The great British blackout was once a threat that hung over the country during the depths of winter, when generators struggled to meet demand or storms destroyed power lines.
But today, as the net zero revolution rolls on, the greatest threat to grid stability could land on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
According to the National Energy System Operator (Neso), the body responsible for keeping the lights on, the UK power grid is at increasing risk of being overwhelmed by surges in solar power.
Underpinning this threat is the fact that too many solar panels have been connected to the grid without any way of monitoring them or controlling their output.
This centralised planning, so, so good, innit?
Planning by politics, we are so blessed.
And I expect they’ll blame householders with panels on their roof, and not the eyesores all around the country in fields.
The ones they’re requiring on newbuilds?
Planning by politics, enabled by useful idiots blindly accepting the bollocks instead of challenging it.
You could just fine the renewables generators if they produce too much.
After all, the grid is the one that is suffering the curtailment costs.
I’d pay a lot of money to see Dale Vince’s face if Ed announced that. I somehow doubt he’d carry on bleating how millionaires should pay even more tax is he suddenly stopped getting £50,000,000 a year for doing bugger all…
… the UK power grid is at increasing risk of being overwhelmed by surges in solar power.
Wasn’t there a major failure of the grid in (Spain? Portugal? France?) not that long ago because there was too much solar power being fed into it? Or a power regulator failed?
My memory is hazy on this one. Wasn’t there some salutary lesson to be learned?
Yeah, last April. Since when they’ve been desperately searching for some other explanation. I’ve lost track of what the latest one is.
The spanish are just having an enquiry where transcripts from last January from power station techs saying “You all saw how bad it was. If the unit had tripped there would have been zero power”. Later on the morning of April 28th they were asking for more spinning reserve. Too late.
Here’s some of the detail from NetZeroWatch:
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/spanish-blackout-transcripts
I wonder how many similar conversations have occurred in the UK. To be fair there don’t seem to be many significant grid excursions here.
The important lesson that wasn’t learn was that if you have prices that go negative due to over supply, that supply can drop very very quickly as the solar export gets turned off very quickly be people who don’t want to make a loss . As these are connected to the low voltage supply and are completely supplying other customers in the local area this manifests as a surge in demand as this area now needs powering from the grid. Add in the odd faulty inverter and a somewhat lacking response from the real generators to the surge it escalates into a blackout.
Planning electricity supply used to work, in the old CEGB days. For some reason it stopped working when lunatics were put in charge.
See also: everything. Although to be fair, it’s not all loonies, sometimes it’s morons as well.
That was when the engineers, not the politicians, were in charge. The engineering penchant for over engineering things probably led to over provisioning the grid.
The CEGB preferred managers to engineers…
Not even then. The CEGB was hopeless at getting the nuclear fleet to perform to targets.
And here’s the problem. Sunny sunday afternoon. When you’re not cooking, working, travelling, heating the house, playing Call of Duty. Laundry on the washing line.Sat in the garden with a glass of pimms, your carbon footprint being the radio for the cricket. But there’s bugger all solar for a winter evening.
It’s why my gut tells me that the whole electrolysis thing is the answer. Collect solar, turn to fuel and store it. Use it when it’s a bit parky.
If the economics looked good it would already be happening. So there are definite practical issues.
It’s happening already on a small scale. Synhelion producing a bit of it, selling it to Swiss airlines. It’s a luxury thing, sure. Rich flyers get to feel good about the planet.
But, that’s a small plant in Germany and they’re building a larger one in Spain which will produce cheaper energy. How much cheaper? Dunno. But it’s the one thing in all of this that strikes me as having potential for 2 reasons. Firstly, you can collect solar where it’s really efficient to collect solar (Egypt is about triple the solar energy of the UK) and secondly that you can store and use. You don’t have an intermittency problem with ii that requires a huge backup.
I suspect that using solar for generating fuel isn’t subsidized to the same extent that using solar to pump into the grid is.
Probably because there’s somewhat less opportunity for graft and kickbacks. Though Labour will labor mightily to improve that.
[edit]There’s also the problem that fuel made from solar looks and burns just like fuel that came out of the ground.
How can you silently show your virtue in this case? An electric car is visible and unique to you, buying solar-made petrol isn’t and is just like the other cars on the road.
This is what Swiss are doing. Buying the Synhelion fuel. So Arabella can say to Jocasta that “of course, we’re flying carbon neutral to Klosters” instead of being a Morlock on Easyjet.
I have no issue with smug wankers spending their own money to get a Prius and be one step up the league from other smug wankers. I get cleaner air for nothing.
Same as all the people that want to show off the latest iPhone. That’s paying for a load of nerds at ARM to make better chips and in a couple of years ARM 9 will be in £150 Moto Gs.
A lot of things we take for granted came from status chasing. Cars and planes started as stupid rich men’s toys.
Texas Tea is the answer. We sit on rather a lot of it. After that, nuclear of some kind.
Solar makes sense for this in the desert latitudes: after all, they’re only full of litter and rubbish. But it makes sense for hydrolysis, not direct generation.
And that’s what Synhelion are doing. They’re building a plant in Spain, I presume southern Spain. Produce kerosene, ship it.
Because sticking solar panels on hospitals in Orkney (look it up) is mad.
I’m not a renewables mentalist. I doubt that even if they can make it deliver all needs. But if it works out cheaper, suits some needs, like aircraft fuel, great. More of that, a bit less oil.
It might even be that for some of the short flights that have a high burden of airline passenger tax (say, London to Amsterdam) that eco kerosene is cheaper. We could make an exemption, as the tax is about choking Gaia. The argument for burning money on high speed trains, that it’s greener disappear.
Our local ‘diesel’ trains burn recycled chip fat.
They might say APT is an eco tax but the Treasury would beg to differ.
The cost of the electrolysis bollocks needs to be on the solar energy generators though. They should contract with the grid to deliver reliable, measurable power at the required times. If the sun isn’t shining that’s their problem, they would organise some means of storage or subcontract with other generators to deliver what they can’t. Same goes for Dale Vince and the rest of the windmill fanatics.
Right now we’re all being F’d in the A by these people, who make out like bandits when they’re able to generate but suffer no consequences when the grid needs expensive backup power.
Spot on; this is absolutely how it should work.
I agree with Silverite. Then again, if we did this then there would be no commercial generation from solar power, because the balancing risk/cost would exceed any profit. So there’s that.
Power generation in the 21st century is pretty simple. Have nuclear fission covering the base load and gas or coal covering the peak. Long before we start running out of gas / coal we’ll have got cheaper fusion or small scale nuclear that we can turn on / up in batches to meet demand.
There are a few places that are sufficiently cut off (Western Isles, Hebrides, Scilly Isles) to justify their own local wind/solar power generation, but that needs to be isolated from the grid with it’s own backups.
Most of all, no subsidies or Green taxes. They’re either justified on their own financial costs (generation & backup) or not. Don’t want to pay the price for Shetland Electric? Don’t bloody live there then.
And that’s why you put it in places that have siestas. Some crappy land not far from Cadiz, Casablanca. Suez. Haiti? No-one is doing much with it are they? Loads of sunshine, do the chemistry, into ships and out. You get 12 hours average sunshine in Egypt per day in the summer, and barely a cloud in the sky.
UK solar is pretty crappy. Some of it is really just demonstrating Gaia worship (like any in Scotland).
Plenty of sunny land in Oz.
Though I insist that the entire thing be paid for by the generating companies. No Aussie taxes or subsidies pissed away on it.
Of course, as soon as the people pushing this stuff realise the subsidy will be zero, you won’t see them for dust.
Can a white sheet be pulled over the panels, a bit like putting white covers on a cricket pitch, and then all that planet warming energy can be sent back into space.
Don’t even think it.
Some mad bastards are trying to do that already, but in space. The repercussions are terrifying. ( My spell checker tried to change that to ‘reaper cushions’ which seemed apt somehow ).
On a local level, you can have a power dump. Ideally batteries so you can use the excess during the night, but it doesn’t need to be. You could just convert excess power to heat using a sand battery and use that for local heating, hot water. If nothing else it acts as a cheapish sink for power that can’t / shouldn’t be fed to the grid.
The problem is that you ideally need grid control over that as well. Not that difficult in our internet connected age and done for commercial providers, but that needs to extend to small scale home providers with feed in tariffs as well.
Another option is to split water into HHO gas and then store that, but extra kit required for electrolysis and HHO can be risky to deal with safely.
Storage uses huge amounts of everything and costs far too much for the solar people to feel comfortable.
About the most compact form of storage we have would be turning it into fuel. But people aren’t comfortable having a set of oil tanks in the neighborhood.
But people aren’t comfortable having a set of oil tanks in the neighborhood.
Why? We used to have three yuuuuge tanks of gas at the bottom of the road here. When they were decommissioned I had this mad plan to install huge fans and equip people with wingsuits….
Another option is to split water into HHO gas and then store that.
For heavens sake no? That’d be dealing with pumped nitoglycerine. One spark & a very big bang.
(Did you not do chemistry at school?)
I did say “HHO can be risky to deal with safely”. I use HHO in decorative / light duty welding applications because you get a pin-point flame which burns cleanly without residue. I can generate a small amount of HHO via electrolysis without having to keep and maintain gas canisters for things like oxy-acetylene welding.
Yeah. We used the same thing for soldering precious metals. But it’s a very small amount of gas with copious flashback pevention The point is you’re generating it as you use it. You’re not trying to store it as a mix. The flame front in an HHO mix tends towards supersonic. Why that sharp, high pitched “pop” when you ignite hydrogen
I know how to fix the problem.
Make houses their own batteries.
Put solar panels on roofs.
Line the cavities in walls with lithium
The panels store power in the lithium and the occupants inside are nice and warm ( for a little while at least anyway ).
It would make house fires more…challenging and interesting. Not words you want to hear together.
True. Lithium flames are a very pretty colour.
Also the fire brigade won’t have to waste all that water.
There was a huge push for solar here, the ‘Net Metering’ system was clearly never sustainable.
They started fitting switches to installations a while back so they can ‘curtail’ (switch off) your panels when the solar output exceeds what the grid can cope with.
Now they’ve dumped ‘Net Metering’ and changed to ‘Net Billing’ which doesn’t make economic sense unless you add loads of battery storage to your house.
Fortunately, my system predates the curtailment requirements so I can use as much as I like 24/7 (up to the 1.6MWh my panels have generated this year) and they have to supply…
People keep talking about fixing the problem. So deeply embedded is it in people’s minds that there is a problem it seems to be taken as a given. The actual problem is the idiots in charge who think that there is a problem that needs solving. We used to have a grid that supplied reliable electricity at a reasonable price, now we don’t, that is the actual problem, not the climate crisis or whatever the latest re-branding of it is.
It’s no longer a threat because it is no longer winter. It’ll be back.
‘Struggled’ is a meaningless journalist term. Generators don’t ‘struggle.’ It’s just another day to them.
This from Gawain Towler’s Substack is both relevant and interesting.
That looks to be an interesting substack – thanks.
Mind you, he asks me to take seriously someone who “tells us he likes … chicken thighs …”
Beautifully written, that. Thanks.
Leading the charge against Labour is Reform UK, which has pledged to disconnect solar farms if it wins power at the next general election.
Fucking moderates. I’d build a giant magnifying glass and use it on Ed Miliband.
Bloke who thinks windfall taxes don’t stifle activity. Was he dropped on his head when a child?
Can’t post a link but it’s in the Groaniad and it is Ken Henry, former Treasury Secretary
Ed Miliband got his response in early and permitted the sale of plus in solar panels so people can buy them down at B&Q and plug them into a normal 13A socket despite there being no UK wiring regulations on how to do this safely with little matters like the effect of the power going the wrong way through RCD’s and what happens if you have two different makes plugged into the same ring main.
Vote Labour to die in an electrical fire.
Vote Labour to die…
…
I disagree. I think the Tories pip them to that dismal prize because the Tories always provided cover and ersatz legitimacy to Labour policy by never challenging it. The Tories ought to have overturned the welfare state and the NHS in 1951/2. They ought to have overturned Blairism in 2010. In both cases, they allowed the disasters of Attlee and Blair to bed down and for the electorate to get comfortable with them, under the implicit seal of approval that supposedly went with Tory good sense.
Anyone who was paying attention, and I accept that many do not, knew that Labour policy was disastrous if not downright treasonous. But the moment the Tories allowed it to pass was what made disaster soporific.
In other words, if you’re paying attention, you can expect Labour to be ruinous. That’s what they do.
But people trusted the Tories to be responsible, when in truth all the Tories were interested in was getting into office for no other reason than that was where they believed they ought to be.
Not true- the Conservatives did challenge Laboutr policy and rolled back chunks of it. Churchill and Eden de-nationalised Steel and Road Haulage, inter alia (those are the ones I immediately remember), MacMillan “made a bonfire of controls”, Mrs Thatcher denationalised half a dozen industries, several Conservative governments acted to make Trade Unions subject to the normal laws of the land.
Sorry, just not true. The post-War Tories – generally – did their best to resist creeping socialism, but the Overton Window was never in their favour until (briefly) under Mrs Thatcher (pbuh).
For decades, the Tories had provided a weak and badly leaking bulwark against socialism, slowing the advance of many socialist policies when the electorate favoured welfare and statism. Post-Thatcher, the voters wanted more economic growth but with more handouts – hence Blair’s largely invisible move to socialism with the HRA etc. And, to put it very crudely, Cameron failed to cut public expenditure and instead cut defence to feed welfare; and he also failed to repeal Blair’s constitutional changes.
So, however angry you may be with the Tories, Labour has done far, far, far more damage to Britain than the Tories ever did. And the enfeebling of the Tory party and the splitting of the right-of-centre vote has given us a drifting but demonic Labour government.
I’d have preferred a Sunak government to the current socialist shit-show. I am not a purist: I will always vote for whichever right-of-centre candidate is most likely to keep leftists out. At present, our only hope is Reform – after that, the Tories or Restore are the only alternatives on a ward or constituency level…
Tories=wankers
Liberals=mensch
Mrs Thatch might have been in the Conservative Party but she was a liberal. Major was mostly liberal. Cameron, Boris, May were Tories.
I think Rishi was possibly the best PM post-Thatcher. But he inherited a poison chalice from Boris. I know he thought that running lots of empty trains during Covid was stupid. He canned the Northern part of HS2. So, some good things.
Mrs Thatcher was economically liberal but socially conservative. A majority of Brits are now socially conservative and economically statist. Hence Farage’s positioning of Reform…
My copy of the IEE Regs has a blank page in Section 715: Page Intentionally Blank. Reserved for Photovoltaic Systems. which basically means “won’t be regs-compliant ‘cos there’s no regs to comply with, if you do this, your insurance is kaput”.
Apparently some plans do work, a bit.
https://theconversation.com/which-climate-policies-actually-make-a-difference-our-new-analysis-has-the-answer-277013?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Imagine 229 April 15 2026 – 3738838426&utm_content=Imagine 229 April 15 2026 – 3738838426+CID_c976498077cdbff708c1882df15d3c0a&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=Read more
I *think* I’ve typed the reference out correctly but you should be able to find it on the “conversation” website
Tim will be pleased to learn that 8 out of the 28 policies that work are carbon taxes or pricing, of the others 5 are energy efficiency and standards, a group of 11 are R&D, nuclear, carbon capture, energy efficiency and renewables under a misleading headline of “Renewables and …”, 3 are making reporting about Greenhouse Gas emissions compulsory (“name and shame”) and just 1 is subsidy reduction.
https://theconversation.com/which-climate-policies-actually-make-a-difference-our-new-analysis-has-the-answer-277013
everything after the ? is just tracking and can be deleted.
Thanks
You typed all that? I appreciate the effort but “copy and paste” is definitely your friend.
Anyone know what temperature modern panels get up to in the middle of a sunny day. I’m not going to put my hand on one to find out.
Logically, if they are perfectly efficient they should be no higher than ambient with all the sun’s energy going into electricity that gets piped off, but you have to have some allowance for inefficiency
It’s not really heat generates the current. Photovoltaics are optimised for the frequency band from the near infrared 300 to yellow 1200. Blue to UV is liable to atmospheric scatter & low IR to absorption by water vapour. So the amount generated by solar heat is rather low.