelflaute power shortages caused by a growing reliance on intermittent renewables.
Because all of Europe is moving to those same renewables. And dunkelautes, by their very nature, tend to affect near all of Europe at the same time.
Dunkelflaute’s aside, there is another aspect of this, which is the network effect. If these were purely backup lines in order to provide redundancy against UK grid problems then that would probably be okay, but they’re not, we’re effectively extending the UK grid into other foreign networks and thereby increasing rather than decreasing reliability through those network effects.
It’s all very well if Norway gives us notice that they’re going to take the interconnector offline to do some work on it or because they need the exported capacity for their own system, but in the event of a grid failure in Norway, we then become threatened (although not necessarily subject) to that networks failure.
Then again, I’m sure that idiot Ed Milipede understands the problems of network effects and will just spunk another £400 billion on batteries to cover it.
I’m beginning to think we need to start suffering blackouts and brownouts just to get rid of these Net Stupid idiots.
Brownouts and blackouts will just result in the usual idiots demanding we go to Zero Energy faster and harder.
I always think it ironic that we are being moved to weather based electricity generation in order to combat “climate change”. Isn’t one of the mantras that the weather is becoming more and more uncertain due to climate change?
Hypocrisy is to be expected of the Warble Gloaming crowd, although I seem to recall that the claim about “increasing uncertainty of weather patterns” was a fallback claim since nobody was buy their Warble Gloaming bullshit.
Claims that hurricanes are becoming more frequent and/or more violent for example, don’t pass muster against the records of more than 2 centuries worth of North Atlantic storm records.
Just layer upon layer of lies and distortion.
If a common weather UK phenomenon also has a name in German, there isn’t much chance of the continent rescuing Britain from it.
In the past week, the bulk of our power via interconnectors has come from France and its nukes. I bet we have paid a pretty penny for it too.
Oh good they’re sharing the energy poverty around.
A couple of months ago, Manhattan Contrarian ran something on Germany’s rapidly diminishing returns from new wind and solar installations. In 2023 they added something like 17% to solar capacity and 4% to wind capacity, which led to an 0.3% uplift in the total power generated by wind and solar in the first half of 2024.
@John Galt wrote “…we’re effectively extending the UK grid into other foreign networks and thereby increasing rather than decreasing reliability through those network effects.”
I think you meant to say unreliability?
Yes. *sigh*. Oh for a fucking edit function Timmy.
Marius @ 8.32, I saw somewhere (Paul Homewood maybe) that we were paying France £250 million a week for electricity.
Eco nutjobs:
“We don’t want nuclear in the UK”, but it’s OK to use it if it comes from France.
“We don’t want fossil fuel” but it’s OK to use it if we ship it half way round the fucking planet in diesel fired supertankers………
Insane.
EU: We fish in your waters or we turn off your power.
TTK: Oh, OK. Didn’t see that one coming.
@Marius
The same is true here. Despite all the new wind farms coming online, last year wind power averaged out at 71.92GW. This year to date the average is 6.85GW so nearly a 5% drop.
I think we are waiting for the point when Germany acknowledges the sabotage of Nordstream by Nato countries (UK? USA?) constitutes an act of economic war. Will this be after their next election or will they have excluded the AFD from being democratically elected to represent the interests of citizens who prefer warmth and employment ? A reminder that things go slowly then all at once, the climate scam will fall like the Berlin Wall
We will also gain the benefit of all the EU dunkelflautes, which are much more authentic than UK ones.
“dunkelflaute” is fine but I prefer the “dour, dreich, doldrums”.
If you refuse to consider it for meteorology you could always consider applying it to St Armer and his myrmidons.
I meant to type 7.192 , not 71.92 GW …….. out by a factor of ten. Bad mistake, almost on a par with the Guardian’s use of numbers.
No matter the authenticity of European (notwithstanding EU) dunkelflautes, the Appellation d’origine contrôlée designates only Düsseldorf dunkelflautes are sufficiently authentic to use the name.
All other forms of still and overcast weather must be referred to as “sparkling diffuse cloud”.
Ljh
A reminder that things go slowly then all at once, the climate scam will fall like the Berlin Wall
I doubt it. Things will carry on to hell for a while but people will gradually wake up, as they did in the last millennial hysteria.
A reminder that things go slowly then all at once, the climate scam will fall like the Berlin Wall
Preferably more like Romania with the leaders meeting the same fate as the Ceaușescus
“Brownouts and blackouts will just result in the usual idiots demanding we go to Zero Energy faster and harder”
Then we force those idiots to go on Smart Meters, AND have them set to cut off supply when Unreliables can’t meet demand. Let’s see how long they last in the cold & dark….