UK wind gets diesel backup
This article would be amusing if it weren’t so insanely expensive and so completely unnecessary. UK power generators should simply go back to affordable, abundant, reliable, and increasingly clean coal.
Thousands of dirty diesel generators are being secretly prepared all over Britain to provide emergency back-up to prevent the National Grid collapsing when wind power fails.
And under the hugely costly scheme, the National Grid is set to pay up to 12 times the normal wholesale market rate for the electricity they generate. …
the losers will be consumers who can expect yet further hikes in their electricity bills in the name of ‘combating climate change’.
The scheme is expected to cost £1 billion a year by 2015, adding five per cent to energy bills.
This scheme is a direct consequence of the renewable energy policy adopted by the Coalition but first developed by Tony Blair in response to EU renewables directives to reduce Britain’s carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.