Fake It Until You Break It

Dissembling politicians, advisors and tycoons faking expertise as they break our electricity system as we narrowly avoid a blackout.

It has not been a good week for our electricity grid. On Monday, Ed Miliband took to X to boast that wind power was our biggest source of electricity in 2024.

It is gratifying to see he was ratioed, meaning he got more replies to his posts than likes. He also received a Community Note pointing out that without gas, there would be no wind on the grid because wind is too unreliable.

He also claimed this was a “huge moment on our journey away from energy insecurity.” By yesterday, karma arrived and we came very close indeed to widespread blackouts because, surprise, surprise there wasn’t much wind.

Yesterday morning, the grid operator issued a warning that there was a 29% Loss of Load Probability (LOLP), because of a low wind forecast.

As they day wore on, the LOLP dropped as the operator scrambled to keep the lights on. We can see how hard it was to achieve because prices went through the roof. First, an offer was accepted from Rye House power station at 2.35pm to supply power at £4,000/MWh, or 400p/kWh.

Prices then rose steadily up to 5.35pm when another offer was accepted to supply power at £5,500/MWh, much higher than the £3,105/MWh peak reached during last crisis in December.

Kathryn Porter has written an excellent summary of how close we came to blackouts. At 5.30pm on Wednesday evening, total available supply from our own generation and imports from interconnectors was 47.405GW, while peak demand was 46.825GW. This means the actual spare margin at the peak was just 580MW. Even a small power station trip would have triggered blackouts. It is fortunate that the Viking interconnector was able to recover from its partial outage just in time. Just a few hours later, two power stations with total capacity of 2,002MW tripped and did not expect to produce.

It is clear we missed a major blackout by the skin of our teeth. It is amazing how quickly reality bites and demonstrates what clueless clowns we have running our energy system.

Talking of which, in its Winter Outlook published in October last year, NESO claimed that the generation margins were higher than last year and that peak demand would be 44.4GW. They claimed there would be “sufficient operational surplus through the winter.”

The news from the circus got even worse, because on the same day the new head of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), Emma Pinchbeck admitted in Parliament that when she first bought an electric car she forgot to charge it up and had to call help. That’s right, our new climate tsar and self-styled whole economy decarbonisation expert did not understand she had to charge up her EV to get it to move. Quite how anyone can be so delusional they believe they can be an expert in something no country has ever achieved while having no scientific qualifications whatsoever and would probably find it harder to find Carbon on the Periodic Table than an EV charge point is beyond me.

Of course, the usual suspects like the Guardian and Greg Jackson of Octopus Energy were out in force blaming the gas-fired power stations for making money while keeping the lights on. Rather than, you know, designing a grid to meet consumer needs he wants customers to be paid to cook dinner for the kids much later.

This is the stuff of Soviet era five-year plans, not a modern thriving economy. For the sake of clarity, the dire state of our electricity system is entirely down to increasing the proportion of intermittent wind and solar on the grid at the same time as shutting down and then blowing up reliable power stations.

There is a saying in Hollywood that sometimes you have to “fake it until you make it.” What we have had is a series of clueless, preening popinjay energy ministers from Hohn, Davey and Rudd through to Shapps, Coutinho and now Ed Miliband who wanted to “fake it until you break it.” Well, they nearly succeeded yesterday. They are supported by a vast array of dissembling clowns in DESNZ, NESO, the CCC, academia and industry who seem hell bent on feathering their own nests at the expense of the rest of us, all to “save the planet” of course. The near miss we experienced yesterday should be a wake-up call and a signal we need to change course, but I fear we will need an actual blackout before they can be made to see sense.

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I am grateful that this Substack now goes out to more than 3,200 subscribers and paid subscribers who help me make it a success. This growing interest has led to me being invited to give a talk to Sacred Cows on 28th January in London entitled “Net Zero: Why the cure is worse than the climate change disease”. More details and ticket information can be found here, do come along if you can make it. This week’s main article will be published on Sunday, covering the pernicious Climate and Nature Bill.

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