Britain set to lose nearly half its electricity in 6 years

Post by **adam2** » 11 Jun 2008, 16:26

skeptik wrote:
Totally_Baffled wrote:A question for you guys if you dont mind

What are the options for rationing electricity when the time comes?

Are there options?
Yup. It's called 'rolling blackouts'. Everybody (except emergency services such as hospitals) takes their turn being cut off for so many hours.

I imagine this means you are not old enough to remember the 70's?

In most cases hospitals were also cut off despite appeals to make exceptions.
The power was cut off to one grid district at a time, there was no way to make exceptions for individual consumers (except for VERY large consumers that had theire own high voltage grid connection)

Almost every grid district contained either a hospital, a fire station, a police station, a major defence establishment, an important railway station/junction, a port or something else important.

The areas to be cut off at any one time, had to follow the network boundries of the distribution system, and therefore were often odd shaped areas.

As far as possible each district had to contain about the same electrical load, not the same number of sqaure miles or the same number of consumers.
Therefore in town centers the area blacked out at any one time was quite small, one could easily walk to an area still on.
In sparsely populated rural areas, there was not a light for miles in many cases.

Vortex · Post by **Vortex** » 11 Jun 2008, 16:41

I may have told this before ...

During the rolling blackouts Capital Radio proudly declared on air that they were safe.

"We have power feeds from THREE separate London sectors and also a diesel generator."

Within minutes they went off air ... and back up .. and off air .. and back up ... and off air .... and back up but this time 10 minutes later and at a fraction of the power!

The power workers must have regarded that as a nice challenge!

Vortex · Post by **Vortex** » 11 Jun 2008, 16:42

Sectors with kidney machines etc in peoples homes were usually safe.

Bandidoz · Post by **Bandidoz** » 11 Jun 2008, 16:45

peaky2 wrote:
Politically, the blame for this astounding mess lies in all directions .... with those smugly shortsighted 'environmentalists'.
Does anyone know what he's trying to say?

Yes he is blaming environmentalists when we all know it's the NIMBY/BANANA fraternity who's at fault. But the Mail couldn't blame their own readership, could they?

Post by **adam2** » 11 Jun 2008, 16:52

Vortex wrote:Sectors with kidney machines etc in peoples homes were usually safe.

I would not count on it, almost every grid district will contain someone with a kidney machine, or something equally important.

Kidney dialysis had to be planned for non blackout times or days, or in some cases the patient had to be admitted to hospital (hope the generator works) for treatment.

tomhitchman · Post by **tomhitchman** » 11 Jun 2008, 17:01

options for TB, a nationwide energy depletion protocol, aka recession. civ101 might have some nos for declines in energy use in former soviet union in the 90's which we could refer to.

oilslick · Post by **oilslick** » 11 Jun 2008, 17:02

Computer data centres are pretty important these days. Will they try and keep them up and running?

Anyone fancy coming in with me to set up a renewable-powered data centre? I think I'm serious as well!

Post by **adam2** » 11 Jun 2008, 17:15

oilslick wrote:Computer data centres are pretty important these days. Will they try and keep them up and running?

Anyone fancy coming in with me to set up a renewable-powered data centre? I think I'm serious as well!

I doubt that computer data centers will get any special treatment, remember that almost every grid district will contain a data center, or a home kidney machine, or a hospital, or something else important.

Data centers SHOULD have both UPS and diesel backup already, I have little faith in it working however, which could prove interesting!

Adams law states that UPS batteries are to be replaced just AFTER the power cut in which they failed to give protection.
Generators will also be overhauled just AFTER they failed to function in a failure.
The potential load on the generator is also to be compared with its rating, just AFTER the failure when it tripped out on overload (too many kettles and fan heaters plugged into the essiential supply!)

Kieran · Post by **Kieran** » 11 Jun 2008, 17:32

emordnilap wrote:Thanks for the link Kieran.

Could you lose the apostrophe in the thread title? Let's keep the standards up around here!

Oh, how embarassing - that's what happens when there's not much time to type before going out.

I used the word "was" as of course there's not enough time now to build the reactors before they'll be needed. The attack on enviromentalists and support for nuclear as the only option are to be expected from the Mail. With warm, rising seas and a society possibly falling apart the prospect of having dozens of nuclear reactors along the coasts seems quite scary.

It is sobering reading an article like this in the popular media, the sheep are truly starting to look up. Scary times ahead.

syberberg · Post by **syberberg** » 11 Jun 2008, 17:47

So we finally have a time limit. I doubt it will concentrate any minds though, the sheeple don't seem capable of thinking much beyond 6 months, let alone 6 years.

Meanwhile, instead of actually doing something, vast swathes of the population will be engaged in useless finger pointing exercises.

From a purely Machiavellian POV (and assuming Brown's in the know), the decision not to hold a snap election last year is looking positively sublime. He's going to be handing a very large and extremely nasty poisoned chalice over to Cameron. This should be interesting.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 11 Jun 2008, 17:51

Six years.

I think we'll see some interesting events unfolding before six years is up.

2012 anyone?

peakprepper · Post by **peakprepper** » 11 Jun 2008, 20:32

2012 anyone?

2012 Olympics by candlelight?

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 11 Jun 2008, 22:43

They'll be fine. They have The Olympic Torch.

Post by **clv101** » 11 Jun 2008, 22:47

Good to see this in the media, sad that they aren't saying anything we haven't been saying for 3 years or so. My 2005 PeakSpeak presentation was on exactly this subject.

snow hope · Post by **snow hope** » 11 Jun 2008, 22:53

oilslick wrote:Computer data centres are pretty important these days. Will they try and keep them up and running?

Anyone fancy coming in with me to set up a renewable-powered data centre? I think I'm serious as well!

Now there's an idea!

The trouble with keeping all the servers going, is that they aren't much use if the clients aren't able to access them......due to a blackout with the clients. But of course, if they are geographically disparate then it may well be worthwhile, as they might be unaffected by a blackout at the datacentre location. It would then depend on how well protected the comms. network is from rolling blackouts, etc...... so much dependence and inter-dependence....seems to me that you would have to be very lucky for it all to hang together enough for it to work from a client at one end of the country to the servers at the other end?