PowerSwitch

As depletion progresses and the crisis closes in, I think we will see what electricity generating capacity there is limited to private-wire networks which will power local and national government facilities.

So for example, town halls, municipal buildings, street lighting, waste disposal, police, fire and medical services, water provision and defence facilities, will take their power from the last operating generating facilities, which will be mainly nuclear and coal.

Ordinary folks will be left to generate their own power however they can - using wood fuel or coal for heating (smokeless coal will go right out of the window, as it uses a lot of energy to make), solar for hot water or electricity, wind for electricity, and maybe ground- or air- source heat pumps for heating.

Similarly, transport fuels will be commandeered by the essential services and protected by the army. Ordinary folks will have to get by on whatever they (we) can find.

One of the most progressive local authorities in the UK is Woking, which already has private wire networks installed, along with local CHP generating facilities. Alan Jones, who pioneered Woking's energy strategy, is now heading up Ken Livingstone's Climate Change team for the whole of London.

Woking's private wire networks:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... /12619.htm

When do you reckon it'll come to this? I think it'd be worse if the leccy/ gas heating stopped working.

I think over the next 5 years we will see a devolution of generating capacity and distribution - the operative term is "distributed generation".

There is currently a limit of 1MW on sales to domestic users on private wire networks, so small-scale generators generally supply non-domestic users such as local authorities - I think the limit is there deliberately so that the system works in this way. The idea is that the big energy companies can milk the domestic market to pay for their large-scale generating capacity.

When the large-scale generating capacity falls over, the private wire networks using small, local generating capacity to supply essential services and local authorities remains functioning, so that the authorities can keep law and order, even whilst people are freezing in their homes. It then becomes 100% the responsibility of the householder to provide their own energy.

Whilst the public's attention will be fixed on the big news of large-scale generating capacity, watch local authorities, the military and other essential services switch over "under the radar" to distributed generation on private wire networks ("Island Generation" - meaning that strategic islands of power will stay on when the national grid fails).

Rest assured that the authorities intend to stay in authority. Whatever happens to the likes of you and me is up to us, and us alone, unfortunately.

The limit will be in place due to technical issues such as fault protection.

I don't think so . . . have a look at

http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/gas_and_el ... ptions.pdf

3.4 . . . 1MW to domestic consumers . . . exempt from commercial generating licenses . . . this would assist local authorities with combined heat and power facilities linked to individual developments

In some circumstances you can generate up to 100MW without a commercial licence, as long as you have the approval of the Secretary of State. (e.g. military/essential industry)

Because these regulations apply to private wire networks, they don't have any safety implications for connections with the national grid, which is the main concern for large-scale generating capacity such as wind farms.

I think the rules are there to make it easy and inexpensive for island networks to be set up independently of the national grid, for strategic services.

If you start connecting up domestic users to private wire networks, that means they don't have the option to switch supplier, which is anti-competitive. I think the rules are more for strategic and economic reasons than safety concerns.