by Paul Homewood at wattsupwiththat.com
The National Grid will ask factories and businesses to voluntarily cut their electricity usage this winter under an expansion of a service previously pioneered by households.
In a bid to help keep Britain’s lights on, the Grid has confirmed it will urge heavy industry to sign up to the so-called demand flexibility service this coming winter.
Businesses that sign up would be asked to reduce their consumption at times when supplies are expected to be stretched, helping to ease pressure on the system.
While they may use the same amount of energy overall, shifting their usage outside of peak times can help the Grid to manage and prevent blackouts in worst-case scenarios.
Households are also being asked to take part in the demand flexibility service again, which was first introduced last year.
We are rapidly returning to the blackouts and voltage reductions of the 1960s and 70s. (Remember how our old TVs used to lose their horizontal hold, whenever voltage was reduced?)
Back then our steel works, along with many other heavy power users, were handed Maximum Demand periods, usually of an hour, and with maybe a day’s notice at times of peak demand. Any electricity used during that hour was charged at a punitive rate. Consequently everything shut down, the furnaces, rolling mills etc; even the lights went off in the offices, which was quite a fun time when you did not have to work and could chat the girls up instead!. But it was no way to run a factory efficiently, and neither will this latest idea.
This move is, to all intents and purposes, rationing. And the reason is quite clear – the closure of nearly all of our coal power capacity.
If we are having to take such drastic action now, heaven help us when our gas plants start to shut down as well.
The Telegraph finishes with this ridiculous claim:
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