We should be grateful to Europe for continuing to prop up the UK power grid
IT may be of interest to note that yet again during this pandemic the UK power grid has had to rely upon Europe.
Since last weekend, Scotland and the rest of mainland Britain has had to depend upon European imported power to keep our lights on, and our hospitals and labs functioning, as wind generation has collapsed and solar output in the cloudy, short-daylight weather has been typically low and brief.
As at Tuesday mid-afternoon (March 2), Scotland was importing more than 1000MW from England, almost equivalent to a second Torness, which in turn is importing 5000MW, the maximum possible, from Europe – mostly nuclear power from France, where the new interconnector commissioned just recently is running flat out.
UK wind with a connected capability of greater than 25000MW was producing 0.59MW, equivalent to 1.47 per cent of our demand.
Besides the European imports the UK is running close to maximum on primarily imported gas at 52%, nuclear at 9.5%, burning of imported and environmentally questionable American woodchips at 7.4% which we subsidise at circa £780 million per year through our bills, elderly coal stations using imported coal at 6.7% and even filthy open cycle gas turbines.
We have been running coal almost every day over the last month with wind having seriously nosedived yet again since midday last Saturday.
While the French may have been reluctant initially to accept the Oxford vaccine, we are obliged that they continue to
power us in the continuing absence of adequate UK baseload and standby capability during this latest UK energy collapse.
DB Watson,
Cumbernauld.