It is a cold winters day. At the time of posting this, the demand on the national grid was 50.72 Gigawatts (GW). But like so many cold winter days there isn't much wind about, and wind power was only providing 1.13 GW.

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Good old coal and nuclear where would we be without it?

Sat in the dark freezing ones nuts off but happy in the knowledge we are meeting some climate change target somewhere!!



Clearly the answer is more Nuclear power stations. The sooner we wake up to that fact and press on and build the better off we will all be. We import the vast majority of our gas now (represented as CCGT) in the image above.

If the Russians were to turn off the (gas) taps tomorrow not only would our gas fires and central heating be useless but at a stroke we would lose approx 40% of the Countries electricity generating capacity.

We stand but the width of a fag paper away from the next energy crisis and our politicians still pander to the Green lobby.

then we would realy know what the cold war is about.

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Its not always the biggest and the bestest, its them that make the least mistakes.

Brilliant Jim (as usual)

Looking at the graph , looks like we need more coal stations first , as they are quicker to build
and they have served us well so far

Can't have coal, even though we have loads of the stuff, Brussels won't allow it !!!

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Lets be careful out there !

when and if we are rich , we can apply utopia ideals ie wind power
until then we cant afford them
we must go for the cheapest , fastest option ,
its a trade off , pollution v expense v no power at all
or only power for the rich
Cameron should opt out of the eec deal and go ahead

Quite agree. At the moment it's looking like brownouts in 2015

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Lets be careful out there !

From this site: http://www.energy-uk.org.uk/energy-indu ... power.html

Coal power stations to close by 2015

Didcot A Power Station 2000 MW - RWE npower (to close by the end of 2015)
Ferrybridge Power Station 1995MW - SSE (units 1 and 2 will close by the end of 2015)
Ironbridge Power Station 970MW - E.ON (to close by the end of 2015)
Kingsnorth power station 1940MW - E.ON (to close by the end of 2015)
Tilbury Power Station 1131MW - RWE npower (to close by the end of 2015)

The total loss of coal generating capacity by 2015 adds up to 8.03 GW.

A normal demand of around 50GW means that a loss of 16% of generating capacity will be switched off in 2015. That can only mean that serious power cuts are on the way.

Look at the dates.. Maybe this is why CMD doesn't want to be re-elected. The other lot will get the blame then when the lights go out..