Lights Out! UK to Ditch Coal Completely—Will the Power Stay On? – UK Column News
Wed 4:35 pm +00:00, 2 Oct 2024 1Full news and all the source links: www.ukcolumn.org/video/uk-column-news-2nd-october-2024
– GOV.UK: End to coal power brought forward to October 2024
– National Energy System Operator: The UK Government has set a clear deadline for coal fired power stations to cease production by October 2024—so what are we doing to make that happen?
– National Grid Group: How will our electricity supply change in the future?
– Electricity System Operator: Becoming the National Energy System Operator (NESO)
– National Energy System Operator (YouTube): NESO launch film
– NESO: Energy outages: What to do if there’s a power cut in your area
– Carbon Intensity: Carbon Intensity API
– Environmental Defense Fund: Bezos Earth Fund supports EDF science and solutions
– GOV.UK: Authored article: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s article in the Telegraph: 12 March 2024
“When the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, this is how we will keep your lights on and your bills down. It is the insurance policy Britain needs to protect our energy security, while we deliver our net zero transition.”
– Trading Economics: Electricity Price
The problem is that the general public and the politicians have little idea on how the grid works. The issues of matching supply and demand since only a fraction of generation can be stored in the reservoirs such as Dinorwig in Wales which can produce 1.8GW for 5 hours.
There is also the issue of the 50Hz grid frequency and how to maintain that using wind farms, solar panels and interconnectors which have little inertia. When the grid was powered by large coal fired turbines, along with nuclear, this was not a problem.