A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
I heard it on Sky last night but also this article refers to it
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
I heard it on Sky last night but also this article refers to it
I will freely acknowledge that I have only the vaguest knowledge of Canadian politics, all from PB.
My understanding is that Trudeau was considered a weak PM, and became deeply unpopular. And that there are deeper issues within Canada relating to housing shortages, and a growing resentment about well-off boomers who appear to be pulling up the drawbridge behind them (and who vote Liberal). It seems extraordinary to me that a country the size of Canada can have nimbyism, but I suppose everything is relative.
I do not see that Carney has signalled that he will depart significantly from the Trudeau path (and I would doubt it even if he had). He has been allowed to win because for enough people the election had effectively become an identity issue. That leaves all the problems under Trudeau still there, and unlikely to improve. While Carney's only merit is that he is anti-Trump, in a similar way to the fact that Starmer’s only merit is that he isn't the outgoing Tory Government. That didn't provide much of a honeymoon for Starmer, and I don't really see it doing the same for Carney.
My son’s girlfriend, who is Canadian, is normally a NDP supporter but she voted for Carney to stop the Conservatives. Her view is that Carney is a boring technocrat but maybe what is needed right now and certainly the best person to deal with economic chaos caused by Trump.
The polling suggests that she was very far from alone in that assessment. Whether the massive swing from the NDP to Liberal was a one off will probably determine where Canada goes from here.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
The problem is the absence of what is called "spinning reserve".
Back in the good old days, when almost all our electricity was produced by burning stuff, generation worked as follows:
Burn stuff, create heat. Use said heat (either directly or via a working fluid such as steam) to drive a turbine turning it kenetic energy. Take said kenetic energy, stick it into a electrical generator (effectively an electric motor in reverse) and get electricity out of the far end. The generators were usually coupled pretty much straight to the grid, spinning at rate which chuck out an output synced to grid frequency.
Now one of the benefits of this system is that at any given time there is a lot of kenetic energy stored in the rotating masses of the turbines and generators - and this makes the system really stable. If some supply drops off the network for a few seconds all that spinning mass will exert itself really hard, effectively overloading the generator to try and maintain grid frequency. Equally, if a load of demand falls off the grid, the inertia in the spinning mass stops the plant accelerating away to oblivion.
Most renewable systems don't work like that, they can only output their rated power. So when you get a supply or demand wobble on the grid, at best they don't respond to it (and thus the wobble continues) and at worst they spot an overload condition and trip out - at which point you get a cascading failure.
As renewable penetration has increased, the problem has got a lot more significant.
Various grid systems are playing with ways to create artificial "spinning reserve", ranging from building big motor/gen flywheel sets to battery banks with huge inverters capabile of putting out GWs of power for a few seconds.
As with many things, it's a problem solvable by engineering, but it's quite likely consumers will end up paying, rather than it being included in the costs paid by renewable producers, so it's effectively a hidden subsidy to renewables*.
*or you can wing it and try and run without sufficient spinning reserve, but then everyone pays when it goes wrong - see also Spain's little disaster which started this conversation.
Currently, there is a legal exemption from sex equality laws that means only women can work in the breast screening service. The radiographers' professional body has proposed ending this and letting men work too, given current staff shortages. Kemi Badenoch opposes the suggestion, saying "most if not all" women would prefer a female radiographer. This reminds me of my late mother, a doctor herself, who said she'd much rather have a male radiographer for a mammogram.
Given the way one's breasts are manipulated and smoothed, it would seem to leave men wide open to accusations of 'fondling'. A male might well need to have a chaperone too.
The person who must have the final say in who can examine a patient’s breasts must surely be the woman patient.
Or the patient's father, husband or those who would invoke religion.
Reform are the NIMBY party, we’ve had pylons for decades and they want to stop them being built.
This is what I mean when I say whatever Labour try to do, the NIMBY establishment will oppose at any turn. They really need to tell them where to go.
And with that, fin.
I still don't get your 5 strikes and out thing.
WRT pylons, there are two ways to avoid them. 1) Build high-use energy industries near to the power generation source. Instead of cast pylons to carry energy from Scotland down to the Varsity Crescent for datacentres, build those in Aberdeenshire where the power is onshored 2) Build power generation where the pylons already are. As you can't build renewables in Nottinghamshire etc that means building coal / gas which takes time and leaves us reliant on the forrin
Fukkers have a third way - don't bother with woke things like AI datacentres or anything else which needs power. Nor do you have to actually reopen the coal mines or rebuild the coal power stations - you just chant Net Zero is woke and mysteriously we're transported back to 1978!
A party that opposes the pylons being built from Norwich to Tilbury will clean up. It’s the one thing that seems to unite people of all political persuasions round here. People would rather higher energy bills than the neighbourhood ruined
A year after they've been built nobody will even notice them any more.
Even if that were true, which I doubt, it doesn’t make it a good thing. Plenty of tragic things happen that people move on from, but it doesn’t mean life is not worse than it was before.
I play football in Grays, and as I turn into the road where the ground is, huge pylons start to dominate the sky. I find it quite depressing, and reminds me that Grays is a bit of a khazi. It doesn’t bother me to be a NIMBY, I’d rather pay higher energy bills than have the pylons spoil the beauty of the countryside
Grays is hardly typical, though.
It's one mile from the two tallest pylons in the entire country, which are 600+ft tall (ie taller than the Post Office Tower) and used to bring 400kV wires across the Thames just below the QE bridge !
The vast majority of transmission pylons are under a quarter of that height, at 120 to 150 ft - despite the shit shovelled by the Daily Telegraph about 600ft pylons appearing all over Essex.
If the people of Essex believe the Telegraph, then no disrespect but that is entirely their own problem.
I feel well qualified to comment as I have 2 views despoiled by pylons. The vineyard is in a dry valley that sometime in the past the grid decided would suit 2 power lines. Smallish, but very visible. I also have a giant phone mast opposite the vines, which makes for good 5G connectivity but is probably frying my brain. And our place in France is a 5 minute walk away from another dry valley that EDF decided decades ago would be ideal for a huge power line. Fortunately not visible from our hamlet.
The one place you won’t find a pylon for love nor money is inner London. We don’t even have telegraph poles, it’s all buried.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
The problem is the absence of what is called "spinning reserve".
Back in the good old days, when almost all our electricity was produced by burning stuff, generation worked as follows:
Burn stuff, create heat. Use said heat (either directly or via a working fluid such as steam) to drive a turbine turning it kenetic energy. Take said kenetic energy, stick it into a electrical generator (effectively an electric motor in reverse) and get electricity out of the far end. The generators were usually coupled pretty much straight to the grid, spinning at rate which chuck out an output synced to grid frequency.
Now one of the benefits of this system is that at any given time there is a lot of kenetic energy stored in the rotating masses of the turbines and generators - and this makes the system really stable. If some supply drops off the network for a few seconds all that spinning mass will exert itself really hard, effectively overloading the generator to try and maintain grid frequency. Equally, if a load of demand falls off the grid, the inertia in the spinning mass stops the plant accelerating away to oblivion.
Most renewable systems don't work like that, they can only output their rated power. So when you get a supply or demand wobble on the grid, at best they don't respond to it (and thus the wobble continues) and at worst they spot an overload condition and trip out - at which point you get a cascading failure.
As renewable penetration has increased, the problem has got a lot more significant.
Various grid systems are playing with ways to create artificial "spinning reserve", ranging from building big motor/gen flywheel sets to battery banks with huge inverters capabile of putting out GWs of power for a few seconds.
As with many things, it's a problem solvable by engineering, but it's quite likely consumers will end up paying, rather than it being included in the costs paid by renewable producers, so it's effectively a hidden subsidy to renewables*.
*or you can wing it and try and run without sufficient spinning reserve, but then everyone pays when it goes wrong - see also Spain's little disaster which started this conversation.
The big Tesla battery in Australia paid for itself (inside a year) by doing smoothing and inertia.
Whenever you are creating AC you are imposing a frequency. The inverters on such a battery install are extremely accurate in the frequency they generate.
Reform are the NIMBY party, we’ve had pylons for decades and they want to stop them being built.
This is what I mean when I say whatever Labour try to do, the NIMBY establishment will oppose at any turn. They really need to tell them where to go.
And with that, fin.
I still don't get your 5 strikes and out thing.
WRT pylons, there are two ways to avoid them. 1) Build high-use energy industries near to the power generation source. Instead of cast pylons to carry energy from Scotland down to the Varsity Crescent for datacentres, build those in Aberdeenshire where the power is onshored 2) Build power generation where the pylons already are. As you can't build renewables in Nottinghamshire etc that means building coal / gas which takes time and leaves us reliant on the forrin
Fukkers have a third way - don't bother with woke things like AI datacentres or anything else which needs power. Nor do you have to actually reopen the coal mines or rebuild the coal power stations - you just chant Net Zero is woke and mysteriously we're transported back to 1978!
A party that opposes the pylons being built from Norwich to Tilbury will clean up. It’s the one thing that seems to unite people of all political persuasions round here. People would rather higher energy bills than the neighbourhood ruined
A year after they've been built nobody will even notice them any more.
Even if that were true, which I doubt, it doesn’t make it a good thing. Plenty of tragic things happen that people move on from, but it doesn’t mean life is not worse than it was before.
I play football in Grays, and as I turn into the road where the ground is, huge pylons start to dominate the sky. I find it quite depressing, and reminds me that Grays is a bit of a khazi. It doesn’t bother me to be a NIMBY, I’d rather pay higher energy bills than have the pylons spoil the beauty of the countryside
Grays is hardly typical, though.
It's one mile from the two tallest pylons in the entire country, which are 600+ft tall (ie taller than the Post Office Tower) and used to bring 400kV wires across the Thames just below the QE bridge !
The vast majority of transmission pylons are under a quarter of that height, at 120 to 150 ft - despite the shit shovelled by the Daily Telegraph about 600ft pylons appearing all over Essex.
If the people of Essex believe the Telegraph, then no disrespect but that is entirely their own problem.
I feel well qualified to comment as I have 2 views despoiled by pylons. The vineyard is in a dry valley that sometime in the past the grid decided would suit 2 power lines. Smallish, but very visible. I also have a giant phone mast opposite the vines, which makes for good 5G connectivity but is probably frying my brain. And our place in France is a 5 minute walk away from another dry valley that EDF decided decades ago would be ideal for a huge power line. Fortunately not visible from our hamlet.
The one place you won’t find a pylon for love nor money is inner London. We don’t even have telegraph poles, it’s all buried.
How does that despoil anything? Good that you have that there, it means you have good infrastructure.
We need more of that for everyone. Anyone complaining should be ignored.
The husband of murdered MP Jo Cox has called on Kneecap to give a "real apology" after footage emerged of the band allegedly calling for MPs to be killed.
It comes after the band defended themselves and posted an apology to the families of murdered MPs Jo Cox and Sir David Amess in a statement posted on X, external on Monday night.
The band said that "an extract of footage, deliberately taken out of all context, is now being exploited and weaponised, as if it were a call to action".
Brendan Cox, whose wife was killed in June 2016, said this was "only half an apology".
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Pretty sure if shame and guilt over the Jews were factors, they were deeply buried in the collective subconscious, there was a whole layer of denial about knowing anything about the camps to get through first. I may be wrong but I don't think there was a surge of suicides after the German population had their noses rubbed in the Holocaust, literally or via films. I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
Quite recently I read this authoritative book on the exact subject
It’s excellent if harrowing. Makes clear guilt about the Jews and the eastern front played a role
It’s a fine point of difference, but I’d still distinguish between guilt (we have done a terrible and evil thing) and fear of the consequences of being found to have done a a terrible and evil thing.
We cannot make windows into men’s souls. But the way the author phrases it, some Germans were able to suspend their shame and guilt as long as they were winning, but when it became clear they were going to lose, and that they would face Die Rechnung - then that made them face their own guilt, long hidden. And they couldn’t abide it
So many offed themselves it would be amazing if a proportion didn’t do it out of basic brutal remorse
Probably many more in the east did it out of abject fear of the Red Army, and for good reason
“Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich” by Bartov, might be of some use.
He uses analyses of soldiers letters to provide evidence of his ideas. Because conscription was universal and so was mail censorship, there is a huge amount of data.
Essentially, Nazi propaganda had created a mindset that even *hardline opponents* of the regime had bought into. The war in Russia was characterised as Civilisation vs Barely Human Barbarians.
So even as they describe committing atrocities, soldiers would blame *the victims* - it was all down to the subhumans.
With the retreat at the end of the war, the assumption was that the “subhumans” would annihilate “civilisation”
‘So even as they describe committing atrocities, soldiers would blame *the victims* - it was all down to the subhumans.’
Plus ça change.
From memory, Clive James said something similar: "It's their fault we're doing it to them"
Reform are the NIMBY party, we’ve had pylons for decades and they want to stop them being built.
This is what I mean when I say whatever Labour try to do, the NIMBY establishment will oppose at any turn. They really need to tell them where to go.
And with that, fin.
I still don't get your 5 strikes and out thing.
WRT pylons, there are two ways to avoid them. 1) Build high-use energy industries near to the power generation source. Instead of cast pylons to carry energy from Scotland down to the Varsity Crescent for datacentres, build those in Aberdeenshire where the power is onshored 2) Build power generation where the pylons already are. As you can't build renewables in Nottinghamshire etc that means building coal / gas which takes time and leaves us reliant on the forrin
Fukkers have a third way - don't bother with woke things like AI datacentres or anything else which needs power. Nor do you have to actually reopen the coal mines or rebuild the coal power stations - you just chant Net Zero is woke and mysteriously we're transported back to 1978!
A party that opposes the pylons being built from Norwich to Tilbury will clean up. It’s the one thing that seems to unite people of all political persuasions round here. People would rather higher energy bills than the neighbourhood ruined
A year after they've been built nobody will even notice them any more.
Even if that were true, which I doubt, it doesn’t make it a good thing. Plenty of tragic things happen that people move on from, but it doesn’t mean life is not worse than it was before.
I play football in Grays, and as I turn into the road where the ground is, huge pylons start to dominate the sky. I find it quite depressing, and reminds me that Grays is a bit of a khazi. It doesn’t bother me to be a NIMBY, I’d rather pay higher energy bills than have the pylons spoil the beauty of the countryside
Grays is hardly typical, though.
It's one mile from the two tallest pylons in the entire country, which are 600+ft tall (ie taller than the Post Office Tower) and used to bring 400kV wires across the Thames just below the QE bridge !
The vast majority of transmission pylons are under a quarter of that height, at 120 to 150 ft - despite the shit shovelled by the Daily Telegraph about 600ft pylons appearing all over Essex.
If the people of Essex believe the Telegraph, then no disrespect but that is entirely their own problem.
I feel well qualified to comment as I have 2 views despoiled by pylons. The vineyard is in a dry valley that sometime in the past the grid decided would suit 2 power lines. Smallish, but very visible. I also have a giant phone mast opposite the vines, which makes for good 5G connectivity but is probably frying my brain. And our place in France is a 5 minute walk away from another dry valley that EDF decided decades ago would be ideal for a huge power line. Fortunately not visible from our hamlet.
The one place you won’t find a pylon for love nor money is inner London. We don’t even have telegraph poles, it’s all buried.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
The problem is the absence of what is called "spinning reserve".
Back in the good old days, when almost all our electricity was produced by burning stuff, generation worked as follows:
Burn stuff, create heat. Use said heat (either directly or via a working fluid such as steam) to drive a turbine turning it kenetic energy. Take said kenetic energy, stick it into a electrical generator (effectively an electric motor in reverse) and get electricity out of the far end. The generators were usually coupled pretty much straight to the grid, spinning at rate which chuck out an output synced to grid frequency.
Now one of the benefits of this system is that at any given time there is a lot of kenetic energy stored in the rotating masses of the turbines and generators - and this makes the system really stable. If some supply drops off the network for a few seconds all that spinning mass will exert itself really hard, effectively overloading the generator to try and maintain grid frequency. Equally, if a load of demand falls off the grid, the inertia in the spinning mass stops the plant accelerating away to oblivion.
Most renewable systems don't work like that, they can only output their rated power. So when you get a supply or demand wobble on the grid, at best they don't respond to it (and thus the wobble continues) and at worst they spot an overload condition and trip out - at which point you get a cascading failure.
As renewable penetration has increased, the problem has got a lot more significant.
Various grid systems are playing with ways to create artificial "spinning reserve", ranging from building big motor/gen flywheel sets to battery banks with huge inverters capabile of putting out GWs of power for a few seconds.
As with many things, it's a problem solvable by engineering, but it's quite likely consumers will end up paying, rather than it being included in the costs paid by renewable producers, so it's effectively a hidden subsidy to renewables*.
*or you can wing it and try and run without sufficient spinning reserve, but then everyone pays when it goes wrong - see also Spain's little disaster which started this conversation.
Do we know if that's why Spain/Portugal had this big power cut though?
I still don't really get the Poilievre defeat in Carleton. In the new boundaries he had 52% of the vote, so in theory it didn't matter how much Fanjoy squeezed the NDP, Poilievre would be safe. Nationally the Conservatives gained 8% vote share. In Ontario the CPC gained 9%. Admittedly in the Ottawa region it was less, the other Conservative candidates in the region range from +1.0% to -0.5% but Poilievre was -5.7% compared to 2021.
Normally party leaders get a vote boost, they are on TV every day of the campaign and their opponents usually anonymous by comparison. Rishi Sunak only lost 15% vote share in Richmond and Northallerton in 2024, whereas in both Skipton and Ripon, and Thirsk and Melton the Tory candidates dropped 23%.
What happened there? What made him unpopular in his own riding?
I would suggest demographic change. My guess is that the pandemic led to Canadian government workers WFH and that some of them then decided to move out of downtown Ottawa to surrounding areas, bringing their politics with them. We saw the same here e.g. Hertford and Stortford.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
No you haven’t . You’ve been ranted at for sharing “inside info” from “a friend”.
It’s not news to anyone that pays attention that solar & wind are problematic energy sources from the perspective of grid stability because they lack the stabilising inertia that large rotating turbines bring to the system. Solar especially can bring difficulties because solar influx on a specific solar farm can vary on a second to second basis as clouds condense (or evaporate!) in the air above them. These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are real ones.
Jumping to the conclusion that lack of grid inertia is what caused the Spanish grid failures at this point is pure speculation at this point. From you it just seems like motivated reasoning to be honest - you want it to be true so you’re spreading the story, even though you have no evidence for it.
Britain hit by unusual power activity hours before Spain blackout The UK’s grid operator is investigating unexplained shifts in electricity frequency on Sunday ... The first event began at around 2am with an outage at the Keadby 2 gas-fired power plant in Lincolnshire, followed by the unexplained failure of the Viking Link interconnector between the UK and Denmark.
At around 6pm, the frequency shifted unexpectedly again – with the cause currently unknown.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
Blackouts have been caused in the past when *one* large 'conventional' power plant has gone off, causing cascade failures. The robust-yet-fragile concept of networks. And as ever, be careful of looking for a single cause over many causal factors.
Anyway, it'd be best to wait for more information, rather than believe people with 'friends' on t'Internet who just so happen to back up their own views...
The old system - a nationwide grid with large turbine generators - mandates a single national frequency by its very nature. (And the generators also provide the 'inertia' required to manage such a system.)
A modern distributed grid, with long distance DC interconnects, distributed battery storage, and smart power inverters everywhere, wouldn't.
Spain may have tried to get to the latter state too quickly. Partly by growing solar generation far faster than they've grown battery storage. Who knows ?
In any event, a fully distributed grid would be invulnerable to such events - which is one of the reasons it will almost certainly be the future.
Reform are the NIMBY party, we’ve had pylons for decades and they want to stop them being built.
This is what I mean when I say whatever Labour try to do, the NIMBY establishment will oppose at any turn. They really need to tell them where to go.
And with that, fin.
I still don't get your 5 strikes and out thing.
WRT pylons, there are two ways to avoid them. 1) Build high-use energy industries near to the power generation source. Instead of cast pylons to carry energy from Scotland down to the Varsity Crescent for datacentres, build those in Aberdeenshire where the power is onshored 2) Build power generation where the pylons already are. As you can't build renewables in Nottinghamshire etc that means building coal / gas which takes time and leaves us reliant on the forrin
Fukkers have a third way - don't bother with woke things like AI datacentres or anything else which needs power. Nor do you have to actually reopen the coal mines or rebuild the coal power stations - you just chant Net Zero is woke and mysteriously we're transported back to 1978!
A party that opposes the pylons being built from Norwich to Tilbury will clean up. It’s the one thing that seems to unite people of all political persuasions round here. People would rather higher energy bills than the neighbourhood ruined
A year after they've been built nobody will even notice them any more.
Even if that were true, which I doubt, it doesn’t make it a good thing. Plenty of tragic things happen that people move on from, but it doesn’t mean life is not worse than it was before.
I play football in Grays, and as I turn into the road where the ground is, huge pylons start to dominate the sky. I find it quite depressing, and reminds me that Grays is a bit of a khazi. It doesn’t bother me to be a NIMBY, I’d rather pay higher energy bills than have the pylons spoil the beauty of the countryside
Grays is hardly typical, though.
It's one mile from the two tallest pylons in the entire country, which are 600+ft tall (ie taller than the Post Office Tower) and used to bring 400kV wires across the Thames just below the QE bridge !
The vast majority of transmission pylons are under a quarter of that height, at 120 to 150 ft - despite the shit shovelled by the Daily Telegraph about 600ft pylons appearing all over Essex.
If the people of Essex believe the Telegraph, then no disrespect but that is entirely their own problem.
I feel well qualified to comment as I have 2 views despoiled by pylons. The vineyard is in a dry valley that sometime in the past the grid decided would suit 2 power lines. Smallish, but very visible. I also have a giant phone mast opposite the vines, which makes for good 5G connectivity but is probably frying my brain. And our place in France is a 5 minute walk away from another dry valley that EDF decided decades ago would be ideal for a huge power line. Fortunately not visible from our hamlet.
The one place you won’t find a pylon for love nor money is inner London. We don’t even have telegraph poles, it’s all buried.
Oh poor you, the struggle is real. Sending hugs.
People in the UK set a lot of value on our gorgeous countryside and sometimes stunning architecture. I'm afraid you share the country with such people, so you'll just have to suck it up.
This callous disregard for non-material shared wealth really puts my back up. If you want people to take considered positions on things like pylons and turbines, stop being such dicks about it.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
No you haven’t . You’ve been ranted at for sharing “inside info” from “a friend”.
It’s not news to anyone that pays attention that solar & wind are problematic energy sources from the perspective of grid stability because they lack the stabilising inertia that large rotating turbines bring to the system. Solar especially can bring difficulties because solar influx on a specific solar farm can vary on a second to second basis as clouds condense (or evaporate!) in the air above them. These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are real ones.
Jumping to the conclusion that lack of grid inertia is what caused the Spanish grid failures at this point is pure speculation at this point. From you it just seems like motivated reasoning to be honest - you want it to be true so you’re spreading the story, even though you have no evidence for it.
In fairness to @Luckyguy1983 it was discussed on Sky last night and it was is referred to in the Telegraph article and by @rottenborough referencing Ed Conwy of Sky
I doubt many people understood that solar and wind energy is any different from that produced by gas, nuclear or hydro
Reform U.K. is an inchoate answer to a yearning. The party will let you scream your rage, and scream it with you. It will be a vessel for your fury. It will watch sympathetically as you point at things that are broken and say that it sees them, too. But it’s plagued by the same lack of real answers that the far right seems to suffer from everywhere. I wonder whether that will matter.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
The problem is the absence of what is called "spinning reserve".
Back in the good old days, when almost all our electricity was produced by burning stuff, generation worked as follows:
Burn stuff, create heat. Use said heat (either directly or via a working fluid such as steam) to drive a turbine turning it kenetic energy. Take said kenetic energy, stick it into a electrical generator (effectively an electric motor in reverse) and get electricity out of the far end. The generators were usually coupled pretty much straight to the grid, spinning at rate which chuck out an output synced to grid frequency.
Now one of the benefits of this system is that at any given time there is a lot of kenetic energy stored in the rotating masses of the turbines and generators - and this makes the system really stable. If some supply drops off the network for a few seconds all that spinning mass will exert itself really hard, effectively overloading the generator to try and maintain grid frequency. Equally, if a load of demand falls off the grid, the inertia in the spinning mass stops the plant accelerating away to oblivion.
Most renewable systems don't work like that, they can only output their rated power. So when you get a supply or demand wobble on the grid, at best they don't respond to it (and thus the wobble continues) and at worst they spot an overload condition and trip out - at which point you get a cascading failure.
As renewable penetration has increased, the problem has got a lot more significant.
Various grid systems are playing with ways to create artificial "spinning reserve", ranging from building big motor/gen flywheel sets to battery banks with huge inverters capabile of putting out GWs of power for a few seconds.
As with many things, it's a problem solvable by engineering, but it's quite likely consumers will end up paying, rather than it being included in the costs paid by renewable producers, so it's effectively a hidden subsidy to renewables*.
*or you can wing it and try and run without sufficient spinning reserve, but then everyone pays when it goes wrong - see also Spain's little disaster which started this conversation.
Do we know if that's why Spain/Portugal had this big power cut though?
*Something* perturbed the system. No one knows yet - or those who do aren't saying.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
The problem is the absence of what is called "spinning reserve".
Back in the good old days, when almost all our electricity was produced by burning stuff, generation worked as follows:
Burn stuff, create heat. Use said heat (either directly or via a working fluid such as steam) to drive a turbine turning it kenetic energy. Take said kenetic energy, stick it into a electrical generator (effectively an electric motor in reverse) and get electricity out of the far end. The generators were usually coupled pretty much straight to the grid, spinning at rate which chuck out an output synced to grid frequency.
Now one of the benefits of this system is that at any given time there is a lot of kenetic energy stored in the rotating masses of the turbines and generators - and this makes the system really stable. If some supply drops off the network for a few seconds all that spinning mass will exert itself really hard, effectively overloading the generator to try and maintain grid frequency. Equally, if a load of demand falls off the grid, the inertia in the spinning mass stops the plant accelerating away to oblivion.
Most renewable systems don't work like that, they can only output their rated power. So when you get a supply or demand wobble on the grid, at best they don't respond to it (and thus the wobble continues) and at worst they spot an overload condition and trip out - at which point you get a cascading failure.
As renewable penetration has increased, the problem has got a lot more significant.
Various grid systems are playing with ways to create artificial "spinning reserve", ranging from building big motor/gen flywheel sets to battery banks with huge inverters capabile of putting out GWs of power for a few seconds.
As with many things, it's a problem solvable by engineering, but it's quite likely consumers will end up paying, rather than it being included in the costs paid by renewable producers, so it's effectively a hidden subsidy to renewables*.
*or you can wing it and try and run without sufficient spinning reserve, but then everyone pays when it goes wrong - see also Spain's little disaster which started this conversation.
The big Tesla battery in Australia paid for itself (inside a year) by doing smoothing and inertia.
Whenever you are creating AC you are imposing a frequency. The inverters on such a battery install are extremely accurate in the frequency they generate.
Indeed, whereas with everything synced to spinning generators you can allow the frequency to drop slightly and convert momentum into extra power to cover a spike.
A solar farm can only output its maximum rating, which can vary quite rapidly if it is partially cloudy.
Every solar "farm" should include a battery compound, sized appropriately. It doesn't have to last long.
Britain hit by unusual power activity hours before Spain blackout The UK’s grid operator is investigating unexplained shifts in electricity frequency on Sunday ... The first event began at around 2am with an outage at the Keadby 2 gas-fired power plant in Lincolnshire, followed by the unexplained failure of the Viking Link interconnector between the UK and Denmark.
At around 6pm, the frequency shifted unexpectedly again – with the cause currently unknown.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
No you haven’t . You’ve been ranted at for sharing “inside info” from “a friend”.
It’s not news to anyone that pays attention that solar & wind are problematic energy sources from the perspective of grid stability because they lack the stabilising inertia that large rotating turbines bring to the system. Solar especially can bring difficulties because solar influx on a specific solar farm can vary on a second to second basis as clouds condense (or evaporate!) in the air above them. These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are real ones.
Jumping to the conclusion that lack of grid inertia is what caused the Spanish grid failures at this point is pure speculation at this point. From you it just seems like motivated reasoning to be honest - you want it to be true so you’re spreading the story, even though you have no evidence for it.
In fairness to @Luckyguy1983 it was discussed on Sky last night and it was is referred to in the Telegraph article and by @rottenborough referencing Ed Conwy of Sky
I doubt many people understood that solar and wind energy is any different from that produced by gas, nuclear or hydro
#pbpedantry Some solar power uses concentrated solar power from mirrors to heat water and spin a turbine, as with the PS10 solar power plant in Spain.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
The problem is the absence of what is called "spinning reserve".
Back in the good old days, when almost all our electricity was produced by burning stuff, generation worked as follows:
Burn stuff, create heat. Use said heat (either directly or via a working fluid such as steam) to drive a turbine turning it kenetic energy. Take said kenetic energy, stick it into a electrical generator (effectively an electric motor in reverse) and get electricity out of the far end. The generators were usually coupled pretty much straight to the grid, spinning at rate which chuck out an output synced to grid frequency.
Now one of the benefits of this system is that at any given time there is a lot of kenetic energy stored in the rotating masses of the turbines and generators - and this makes the system really stable. If some supply drops off the network for a few seconds all that spinning mass will exert itself really hard, effectively overloading the generator to try and maintain grid frequency. Equally, if a load of demand falls off the grid, the inertia in the spinning mass stops the plant accelerating away to oblivion.
Most renewable systems don't work like that, they can only output their rated power. So when you get a supply or demand wobble on the grid, at best they don't respond to it (and thus the wobble continues) and at worst they spot an overload condition and trip out - at which point you get a cascading failure.
As renewable penetration has increased, the problem has got a lot more significant.
Various grid systems are playing with ways to create artificial "spinning reserve", ranging from building big motor/gen flywheel sets to battery banks with huge inverters capabile of putting out GWs of power for a few seconds.
As with many things, it's a problem solvable by engineering, but it's quite likely consumers will end up paying, rather than it being included in the costs paid by renewable producers, so it's effectively a hidden subsidy to renewables*.
*or you can wing it and try and run without sufficient spinning reserve, but then everyone pays when it goes wrong - see also Spain's little disaster which started this conversation.
I’m impressing that something that contains such obvious physical impossibilities gets so many upvotes to be honest!
The spinning mass of a generator does not, and cannot, “work itself really hard, effectively overloading the generator”.
What happens is that the rotational inertia of the generator means that the extra load put on it by a drop in generation elsewhere results in a greater resistance to it’s turning, progressively slowing it down (and reducing the grid frequency in consequence). It does not “work harder” - it can’t. It just starts to slow down under the extra load. With a very fast response generation system (e.g. gas turbines) they can throttle up & increase power to drag the turbine back up to target, but that takes many, many revolutions from the grid’s perspective.
Solar & wind generators have the problem that they usually key off the grid frequency to sync up their generation - the problem is grid sync, not power generation per se. If the grid starts to fall apart, they no longer know what frequency & phase they’re “supposed” to be pushing power into the grid at & drop out in order not to make things even worse.
If you want grid stability then spinning reserve definitely helps but, as Malmesbury points out, you do that just as effectively with a large battery power bank & a suitably chunky sine wave generator.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
No you haven’t . You’ve been ranted at for sharing “inside info” from “a friend”.
It’s not news to anyone that pays attention that solar & wind are problematic energy sources from the perspective of grid stability because they lack the stabilising inertia that large rotating turbines bring to the system. Solar especially can bring difficulties because solar influx on a specific solar farm can vary on a second to second basis as clouds condense (or evaporate!) in the air above them. These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are real ones.
Jumping to the conclusion that lack of grid inertia is what caused the Spanish grid failures at this point is pure speculation at this point. From you it just seems like motivated reasoning to be honest - you want it to be true so you’re spreading the story, even though you have no evidence for it.
In fairness to @Luckyguy1983 it was discussed on Sky last night and it was is referred to in the Telegraph article and by @rottenborough referencing Ed Conwy of Sky
I doubt many people understood that solar and wind energy is any different from that produced by gas, nuclear or hydro
As I noted last night, the correct response to this is to plan for a lot more battery storage, quickly. Luckily the technology is a lot better and cheaper than it was a few years back.
If we do any deal with China, it should be with CATL to license their tech for manufacturing over here. I wouldn't want the Chinese to have anything to do with building our grid; making batteries is quite another matter.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
No you haven’t . You’ve been ranted at for sharing “inside info” from “a friend”.
It’s not news to anyone that pays attention that solar & wind are problematic energy sources from the perspective of grid stability because they lack the stabilising inertia that large rotating turbines bring to the system. Solar especially can bring difficulties because solar influx on a specific solar farm can vary on a second to second basis as clouds condense (or evaporate!) in the air above them. These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are real ones.
Jumping to the conclusion that lack of grid inertia is what caused the Spanish grid failures at this point is pure speculation at this point. From you it just seems like motivated reasoning to be honest - you want it to be true so you’re spreading the story, even though you have no evidence for it.
In fairness to @Luckyguy1983 it was discussed on Sky last night and it was is referred to in the Telegraph article and by @rottenborough referencing Ed Conwy of Sky
I doubt many people understood that solar and wind energy is any different from that produced by gas, nuclear or hydro
My Spanish friend would like to personally apologise for yesterday's power cut. At the precise moment when he was meant to turn on the mains, he was having a siesta.
Britain hit by unusual power activity hours before Spain blackout The UK’s grid operator is investigating unexplained shifts in electricity frequency on Sunday ... The first event began at around 2am with an outage at the Keadby 2 gas-fired power plant in Lincolnshire, followed by the unexplained failure of the Viking Link interconnector between the UK and Denmark.
At around 6pm, the frequency shifted unexpectedly again – with the cause currently unknown.
That's really quite scary. It wouldn't take much to raise widespread panic if there was a significant power outage in this country. If it lasted much longer than a day or so, there would be widespread looting as people would realise that what police offcers were available wouldn't be able to respond, there'd be no ccctv, no phones. There'd be another bog roll shortage for a start!
My Spanish friend would like to personally apologise for yesterday's power cut. At the precise moment when he was meant to turn on the mains, he was having a siesta.
I still haven't ruled out @BlancheLivermore having an EMP in his backpack.
Pritzker: Here’s the problem with the do-nothing crowd now telling us what to do: while they spent their years watching Republicans illegitimately pack the Supreme Court, take away voting rights from people of color, and systematically chip away at the Constitution, all the while they offered only a simple defense of norms and decorum — a blind hope that one day soon Republicans would wake up to find their better angels. That got us where we are today.
The reckoning is here. And now that this culture of timidity is on display, these same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on the defense of Black people, trans kids, and immigrants, instead of on their own lack of guts and gumption. https://x.com/Acyn/status/1916958292888506655
Britain hit by unusual power activity hours before Spain blackout The UK’s grid operator is investigating unexplained shifts in electricity frequency on Sunday ... The first event began at around 2am with an outage at the Keadby 2 gas-fired power plant in Lincolnshire, followed by the unexplained failure of the Viking Link interconnector between the UK and Denmark.
At around 6pm, the frequency shifted unexpectedly again – with the cause currently unknown.
That's really quite scary. It wouldn't take much to raise widespread panic if there was a significant power outage in this country. If it lasted much longer than a day or so, there would be widespread looting as people would realise that what police offcers were available wouldn't be able to respond, there'd be no ccctv, no phones. There'd be another bog roll shortage for a start!
Reform are the NIMBY party, we’ve had pylons for decades and they want to stop them being built.
This is what I mean when I say whatever Labour try to do, the NIMBY establishment will oppose at any turn. They really need to tell them where to go.
And with that, fin.
I still don't get your 5 strikes and out thing.
WRT pylons, there are two ways to avoid them. 1) Build high-use energy industries near to the power generation source. Instead of cast pylons to carry energy from Scotland down to the Varsity Crescent for datacentres, build those in Aberdeenshire where the power is onshored 2) Build power generation where the pylons already are. As you can't build renewables in Nottinghamshire etc that means building coal / gas which takes time and leaves us reliant on the forrin
Fukkers have a third way - don't bother with woke things like AI datacentres or anything else which needs power. Nor do you have to actually reopen the coal mines or rebuild the coal power stations - you just chant Net Zero is woke and mysteriously we're transported back to 1978!
A party that opposes the pylons being built from Norwich to Tilbury will clean up. It’s the one thing that seems to unite people of all political persuasions round here. People would rather higher energy bills than the neighbourhood ruined
A year after they've been built nobody will even notice them any more.
Even if that were true, which I doubt, it doesn’t make it a good thing. Plenty of tragic things happen that people move on from, but it doesn’t mean life is not worse than it was before.
I play football in Grays, and as I turn into the road where the ground is, huge pylons start to dominate the sky. I find it quite depressing, and reminds me that Grays is a bit of a khazi. It doesn’t bother me to be a NIMBY, I’d rather pay higher energy bills than have the pylons spoil the beauty of the countryside
Grays is hardly typical, though.
It's one mile from the two tallest pylons in the entire country, which are 600+ft tall (ie taller than the Post Office Tower) and used to bring 400kV wires across the Thames just below the QE bridge !
The vast majority of transmission pylons are under a quarter of that height, at 120 to 150 ft - despite the shit shovelled by the Daily Telegraph about 600ft pylons appearing all over Essex.
If the people of Essex believe the Telegraph, then no disrespect but that is entirely their own problem.
I feel well qualified to comment as I have 2 views despoiled by pylons. The vineyard is in a dry valley that sometime in the past the grid decided would suit 2 power lines. Smallish, but very visible. I also have a giant phone mast opposite the vines, which makes for good 5G connectivity but is probably frying my brain. And our place in France is a 5 minute walk away from another dry valley that EDF decided decades ago would be ideal for a huge power line. Fortunately not visible from our hamlet.
The one place you won’t find a pylon for love nor money is inner London. We don’t even have telegraph poles, it’s all buried.
Oh poor you, the struggle is real. Sending hugs.
People in the UK set a lot of value on our gorgeous countryside and sometimes stunning architecture. I'm afraid you share the country with such people, so you'll just have to suck it up.
This callous disregard for non-material shared wealth really puts my back up. If you want people to take considered positions on things like pylons and turbines, stop being such dicks about it.
If I want to comment about it I will and, quite frankly, I don’t have to suck up privileged middle class whining without comment if I choose not to.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
No you haven’t . You’ve been ranted at for sharing “inside info” from “a friend”.
It’s not news to anyone that pays attention that solar & wind are problematic energy sources from the perspective of grid stability because they lack the stabilising inertia that large rotating turbines bring to the system. Solar especially can bring difficulties because solar influx on a specific solar farm can vary on a second to second basis as clouds condense (or evaporate!) in the air above them. These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are real ones.
Jumping to the conclusion that lack of grid inertia is what caused the Spanish grid failures at this point is pure speculation at this point. From you it just seems like motivated reasoning to be honest - you want it to be true so you’re spreading the story, even though you have no evidence for it.
In fairness to @Luckyguy1983 it was discussed on Sky last night and it was is referred to in the Telegraph article and by @rottenborough referencing Ed Conwy of Sky
I doubt many people understood that solar and wind energy is any different from that produced by gas, nuclear or hydro
#pbpedantry Some solar power uses concentrated solar power from mirrors to heat water and spin a turbine, as with the PS10 solar power plant in Spain.
My understanding is that these have been a disappointment in practice - and further similar installations have been put on hold/cancelled.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
The problem is the absence of what is called "spinning reserve".
Back in the good old days, when almost all our electricity was produced by burning stuff, generation worked as follows:
Burn stuff, create heat. Use said heat (either directly or via a working fluid such as steam) to drive a turbine turning it kenetic energy. Take said kenetic energy, stick it into a electrical generator (effectively an electric motor in reverse) and get electricity out of the far end. The generators were usually coupled pretty much straight to the grid, spinning at rate which chuck out an output synced to grid frequency.
Now one of the benefits of this system is that at any given time there is a lot of kenetic energy stored in the rotating masses of the turbines and generators - and this makes the system really stable. If some supply drops off the network for a few seconds all that spinning mass will exert itself really hard, effectively overloading the generator to try and maintain grid frequency. Equally, if a load of demand falls off the grid, the inertia in the spinning mass stops the plant accelerating away to oblivion.
Most renewable systems don't work like that, they can only output their rated power. So when you get a supply or demand wobble on the grid, at best they don't respond to it (and thus the wobble continues) and at worst they spot an overload condition and trip out - at which point you get a cascading failure.
As renewable penetration has increased, the problem has got a lot more significant.
Various grid systems are playing with ways to create artificial "spinning reserve", ranging from building big motor/gen flywheel sets to battery banks with huge inverters capabile of putting out GWs of power for a few seconds.
As with many things, it's a problem solvable by engineering, but it's quite likely consumers will end up paying, rather than it being included in the costs paid by renewable producers, so it's effectively a hidden subsidy to renewables*.
*or you can wing it and try and run without sufficient spinning reserve, but then everyone pays when it goes wrong - see also Spain's little disaster which started this conversation.
Ummm: this isn't quite true. Spinning reserve is great at smoothing out a few seconds of power loss, but it can't do much more. Also, it's much more relevant for coal and nuclear.
For natural gas, an OCGT will lose all power if the gas gets cut off pretty much immediately, while a CCGT will lose its primary generating cycle (the turbine)... you will get a little bit more from the secondary cycle (the boiling water bit), but that's the less power efficient part of the generating cyclle.
NEWS in @punchbowlnews AM: @amazon will start displaying how much of an item’s cost is derived from tariffs – right next to the product’s total listed price.
Reform are the NIMBY party, we’ve had pylons for decades and they want to stop them being built.
This is what I mean when I say whatever Labour try to do, the NIMBY establishment will oppose at any turn. They really need to tell them where to go.
And with that, fin.
I still don't get your 5 strikes and out thing.
WRT pylons, there are two ways to avoid them. 1) Build high-use energy industries near to the power generation source. Instead of cast pylons to carry energy from Scotland down to the Varsity Crescent for datacentres, build those in Aberdeenshire where the power is onshored 2) Build power generation where the pylons already are. As you can't build renewables in Nottinghamshire etc that means building coal / gas which takes time and leaves us reliant on the forrin
Fukkers have a third way - don't bother with woke things like AI datacentres or anything else which needs power. Nor do you have to actually reopen the coal mines or rebuild the coal power stations - you just chant Net Zero is woke and mysteriously we're transported back to 1978!
A party that opposes the pylons being built from Norwich to Tilbury will clean up. It’s the one thing that seems to unite people of all political persuasions round here. People would rather higher energy bills than the neighbourhood ruined
A year after they've been built nobody will even notice them any more.
Even if that were true, which I doubt, it doesn’t make it a good thing. Plenty of tragic things happen that people move on from, but it doesn’t mean life is not worse than it was before.
I play football in Grays, and as I turn into the road where the ground is, huge pylons start to dominate the sky. I find it quite depressing, and reminds me that Grays is a bit of a khazi. It doesn’t bother me to be a NIMBY, I’d rather pay higher energy bills than have the pylons spoil the beauty of the countryside
Grays is hardly typical, though.
It's one mile from the two tallest pylons in the entire country, which are 600+ft tall (ie taller than the Post Office Tower) and used to bring 400kV wires across the Thames just below the QE bridge !
The vast majority of transmission pylons are under a quarter of that height, at 120 to 150 ft - despite the shit shovelled by the Daily Telegraph about 600ft pylons appearing all over Essex.
If the people of Essex believe the Telegraph, then no disrespect but that is entirely their own problem.
I feel well qualified to comment as I have 2 views despoiled by pylons. The vineyard is in a dry valley that sometime in the past the grid decided would suit 2 power lines. Smallish, but very visible. I also have a giant phone mast opposite the vines, which makes for good 5G connectivity but is probably frying my brain. And our place in France is a 5 minute walk away from another dry valley that EDF decided decades ago would be ideal for a huge power line. Fortunately not visible from our hamlet.
The one place you won’t find a pylon for love nor money is inner London. We don’t even have telegraph poles, it’s all buried.
Oh poor you, the struggle is real. Sending hugs.
People in the UK set a lot of value on our gorgeous countryside and sometimes stunning architecture. I'm afraid you share the country with such people, so you'll just have to suck it up.
This callous disregard for non-material shared wealth really puts my back up. If you want people to take considered positions on things like pylons and turbines, stop being such dicks about it.
If I want to comment about it I will and, quite frankly, I don’t have to suck up privileged middle class whining without comment if I choose not to.
Go off and whine about a cycle lane somewhere.
Well, it was NIMBYs who blocked a new cycle lane here for so long that it took 10 years to get from proposal to completion. Perhaps we needed some of your energy.
Looks like a bust up with Trump and Besos with Karoline Leavitt calling Amazon action a hostile act
Well, it is a hostile act.
But it also shows that Amazon reckons the Republicans are probably not going to do well in the midterms, and therefore hitching the wagon to Trump may not be that smart an idea. (The fact that Trump doesn't seem to be getting very far in his tariff negotiations may also play a role.)
Looks like a bust up with Trump and Besos with Karoline Leavitt calling Amazon action a hostile act
Well, it is a hostile act.
But it also shows that Amazon reckons the Republicans are probably not going to do well in the midterms, and therefore hitching the wagon to Trump may not be that smart an idea. (The fact that Trump doesn't seem to be getting very far in his tariff negotiations may also play a role.)
Sky reporter suggesting Trump will call a national emergency and cancel the mid terms if he looks like losing
Reform U.K. is an inchoate answer to a yearning. The party will let you scream your rage, and scream it with you. It will be a vessel for your fury. It will watch sympathetically as you point at things that are broken and say that it sees them, too. But it’s plagued by the same lack of real answers that the far right seems to suffer from everywhere. I wonder whether that will matter.
Looks like a bust up with Trump and Besos with Karoline Leavitt calling Amazon action a hostile act
Well, it is a hostile act.
But it also shows that Amazon reckons the Republicans are probably not going to do well in the midterms, and therefore hitching the wagon to Trump may not be that smart an idea. (The fact that Trump doesn't seem to be getting very far in his tariff negotiations may also play a role.)
Sky reporter suggesting Trump will call a national emergency and cancel the mid terms if he looks like losing
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
No you haven’t . You’ve been ranted at for sharing “inside info” from “a friend”.
It’s not news to anyone that pays attention that solar & wind are problematic energy sources from the perspective of grid stability because they lack the stabilising inertia that large rotating turbines bring to the system. Solar especially can bring difficulties because solar influx on a specific solar farm can vary on a second to second basis as clouds condense (or evaporate!) in the air above them. These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are real ones.
Jumping to the conclusion that lack of grid inertia is what caused the Spanish grid failures at this point is pure speculation at this point. From you it just seems like motivated reasoning to be honest - you want it to be true so you’re spreading the story, even though you have no evidence for it.
In fairness to @Luckyguy1983 it was discussed on Sky last night and it was is referred to in the Telegraph article and by @rottenborough referencing Ed Conwy of Sky
I doubt many people understood that solar and wind energy is any different from that produced by gas, nuclear or hydro
#pbpedantry Some solar power uses concentrated solar power from mirrors to heat water and spin a turbine, as with the PS10 solar power plant in Spain.
My understanding is that these have been a disappointment in practice - and further similar installations have been put on hold/cancelled.
Amazon shares drop in premarket trading after the @PressSec said Amazon’s reported decision to display the impact of tariffs on pricing was a “hostile” act.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
The problem is the absence of what is called "spinning reserve".
Back in the good old days, when almost all our electricity was produced by burning stuff, generation worked as follows:
Burn stuff, create heat. Use said heat (either directly or via a working fluid such as steam) to drive a turbine turning it kenetic energy. Take said kenetic energy, stick it into a electrical generator (effectively an electric motor in reverse) and get electricity out of the far end. The generators were usually coupled pretty much straight to the grid, spinning at rate which chuck out an output synced to grid frequency.
Now one of the benefits of this system is that at any given time there is a lot of kenetic energy stored in the rotating masses of the turbines and generators - and this makes the system really stable. If some supply drops off the network for a few seconds all that spinning mass will exert itself really hard, effectively overloading the generator to try and maintain grid frequency. Equally, if a load of demand falls off the grid, the inertia in the spinning mass stops the plant accelerating away to oblivion.
Most renewable systems don't work like that, they can only output their rated power. So when you get a supply or demand wobble on the grid, at best they don't respond to it (and thus the wobble continues) and at worst they spot an overload condition and trip out - at which point you get a cascading failure.
As renewable penetration has increased, the problem has got a lot more significant.
Various grid systems are playing with ways to create artificial "spinning reserve", ranging from building big motor/gen flywheel sets to battery banks with huge inverters capabile of putting out GWs of power for a few seconds.
As with many things, it's a problem solvable by engineering, but it's quite likely consumers will end up paying, rather than it being included in the costs paid by renewable producers, so it's effectively a hidden subsidy to renewables*.
*or you can wing it and try and run without sufficient spinning reserve, but then everyone pays when it goes wrong - see also Spain's little disaster which started this conversation.
Ummm: this isn't quite true. Spinning reserve is great at smoothing out a few seconds of power loss, but it can't do much more. Also, it's much more relevant for coal and nuclear...
That might be quite important for preventing some sort of self- reinforcing oscillation in a system not well designed to prevent them ?
https://ietresearch.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1049/gtd2.12544 A variety of power electronic equipment in AC/DC distribution networks causes oscillations with unknown origin. A self-sustained low-frequency oscillation appeared recently in a practical AC/DC distribution network in Tongli, Jiangsu Province, China. In this paper, the accident is introduced, and the oscillation phenomenon has been successfully reproduced by theoretical modelling. Based on the small signal model, the oscillation is well analysed and an additional controller is designed to suppress this low-frequency oscillation. The reason of the oscillation is related to the power and control parameters of buck converter; the system is critically stable within the linear system stability theory, namely, the leading eigenvalues of the small-signal system are on the imaginary axis. Meanwhile, a novel inhomogeneity phenomenon for oscillation amplitudes on different voltage-level DC buses, which are not proportional to their steady-state voltages, is found. This paper provides a new case study of self-sustained oscillations coming from a practical AC/DC distribution network and is of great significance for our understanding of oscillations in electric power engineering...
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
No you haven’t . You’ve been ranted at for sharing “inside info” from “a friend”.
It’s not news to anyone that pays attention that solar & wind are problematic energy sources from the perspective of grid stability because they lack the stabilising inertia that large rotating turbines bring to the system. Solar especially can bring difficulties because solar influx on a specific solar farm can vary on a second to second basis as clouds condense (or evaporate!) in the air above them. These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are real ones.
Jumping to the conclusion that lack of grid inertia is what caused the Spanish grid failures at this point is pure speculation at this point. From you it just seems like motivated reasoning to be honest - you want it to be true so you’re spreading the story, even though you have no evidence for it.
In fairness to @Luckyguy1983 it was discussed on Sky last night and it was is referred to in the Telegraph article and by @rottenborough referencing Ed Conwy of Sky
I doubt many people understood that solar and wind energy is any different from that produced by gas, nuclear or hydro
#pbpedantry Some solar power uses concentrated solar power from mirrors to heat water and spin a turbine, as with the PS10 solar power plant in Spain.
My understanding is that these have been a disappointment in practice - and further similar installations have been put on hold/cancelled.
There's at least 5 now in Spain.
They're closing down the one on the NV/CA border, because it's too maintenance heavy: lots of heat-cool cycles.
Looks like a bust up with Trump and Besos with Karoline Leavitt calling Amazon action a hostile act
Well, it is a hostile act.
But it also shows that Amazon reckons the Republicans are probably not going to do well in the midterms, and therefore hitching the wagon to Trump may not be that smart an idea. (The fact that Trump doesn't seem to be getting very far in his tariff negotiations may also play a role.)
Sky reporter suggesting Trump will call a national emergency and cancel the mid terms if he looks like losing
What on earth has America become ?
Is there a link to,that ? I’ve had a look and cannot see it on Twitter.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
No you haven’t . You’ve been ranted at for sharing “inside info” from “a friend”.
It’s not news to anyone that pays attention that solar & wind are problematic energy sources from the perspective of grid stability because they lack the stabilising inertia that large rotating turbines bring to the system. Solar especially can bring difficulties because solar influx on a specific solar farm can vary on a second to second basis as clouds condense (or evaporate!) in the air above them. These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are real ones.
Jumping to the conclusion that lack of grid inertia is what caused the Spanish grid failures at this point is pure speculation at this point. From you it just seems like motivated reasoning to be honest - you want it to be true so you’re spreading the story, even though you have no evidence for it.
In fairness to @Luckyguy1983 it was discussed on Sky last night and it was is referred to in the Telegraph article and by @rottenborough referencing Ed Conwy of Sky
I doubt many people understood that solar and wind energy is any different from that produced by gas, nuclear or hydro
#pbpedantry Some solar power uses concentrated solar power from mirrors to heat water and spin a turbine, as with the PS10 solar power plant in Spain.
My understanding is that these have been a disappointment in practice - and further similar installations have been put on hold/cancelled.
There's at least 5 now in Spain.
The impact on avifauna at just one of them:
"the total avian mortality for the first year [at Ivanpah] was estimated at 1492 for known causes and 2012 from unknown causes. Of the bird deaths due to known causes, 47.4% were burned, 51.9% died of collision effects, and 0.7% died from other causes.
Looks like a bust up with Trump and Besos with Karoline Leavitt calling Amazon action a hostile act
Well, it is a hostile act.
But it also shows that Amazon reckons the Republicans are probably not going to do well in the midterms, and therefore hitching the wagon to Trump may not be that smart an idea. (The fact that Trump doesn't seem to be getting very far in his tariff negotiations may also play a role.)
Sky reporter suggesting Trump will call a national emergency and cancel the mid terms if he looks like losing
What on earth has America become ?
Is there a link to,that ? I’ve had a look and cannot see it on Twitter.
It was in a discussion with Skys defence analyst this morning over Trump's 100 days
Looks like a bust up with Trump and Besos with Karoline Leavitt calling Amazon action a hostile act
Well, it is a hostile act.
But it also shows that Amazon reckons the Republicans are probably not going to do well in the midterms, and therefore hitching the wagon to Trump may not be that smart an idea. (The fact that Trump doesn't seem to be getting very far in his tariff negotiations may also play a role.)
Sky reporter suggesting Trump will call a national emergency and cancel the mid terms if he looks like losing
Why is displaying the tariff due on an item an issue. I assume Amazon customers don't suddenly want to have to start marching down to their local US Post Service offices to pick up goods that are being held up due to a $12 customs duty charge with a $20 admin fee. That'd be the really hostile way to approach tariffs.
Looks like a bust up with Trump and Besos with Karoline Leavitt calling Amazon action a hostile act
Well, it is a hostile act.
But it also shows that Amazon reckons the Republicans are probably not going to do well in the midterms, and therefore hitching the wagon to Trump may not be that smart an idea. (The fact that Trump doesn't seem to be getting very far in his tariff negotiations may also play a role.)
Sky reporter suggesting Trump will call a national emergency and cancel the mid terms if he looks like losing
What on earth has America become ?
Is there a link to,that ? I’ve had a look and cannot see it on Twitter.
It was in a discussion with Skys defence analyst this morning over Trump's 100 days
Bessent: "I think one thing that has been a little disconcerting for the markets is President Trump creates what I would call strategic uncertainty...Certainty is not necessarily a good thing in negotiating."
@PressSec , who said she spoke to Trump on this issue, calls this a "hostile and political act by Amazon"
So, presumably, everyone who was hating on Bezos over Trump support last November will like him now ?
The criticism was intended to get Bezos to change his behaviour.
If he has now changed his behaviour, then of course Trump critics will like him.
Ha ha, Bezos will do what is right for Bezos and Amazon. I don’t think for one minute he cares about the view of Joe Spod, and IT manager, from Wivenhoe, with 30 followers on X
@PressSec , who said she spoke to Trump on this issue, calls this a "hostile and political act by Amazon"
So, presumably, everyone who was hating on Bezos over Trump support last November will like him now ?
The criticism was intended to get Bezos to change his behaviour.
If he has now changed his behaviour, then of course Trump critics will like him.
Ha ha, Bezos will do what is right for Bezos and Amazon. I don’t think for one minute he cares about the view of Joe Spod, and IT manager, from Wivenhoe, with 30 followers on X
That is the other interesting dynamic
Bezos is a legitimate self made billionaire
And Trumpski isn't
It's a bit Alien v Predator, but interesting to see who 'wins'
Reform are the NIMBY party, we’ve had pylons for decades and they want to stop them being built.
This is what I mean when I say whatever Labour try to do, the NIMBY establishment will oppose at any turn. They really need to tell them where to go.
And with that, fin.
I still don't get your 5 strikes and out thing.
WRT pylons, there are two ways to avoid them. 1) Build high-use energy industries near to the power generation source. Instead of cast pylons to carry energy from Scotland down to the Varsity Crescent for datacentres, build those in Aberdeenshire where the power is onshored 2) Build power generation where the pylons already are. As you can't build renewables in Nottinghamshire etc that means building coal / gas which takes time and leaves us reliant on the forrin
Fukkers have a third way - don't bother with woke things like AI datacentres or anything else which needs power. Nor do you have to actually reopen the coal mines or rebuild the coal power stations - you just chant Net Zero is woke and mysteriously we're transported back to 1978!
A party that opposes the pylons being built from Norwich to Tilbury will clean up. It’s the one thing that seems to unite people of all political persuasions round here. People would rather higher energy bills than the neighbourhood ruined
A year after they've been built nobody will even notice them any more.
Even if that were true, which I doubt, it doesn’t make it a good thing. Plenty of tragic things happen that people move on from, but it doesn’t mean life is not worse than it was before.
I play football in Grays, and as I turn into the road where the ground is, huge pylons start to dominate the sky. I find it quite depressing, and reminds me that Grays is a bit of a khazi. It doesn’t bother me to be a NIMBY, I’d rather pay higher energy bills than have the pylons spoil the beauty of the countryside
Grays is hardly typical, though.
It's one mile from the two tallest pylons in the entire country, which are 600+ft tall (ie taller than the Post Office Tower) and used to bring 400kV wires across the Thames just below the QE bridge !
The vast majority of transmission pylons are under a quarter of that height, at 120 to 150 ft - despite the shit shovelled by the Daily Telegraph about 600ft pylons appearing all over Essex.
If the people of Essex believe the Telegraph, then no disrespect but that is entirely their own problem.
I feel well qualified to comment as I have 2 views despoiled by pylons. The vineyard is in a dry valley that sometime in the past the grid decided would suit 2 power lines. Smallish, but very visible. I also have a giant phone mast opposite the vines, which makes for good 5G connectivity but is probably frying my brain. And our place in France is a 5 minute walk away from another dry valley that EDF decided decades ago would be ideal for a huge power line. Fortunately not visible from our hamlet.
The one place you won’t find a pylon for love nor money is inner London. We don’t even have telegraph poles, it’s all buried.
Oh poor you, the struggle is real. Sending hugs.
People in the UK set a lot of value on our gorgeous countryside and sometimes stunning architecture. I'm afraid you share the country with such people, so you'll just have to suck it up.
This callous disregard for non-material shared wealth really puts my back up. If you want people to take considered positions on things like pylons and turbines, stop being such dicks about it.
I actually don’t mind them at all. I was making a blithe factual comment. But clearly didn’t signal the irony filter loudly enough.
I wonder how much of Trump/Vance's unpopularity is down to his spat with Zelensky? Does Joe public really understand tariffs or care too much? I suspect not. But watching a diminutive international hero whose country stood alone being bullied and humiliated is something few will forget or forgive
Looks like a bust up with Trump and Besos with Karoline Leavitt calling Amazon action a hostile act
She’s deranged . Calling it a hostile act by Bezos .
It's interesting to discover that all these pretty-pretty media types are actually shit at doing anything other than being pretty-pretty media types. How could anyone have any real expectation that a weekend Fox News anchor could hold down the job of Secretary of Defence?
Looking at you, Republican Senators that approved them in post. You all deserve to lose your seats for dereliction of duty.
Why is displaying the tariff due on an item an issue. I assume Amazon customers don't suddenly want to have to start marching down to their local US Post Service offices to pick up goods that are being held up due to a $12 customs duty charge with a $20 admin fee. That'd be the really hostile way to approach tariffs.
The issue is the tariffs are being paid by the importer who then needs to pass the cost on to the next person in the chain.
So say a Christmas tree costs $20 from China. With tariffs that’s now $47 so who is going to absorb the extra $27 or is all of it passed on to the next part of the chain who used to say sell the tree for $40. Now they have to sell it for more than $47 but do they sell it for $67 (I.e. keep their profits the same) or sell it for $94 I.e. keep their margin the same).
And that cascades all the way up the chain - so I can see why Amazon want to make the tariff costs obvious because they don’t want to be seen to be profiteering
Reform U.K. is an inchoate answer to a yearning. The party will let you scream your rage, and scream it with you. It will be a vessel for your fury. It will watch sympathetically as you point at things that are broken and say that it sees them, too. But it’s plagued by the same lack of real answers that the far right seems to suffer from everywhere. I wonder whether that will matter.
"...elected five lawmakers from the far-right anti-immigration Reform U.K. party. "
They aren't far-right. At a guess they're European-style National Conservatives. UK finds it extremely difficult to classify parties. I'm on the tablet so I won't bore you all with a link to my "classifications" article...
Looks like a bust up with Trump and Besos with Karoline Leavitt calling Amazon action a hostile act
Well, it is a hostile act.
But it also shows that Amazon reckons the Republicans are probably not going to do well in the midterms, and therefore hitching the wagon to Trump may not be that smart an idea. (The fact that Trump doesn't seem to be getting very far in his tariff negotiations may also play a role.)
Sky reporter suggesting Trump will call a national emergency and cancel the mid terms if he looks like losing
What on earth has America become ?
Is there a link to,that ? I’ve had a look and cannot see it on Twitter.
It was in a discussion with Skys defence analyst this morning over Trump's 100 days
Thanks.
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm absolutely certain someone will!) but the mid-terms weren't cancelled during WWII. Indeed Roosevelt was re-elected in 1944 so there was a Presidential election.
I wonder how much of Trump/Vance's unpopularity is down to his spat with Zelensky? Does Joe public really understand tariffs or care too much? I suspect not. But watching a diminutive international hero whose country stood alone being bullied and humiliated is something few will forget or forgive
The spat with Zelensky isn't affecting the value of everyone's 401k. Tariff impact >>>>>>>>>>> Zelensky spat for the average American I think.
I wonder how much of Trump/Vance's unpopularity is down to his spat with Zelensky? Does Joe public really understand tariffs or care too much? I suspect not. But watching a diminutive international hero whose country stood alone being bullied and humiliated is something few will forget or forgive
I suspect tariffs are more important. People who aren't across the economic arguments soon sit up and listen if they go into work and hear the suits are panicking and talking about job and pay cuts.
I wonder how much of Trump/Vance's unpopularity is down to his spat with Zelensky? Does Joe public really understand tariffs or care too much? I suspect not. But watching a diminutive international hero whose country stood alone being bullied and humiliated is something few will forget or forgive
The spat with Zelensky isn't affecting the value of everyone's 401k. Tariff impact >>>>>>>>>>> Zelensky spat for the average American I think.
But maybe the other way around for the average Brit?
Looks like a bust up with Trump and Besos with Karoline Leavitt calling Amazon action a hostile act
Well, it is a hostile act.
But it also shows that Amazon reckons the Republicans are probably not going to do well in the midterms, and therefore hitching the wagon to Trump may not be that smart an idea. (The fact that Trump doesn't seem to be getting very far in his tariff negotiations may also play a role.)
You can't be casually talking "hostile", to a guy who can take off and nuke the site from orbit...
I wonder how much of Trump/Vance's unpopularity is down to his spat with Zelensky? Does Joe public really understand tariffs or care too much? I suspect not. But watching a diminutive international hero whose country stood alone being bullied and humiliated is something few will forget or forgive
I suspect tariffs are more important. People who aren't across the economic arguments soon sit up and listen if they go into work and hear the suits are panicking and talking about job and pay cuts.
Not forgetting Musk’s DOGE vandalism, which seems to have taken a lot of Trump voters by surprise when they realised they might be affected. That was already sinking approval ratings before Liberation Day.
Looks like a bust up with Trump and Bezos with Karoline Leavitt calling Amazon action a hostile act
Government don’t like big taxes being evident.
Many years ago, I worked at an oil company. A chap I worked with had a project to commission a new universal petrol pump. It would meet all the standards around the world for features and safety. Mass production would make it cheaper and increase reliability.
So he carefully collected the sum of all the intersecting requirements. In some countries, the tax rate on the petrol *has* to be displayed. So he added it to the design for the display - which was computer display, so easy to add fields of data.
The design was sent to regulators in 90 countries. All looked good. Until he got a message from the U.K. regulator that there was a problem. Someone in the bowls of government had noticed that the pump would display all the taxes on petrol. And told the regulator to reject the design.
So the U.K. pump code was modified to show only the gross number…
IIRC that was not long *before* the U.K. “Petrol Strike”
I wonder how much of Trump/Vance's unpopularity is down to his spat with Zelensky? Does Joe public really understand tariffs or care too much? I suspect not. But watching a diminutive international hero whose country stood alone being bullied and humiliated is something few will forget or forgive
I suspect tariffs are more important. People who aren't across the economic arguments soon sit up and listen if they go into work and hear the suits are panicking and talking about job and pay cuts.
sports radio is filled with dudes who voted for trump who are now sweaty at the prospect of his tariffs. if only they had googled "what are tariffs" 24 hours before election day!
"Trump is increasingly unpopular. This presents a chance for Democrats to tie fascist politics — such as the targeting of immigrants and trans people — to a toxic presidency, and delegitimize those evil policies for years to come."
I wonder how much of Trump/Vance's unpopularity is down to his spat with Zelensky? Does Joe public really understand tariffs or care too much? I suspect not. But watching a diminutive international hero whose country stood alone being bullied and humiliated is something few will forget or forgive
The spat with Zelensky isn't affecting the value of everyone's 401k. Tariff impact >>>>>>>>>>> Zelensky spat for the average American I think.
But maybe the other way around for the average Brit?
For all other NATO countries, I think. Except Canada for which “we want to annex you” probably had even more of an impact.
I wonder how much of Trump/Vance's unpopularity is down to his spat with Zelensky? Does Joe public really understand tariffs or care too much? I suspect not. But watching a diminutive international hero whose country stood alone being bullied and humiliated is something few will forget or forgive
I suspect tariffs are more important. People who aren't across the economic arguments soon sit up and listen if they go into work and hear the suits are panicking and talking about job and pay cuts.
Not forgetting Musk’s DOGE vandalism, which seems to have taken a lot of Trump voters by surprise when they realised they might be affected. That was already sinking approval ratings before Liberation Day.
Liberation Day so quickly became Defibrillation Day...
I wonder how much of Trump/Vance's unpopularity is down to his spat with Zelensky? Does Joe public really understand tariffs or care too much? I suspect not. But watching a diminutive international hero whose country stood alone being bullied and humiliated is something few will forget or forgive
I suspect tariffs are more important. People who aren't across the economic arguments soon sit up and listen if they go into work and hear the suits are panicking and talking about job and pay cuts.
I think Roger's correct on this. People may not like economic self-interest (and yes, I'm as unconvinced as the next man that what they are doing on tarriffs will actually help them while it hurts others, but still), but they accept the principle of wanting to repatriate jobs etc. Whereas what Trump and Vance are doing to Ukraine just looks plain old-fashioned evil.
Comments
Plus the fact it's written by Carswell, a Grade A plonker
Inertia.
https://x.com/EdConwaySky/status/1734471691529605342
I won't hold my breath for any acknowledgements.
Imagine the UK equivalent, “Farage” emblazoned on the Bullring as you walk out of Birmingham New Street.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm
About 12 mins in
Back in the good old days, when almost all our electricity was produced by burning stuff, generation worked as follows:
Burn stuff, create heat. Use said heat (either directly or via a working fluid such as steam) to drive a turbine turning it kenetic energy. Take said kenetic energy, stick it into a electrical generator (effectively an electric motor in reverse) and get electricity out of the far end. The generators were usually coupled pretty much straight to the grid, spinning at rate which chuck out an output synced to grid frequency.
Now one of the benefits of this system is that at any given time there is a lot of kenetic energy stored in the rotating masses of the turbines and generators - and this makes the system really stable. If some supply drops off the network for a few seconds all that spinning mass will exert itself really hard, effectively overloading the generator to try and maintain grid frequency. Equally, if a load of demand falls off the grid, the inertia in the spinning mass stops the plant accelerating away to oblivion.
Most renewable systems don't work like that, they can only output their rated power. So when you get a supply or demand wobble on the grid, at best they don't respond to it (and thus the wobble continues) and at worst they spot an overload condition and trip out - at which point you get a cascading failure.
As renewable penetration has increased, the problem has got a lot more significant.
Various grid systems are playing with ways to create artificial "spinning reserve", ranging from building big motor/gen flywheel sets to battery banks with huge inverters capabile of putting out GWs of power for a few seconds.
As with many things, it's a problem solvable by engineering, but it's quite likely consumers will end up paying, rather than it being included in the costs paid by renewable producers, so it's effectively a hidden subsidy to renewables*.
*or you can wing it and try and run without sufficient spinning reserve, but then everyone pays when it goes wrong - see also Spain's little disaster which started this conversation.
One would think military would trend CPC , mail voting the LPC so it’s very difficult to judge what will happen when these are counted .
The one place you won’t find a pylon for love nor money is inner London. We don’t even have telegraph poles, it’s all buried.
Whenever you are creating AC you are imposing a frequency. The inverters on such a battery install are extremely accurate in the frequency they generate.
We need more of that for everyone. Anyone complaining should be ignored.
The husband of murdered MP Jo Cox has called on Kneecap to give a "real apology" after footage emerged of the band allegedly calling for MPs to be killed.
It comes after the band defended themselves and posted an apology to the families of murdered MPs Jo Cox and Sir David Amess in a statement posted on X, external on Monday night.
The band said that "an extract of footage, deliberately taken out of all context, is now being exploited and weaponised, as if it were a call to action".
Brendan Cox, whose wife was killed in June 2016, said this was "only half an apology".
It’s not news to anyone that pays attention that solar & wind are problematic energy sources from the perspective of grid stability because they lack the stabilising inertia that large rotating turbines bring to the system. Solar especially can bring difficulties because solar influx on a specific solar farm can vary on a second to second basis as clouds condense (or evaporate!) in the air above them. These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are real ones.
Jumping to the conclusion that lack of grid inertia is what caused the Spanish grid failures at this point is pure speculation at this point. From you it just seems like motivated reasoning to be honest - you want it to be true so you’re spreading the story, even though you have no evidence for it.
The UK’s grid operator is investigating unexplained shifts in electricity frequency on Sunday
...
The first event began at around 2am with an outage at the Keadby 2 gas-fired power plant in Lincolnshire, followed by the unexplained failure of the Viking Link interconnector between the UK and Denmark.
At around 6pm, the frequency shifted unexpectedly again – with the cause currently unknown.
Neso, the quango that manages the British grid, confirmed to The Telegraph on Tuesday morning that officials were investigating.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/29/grid-operator-investigates-unusual-activity-spain-blackouts/ (£££)
Curiouser and curiouser.
(And the generators also provide the 'inertia' required to manage such a system.)
A modern distributed grid, with long distance DC interconnects, distributed battery storage, and smart power inverters everywhere, wouldn't.
Spain may have tried to get to the latter state too quickly. Partly by growing solar generation far faster than they've grown battery storage. Who knows ?
In any event, a fully distributed grid would be invulnerable to such events - which is one of the reasons it will almost certainly be the future.
This callous disregard for non-material shared wealth really puts my back up. If you want people to take considered positions on things like pylons and turbines, stop being such dicks about it.
I doubt many people understood that solar and wind energy is any different from that produced by gas, nuclear or hydro
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/opinion/reform-uk-nigel-farage.html
No one knows yet - or those who do aren't saying.
A solar farm can only output its maximum rating, which can vary quite rapidly if it is partially cloudy.
Every solar "farm" should include a battery compound, sized appropriately. It doesn't have to last long.
I don't think wind has quite the same issue.
The spinning mass of a generator does not, and cannot, “work itself really hard, effectively overloading the generator”.
What happens is that the rotational inertia of the generator means that the extra load put on it by a drop in generation elsewhere results in a greater resistance to it’s turning, progressively slowing it down (and reducing the grid frequency in consequence). It does not “work harder” - it can’t. It just starts to slow down under the extra load. With a very fast response generation system (e.g. gas turbines) they can throttle up & increase power to drag the turbine back up to target, but that takes many, many revolutions from the grid’s perspective.
Solar & wind generators have the problem that they usually key off the grid frequency to sync up their generation - the problem is grid sync, not power generation per se. If the grid starts to fall apart, they no longer know what frequency & phase they’re “supposed” to be pushing power into the grid at & drop out in order not to make things even worse.
If you want grid stability then spinning reserve definitely helps but, as Malmesbury points out, you do that just as effectively with a large battery power bank & a suitably chunky sine wave generator.
Luckily the technology is a lot better and cheaper than it was a few years back.
If we do any deal with China, it should be with CATL to license their tech for manufacturing over here.
I wouldn't want the Chinese to have anything to do with building our grid; making batteries is quite another matter.
Tom Scott did reference this problem 8 years ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/apr/29/labour-tory-reform-lib-dem-local-elections-kemi-badenoch-nigel-farage-keir-starmer-uk-politics-latest-live-news?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Pritzker: Here’s the problem with the do-nothing crowd now telling us what to do: while they spent their years watching Republicans illegitimately pack the Supreme Court, take away voting rights from people of color, and systematically chip away at the Constitution, all the while they offered only a simple defense of norms and decorum — a blind hope that one day soon Republicans would wake up to find their better angels. That got us where we are today.
The reckoning is here. And now that this culture of timidity is on display, these same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on the defense of Black people, trans kids, and immigrants, instead of on their own lack of guts and gumption.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1916958292888506655
Go off and whine about a cycle lane somewhere.
@seungminkim
@PressSec
, who said she spoke to Trump on this issue, calls this a "hostile and political act by Amazon"
Generally they can't.
We're about to find out if the inverse is true or not.
You’d need some huge LPC totals there . Their best chance chance of a flip is Terrebonne in Quebec where the BQ is only 26 votes ahead .
If there’s still some advance ballot left to count then that would help but it’s not clear if there any outstanding.
For natural gas, an OCGT will lose all power if the gas gets cut off pretty much immediately, while a CCGT will lose its primary generating cycle (the turbine)... you will get a little bit more from the secondary cycle (the boiling water bit), but that's the less power efficient part of the generating cyclle.
It's a good way to get through to another 10%+ of the electorte who currently don't put 2 and 2 together to make 4. You can see why he would hate it.
TTT: Trump Tariff Tax
But it also shows that Amazon reckons the Republicans are probably not going to do well in the midterms, and therefore hitching the wagon to Trump may not be that smart an idea. (The fact that Trump doesn't seem to be getting very far in his tariff negotiations may also play a role.)
(Leavitt, not you, Big_G.)
What on earth has America become ?
"...elected five lawmakers from the far-right anti-immigration Reform U.K. party. "
Why should Amazon have its consumers thinks it’s Amazon to blame for higher prices.
Be fun if some other companies did it. OEM auto makers.
But I would add these are dangerous people with untold consequences from their actions
Bezos assumed that backing the Mad King was a smart business move
He got thumped (or is that Trumped)
Presumably he now thinks exposing tariffs is a better business plan
Coincidence it happens the day after the Canadians demonstrate that anti-Trump is a winner
Amazon shares drop in premarket trading after the @PressSec said Amazon’s reported decision to display the impact of tariffs on pricing was a “hostile” act.
https://x.com/annmarie/status/1917204745967604051
https://ietresearch.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1049/gtd2.12544
A variety of power electronic equipment in AC/DC distribution networks causes oscillations with unknown origin. A self-sustained low-frequency oscillation appeared recently in a practical AC/DC distribution network in Tongli, Jiangsu Province, China. In this paper, the accident is introduced, and the oscillation phenomenon has been successfully reproduced by theoretical modelling. Based on the small signal model, the oscillation is well analysed and an additional controller is designed to suppress this low-frequency oscillation. The reason of the oscillation is related to the power and control parameters of buck converter; the system is critically stable within the linear system stability theory, namely, the leading eigenvalues of the small-signal system are on the imaginary axis. Meanwhile, a novel inhomogeneity phenomenon for oscillation amplitudes on different voltage-level DC buses, which are not proportional to their steady-state voltages, is found. This paper provides a new case study of self-sustained oscillations coming from a practical AC/DC distribution network and is of great significance for our understanding of oscillations in electric power engineering...
"the total avian mortality for the first year [at Ivanpah] was estimated at 1492 for known causes and 2012 from unknown causes. Of the bird deaths due to known causes, 47.4% were burned, 51.9% died of collision effects, and 0.7% died from other causes.
If transparency and honesty are described as such, then we are indeed in a very dark place.
If he has now changed his behaviour, then of course Trump critics will like him.
I assume Amazon customers don't suddenly want to have to start marching down to their local US Post Service offices to pick up goods that are being held up due to a $12 customs duty charge with a $20 admin fee. That'd be the really hostile way to approach tariffs.
https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
@BulwarkOnline
Bessent: "I think one thing that has been a little disconcerting for the markets is President Trump creates what I would call strategic uncertainty...Certainty is not necessarily a good thing in negotiating."
https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1917203063078605272
Bezos is a legitimate self made billionaire
And Trumpski isn't
It's a bit Alien v Predator, but interesting to see who 'wins'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/04/29/travel-chaos-continues-power-returns-spain-portugal/
Looking at you, Republican Senators that approved them in post. You all deserve to lose your seats for dereliction of duty.
So say a Christmas tree costs $20 from China. With tariffs that’s now $47 so who is going to absorb the extra $27 or is all of it passed on to the next part of the chain who used to say sell the tree for $40. Now they have to sell it for more than $47 but do they sell it for $67 (I.e. keep their profits the same) or sell it for $94 I.e. keep their margin the same).
And that cascades all the way up the chain - so I can see why Amazon want to make the tariff costs obvious because they don’t want to be seen to be profiteering
Many years ago, I worked at an oil company. A chap I worked with had a project to commission a new universal petrol pump. It would meet all the standards around the world for features and safety. Mass production would make it cheaper and increase reliability.
So he carefully collected the sum of all the intersecting requirements. In some countries, the tax rate on the petrol *has* to be displayed. So he added it to the design for the display - which was computer display, so easy to add fields of data.
The design was sent to regulators in 90 countries. All looked good. Until he got a message from the U.K. regulator that there was a problem. Someone in the bowls of government had noticed that the pump would display all the taxes on petrol. And told the regulator to reject the design.
So the U.K. pump code was modified to show only the gross number…
IIRC that was not long *before* the U.K. “Petrol Strike”
I've been hearing local car dealerships on sports radio with 'BUY YOUR CAR NOW BEFORE THE TARIFFS HIT' ads.
@dennycarter.bsky.social
sports radio is filled with dudes who voted for trump who are now sweaty at the prospect of his tariffs. if only they had googled "what are tariffs" 24 hours before election day!
https://bsky.app/profile/dennycarter.bsky.social/post/3lnxec7cpmk2y
New in PN: Trump's polling has already collapsed
"Trump is increasingly unpopular. This presents a chance for Democrats to tie fascist politics — such as the targeting of immigrants and trans people — to a toxic presidency, and delegitimize those evil policies for years to come."
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lnxetf3wzc27