Umm, excuse me Mr. Powerman. I know we’ve debased and bankrupted you, but…um, could you maybe…well, come back? Please?
Yesterday National Grid also contacted the owners of recently closed power plants to enquire as to whether they could be brought back online within the next few weeks. This is an option that has never before been used in Britain, and has been predicted to cost tens of millions as the owners would be paid all costs involved in getting the stations up and running, plus an above market rate price for electricity generated. They would be required to produce energy between 6am and 8pm between November and February.
Via, NWC
So much for Earth Hour. This will be Earth Winter in the UK. Not for the elected elite, of course.
Kim Jon Un is still the undisputed champion at keeping the lights off, though.
UK is a good example of rule by vote whoring PC idiots,
its policies concocted by incompetent green euro marxists,
while it is being looted by corrupt rent seeking scum.
Not a problem.
Just nationalize the assets of all the Green Ngos…especially those “no pressure” idiots.
You know, where I a nasty power-man, I’d take the money get the plants running… and then have unscheduled “problems” anyway and let the bastards freeze in the dark. STARTING with anywhere the MP’s live. i.e. prioritized load-shedding anywhere politicians, media and universities live in groups.
Great idea if it can be pulled off. However, I don’t think there is anyone left in Britain with the testicular fortitude to do this. I think all Henry V and Churchill’s descendants have fled. I mean dhimmis really don’t have much guts to rebel.
This is a moment in time when Atlas needs to shrug.
Paying businesses to shut down for a number of hours every day so that homes will have enough electricity to heat their homes and prepare food. How insane does it have to get before people get angry boot out the AGW morons.
To also think that Canadians seem poised to elect the same sort of morons in Ottawa.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/conservatives-trailing-behind-ndp-liberals-in-nanos-power-index-1.1989993
Fred, that will happen anyway. Restarting plants which have been cold and dead for years is NOT easy. There will be lots of mechanical and maintenance problems. And because the taxpayers have done this stupid thing (they elected these gormless politicians after all) the taxpayer will have to cough up.
Ken, Ontario had a version of that for many, many years, at least since the 1950s under the old Ontario Hydro. It’s called an interruptible power rate. You the consumer get a cheap rate from me the utility and in return I have the right to cut you off when supply runs short. It made a lot of sense, and the financing was already built into the rate.
But in Britain and most other places, power supply is guaranteed if you have a contract. So now the government has to pay to set the guarantee provision aside. And so it should; it created this shambles, so the taxpayers have to foot the bill.
If I was one of the people/companies they were contacting, it would probably be the single greatest pleasure of my life to hear out their plea, and tell them: ‘No’.
Yeah, I know, and I also know the British transmission lines (grid) operator , is a different corp than the power generators, unlike HydroQuebec , say where the same operator owns both the lines and the generating capacity.
So frankly the transmission guys could do this anytime they felt like it, but I’m sure the great and good would object, even though they are proximately responsible.
Who Zimbabweed the British economy? These can’t be the same people that ruled the world for 500 years. Those people weren’t idiots.
If you do that, the federal thieves will just take what you have. They will federalize your power plant for the public good. They will nationalize your property. The trick is to maximize their costs, what they have to pay you to restart, without causing them to nationalize. They don’t really have any one in government that knows what you are charging them for, anyway. The defense contractors do this all the time. It used to be really bad when the government only bought a few items (say F-15s, B1Bs, etc.) a year. You might be surprised at the cost of re-establishing a tooling fixture. The US government finally wised up and did multi-year purchases and IDIQ contracts. Of course the US progressives have tried to do away with multi-year and IDIQs to keep our voracious military under their control, but the cost of the product just went up with their stupidity. But the military certainly is punished, maybe along with a few overseas journolists.
Have they figured out how to make the wind blow to produce just the right amount of “power” at the right time? Ontario is so brain dead they sell at a loss/give away the excess power when it’s produced when not needed. This is the 21st century, thankfully our forefathers had more common sense or we may not have survived.
I’m afraid I’d need the same level of subsidy that your “sustainable” power sources get. Otherwise, no can do. Sorry.
I did not know this until I read the linked article: the UK Department of Energy is actually called the “Department of Energy and Climate Change”.
No need to enquire further as to the reasons for the possible blackouts this coming winter.
Let the green bastards freeze in the dark.
Allowing green theologians to merge with the control freaks of the state to form the green theocracy and then giving them the keys to the economy including energy policies is like letting monkeys play with hand grenades.
Unfortunately it will not be them. It will be the lower income and elderly, and who by the way are expendable to the leftist green elites.
scar, “Who Zimbabweed the British economy? These can’t be the same people that ruled the world for 500 years. Those people weren’t idiots.” It was the socialists that Hayek warned us about during the 1930s and 40s.