It's not even winter...

[NickFitz]

You can keep an eye on the National Grid at National Grid: Live Status

I don't see anything too out of the ordinary there, but I suppose "Power management process works as planned during trivial deviation from normal operation" wouldn't make for such a good headline

[BrilloPad]

The UK's descent to third world status gathers pace

Yes! The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It is not as if AGW even exists...

[Troll]

The UK's descent to third world status gathers pace

[Forgotmylogin]

I wonder how many of those businesses would still want to be on that "clever scheme" to power down - it was assumed that the powerdown will never be used...

Probably most of them, if they got paid just for turning off the aircon for an hour.

[EternalOptimist]

It gets dark early in this country in winter. and often the wind does not blow.

with expensive solar and wind out of the picture, and cheaper gas and coal out, due to the green eco-zealots, we will be looking at load-shedding i.e. selected blackouts.

I sincerely hope it never comes to that. but if it does, I hope the blame gets pinned where it belongs

on these green cretins

[MicrosoftBob]

78f in the office today, it doesn't feel like November

[AtW]

BUT...

"Britain was forced to rely on new "last resort" measures to keep the lights on for the first time on Wednesday after coal power plants broke down and wind farms produced less than one per cent of required electricity.

National Grid used a new emergency scheme to pay large businesses to cut their electricity usage, resulting in dozens of large office buildings powering down their air conditioning and ventilation systems between 5pm and 6pm.

The scheme, which is paid for through levies on consumer energy bills, was introduced last year but had never been called upon before.

National Grid blamed the power crunch on “multiple plant break downs”. Several ageing coal-fired power plants had unexpected maintenance issues and temporarily shut down, experts said, reducing available supplies.

The problem was compounded by low wind speeds meaning most of Britain’s 6,500 onshore and offshore wind turbines were barely generating any power just as demand hit its highest.

UK wind farms have a theoretical maximum capacity of more than 13,000 megawatts, but produced less than 400 megawatts of power for much of the peak demand period – meeting less than one per cent of the UK’s electricity needs, published data suggests. "

Source: National Grid uses 'last resort' measures to keep UK lights on - Telegraph

I wonder how many of those businesses would still want to be on that "clever scheme" to power down - it was assumed that the powerdown will never be used...