The UK’s Green Power Crisis – UK paid £9.72/KWh to keep the lights on – Does it work?

Essay by Eric Worrall

h / t Alba; Imagine you get a £10,000 quarterly electricity bill – because this is what the UK Electricity System Operator paid last Wednesday, to prevent blackouts during the hot.

London nearly lost power due to electricity price hike last week

The UK is forced to pay 5,000% more than usual electricity rates to prevent blackouts in south-east London.

UK pays highest electricity price on record London Last week when the capital narrowly avoided a blackout, it appeared.

National Grid’s electricity system operator (ESO) has been forced to pay £9,724.54 per megawatt hour for Belgium5,000% above normal rates, last Wednesday to prevent power outages in south-east London, as first reported by Bloomberg.

A series of issues surrounding the UK’s hottest days on record have led to severe limitations in the power system and increased demand.

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While the record purchases are minimal – believed to be enough to power eight homes for a year – it shows the UK’s reliance on importing electricity from connected appliances. abroad, especially FranceBelgium and the Netherlands.

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But Households could feel Wednesday’s sky-high deals on their upcoming energy bills when the energy supplier transfers the costs.

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Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/london-belgium-london-fire-brigade-europe-france-b2130623.html

Part of the reason for the power shortage could be the UK’s solar fleet not working in hot weather.

Weather ‘too hot’ for solar panels

Power output during a heatwave falls below levels typically achieved in spring

Via Helen Cahill
July 19, 2022 • 7:07 pm

The weather is too hot for solar panels on Tuesday because rising temperatures reduce their efficiency.

When the heatwave pushed mercury above 40C for the first time in the UK, solar energy production was still far below the levels typically achieved at peak spring times.

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Solar panels become less efficient when the temperature rises above 25Cmeans that power generation goes down, with an efficiency drop of about 0.35 percentage points for all levels above this.

Professor Alastair Buckley, of the University of Sheffield, said: “We never see peak yields in the middle of summer.

“The actual solar cell temperature depends on a combination of ambient temperature and thermal radiation from the sun and also cooling from the wind. We saw a cell temperature of 70 degrees yesterday on our test system. Usually it will be between 40 degrees and 50 degrees”.

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Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/07/19/weather-hot-solar-panels/

Can you imagine a more useless global warming energy solution than a failed solution in hot weather?

The struggle to provide adequate power in adverse conditions makes me wonder what Britain’s next winter will be like. Solar energy is almost useless in winter at high latitudes, and widespread wind drought in Europe like last September not exactly rare. If Russia continues to play the geopolitical game with gas supplies, and France continues to have problems with its nuclear fleetmay no longer have spare capacity at any rate, in the near term the UK will be without electricity.

Only British voters can solve this crisis, by asking politicians to prioritize energy security and affordability over achieving zero net goals.