We would be capable of supplying more than 100% of our electricity needs if we had just followed our noses and had allowed perfectly serviceable electricity generating plants to function until we built better ones or additional ones.
However, instead of allowing the natural evolution in power generation to progress at normal speed, the green loonies decided to meddle. Their favourite way of meddling was to put massive super-taxes and other financial sanctions on reliable and steady power stations, and then to hugely subsidise the unreliable technologies like the wind-farms and solar generators. This, as was their plan, crippled domestic power generation and left us in the panic situation we are now in. Powerless.
So, we cannot supply the power we need, and the country faces rolling blackouts.
And what’s the emergency procedure the Government and the electricity regulators have come up with? They intend to pay large amounts of money to the large companies that use large quantities of electricity. The money will be for them to close down for a day, thus releasing the electricity they would have used so that it can be supplied to others.
A rolling blackout programme across industry will be introduced. We at home won’t be seething with rage if all goes to plan. If all goes to plan most homes will have lights staying on. Instead they’ll go out in the big industries.
Big industries. Hmmm. Aren’t they what the green lobby hate? Aha, makes sense now.
With a bit of luck, the payment made to force the big industries to switch off one day a week will include the wages of the workers who will otherwise have to be laid off. But we’ll have to wait and see.
Will the shortage of whatever they are unable to produce so much of because of the shutdown lead to a price hike? We’ll have to wait and see about that, too.
England's England 
Hello Chris,
Every time a big ‘ announcement ‘ comes along, you need to at once look behind it and consider the actual reason for it. As you surmise, the announcement that our generating capacity may not be sufficient may be to frighten people in to switching off, things that do not need to be operating or it may be to soften the population up for a price increase.
Maybe it is to terrify us that if we leave the EU we will no longer get the power that we import or the materials we import to make out power here.
As you correctly say, the problem ( if it exists ) has not been sprung on us by unforeseen circumstances, it has been deliberately manufactured.
If I were to perch on the chimney of my home and point binoculars toward the sea, I would spy many wind turbines on the site of what was Bradwell Nuclear Power Station. In the further distance I would see many, many more offshore
Just now, people are waking up and putting their kettles and stoves on for breakfast. Shops in the town in the distance are opening for business. Demand for electricity will increase steadily, but there is no wind blowing. none of this vast array of turbines is doing anything of value at all.
There is no chance of switching Bradwell back on as it has been closed down and dismantled.
Now, within a few miles of these useless windmills are three conventional power stations, Tilbury, Grain and Kingsnorth. In the case of Tilbury, it is ready to go. Indeed it was only recently converted from coal to ‘ biomass ‘ . But it had to be shut down due to an EU Directive namely the Large Combustion Plant Directive.
Even with the improvements someone within the EU decided that Tilbury was till too polluting. So it sits doing nothing.
Nearby are Grain and Kingsnorth power stations. Again they were closed due to the above directive but at the time of closure were completely serviceable. However, in the case of these two, they are being demolished to ensue that they cannot be put back in to use.
My rough calculation is that if these plants were operating, UK generating capacity would rise by 5% and the problem in the short/medium term would go away.
So, are our politicians so utterly incompetent that they have not thought this through, or are they, as you might think, being steered by pressure groups who would actually delight in the power going off, or maybe they are being backhanded by those who benefit from the huge profits and subsidies for new means of power generation that often do not work at all.
Everywhere you look i.e. outside of electricity, the same illogical madness is plain to see. Juggle the reasons and see what you end up with. Incompetence, dogma, corruption and the EU or a combination of all of these things.
Peter Moore.
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