International Britons Paying Over $1 Billion A Year Because Grid Can't Handle Excess Power Output From Wind Farms

[idrankyourbeer]

 

[aries]

Didn't they think of this before they designed and build?

It's a partial but significant red herring. It costs the Government £215 million to shut off those turbines only because of the fact that that's the rate the Government chooses to pay! They don't have to, as our electricity price for generation is set nationally, so one set price for all electricity generated, even if it should be much cheaper like wind power would be if the price wasn't fixed. We set this up in 2005 but there is no mention of reviewing the system. There are many many other options that could not only massively reduced the cost of energy to UK consumers but also incentivise building more clean energy.

But you are quite correct, if they had built in energy storage capacity at the beginning it wouldn't even be an issue. This is all completely under the government's control but they don't seem interested in greener cheaper energy, I wonder why.....could it be the same reason over 50% of the House of Lords have shares in fossil fuel companies? We don't know what shares sitting MP's have as they don't have to declare them unless the cash in.

 

[aries]

Get that energy storage and grid upgrade going and the U.K wouldn't need to import natural gas one day.

UK renewables produced enough electricity to ‘power every UK home’ through the winter, analysts say
Analysts say producing more clean energy saves the UK from importing and burning more gas

British-based renewables generated more electricity than gas this winter and produced enough to power every UK home through the winter, analysis has shown.

Between 1 October and 28 February, power generated by wind, hydro and solar reached 47TWh (terawatt hours), according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).

Generating the same amount of electricity using gas power stations would have required around 95TWh of gas – equal to 110 tankers of liquified natural gas (LNG) or the amount more than 10 million UK homes would burn over the winter.

Renewably-produced electricity this winter has displaced more than a third of the UK’s entire annual gas demand for power generation, the analysts said.

Without it, the UK would have had to burn more gas which would have potentially increased net gas imports by more than 22 per cent, including gas imported via pipeline.

Jess Ralston, head of energy at ECIU, said: “We’re seeing the old electricity system give way to the new, with renewables becoming the backbone and displacing more and more gas.

“Battery storage is ramping up faster than expected, boosting the UK’s energy security and leaving us less exposed to international gas markets.

“Lifting the ban on the onshore wind will help. But with the US and the EU going gangbusters for renewables, eyes are on the Government, the Chancellor and the Budget to decide on how the UK stays an attractive market for the investments that will ultimately bring down bills.”

On Monday, Energy Security Secretary Grant Shapps met his US counterpart Jennifer Granholm in London and said he wants to commit the UK to greater energy independence through nuclear and renewables.

Mr Shapps and Ms Granholm want to wean Western countries off Russian oil and gas to undermine Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

They said the huge rise in gas prices after the Russian invasion has shown the need to speed up the move away from fossil fuels.

Emma Pinchbeck, Energy UK’s chief executive, said “we must do everything possible” to encourage and speed up investment in low-carbon power.

She added: “This analysis confirms the ever-growing contribution that homegrown renewable generation is making to power our homes and our businesses.

“We’ve seen the effect that record wholesale gas prices have had on customers’ bills over the last 18 months and it’s underlined the urgency of expanding our supply of cheap, domestic, clean power in order to remove our dependency on expensive fossil fuels – which will strengthen the country’s energy security, cut bills and emissions and boost economic growth.”

In 2022, UK renewables provided 38 per cent of the country’s electricity generation, nearly as much as gas at 40 per cent, and became a net electricity exporter for the first time since 2010.

Most clean energy in the UK comes from wind power which is most productive during the winter when winds are stronger.

Other sources of generation, including nuclear and biomass, generated 28TWh over the winter period, the ECIU analysts said.

Using gas power plants instead would have required 56TWh more gas, equivalent to almost five million homes’ annual gas demand or more than 60 LNG tankers.

Battery storage is also set to grow 14-fold with the storage pipeline having increased by five times in the last year.

Europe’s largest grid-scale battery storage facility came online in 2022 and the UK’s pumped hydro storage capacity is set to rise by 130 per cent to 6.5GW.

The UK is still heavily dependent on gas. It supplies 40 per cent of our power and 85 per cent of our heating and UK households have been badly hit by rising gas prices because they are the least energy efficient in western Europe, according to the International Monetary Fund.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-renewable-energy-electricity-winter-b2292542.html

Why do they keep banging on about nuclear? It took 11 years from approval to build our latest reactor Hinckley C. And it's not even online yet, last official report was it would be ready in 2027, that's 15 years after approval. And the lastest rumour is it might not be ready until 2037, which would be 25 years. We could have carpeted the whole of the UK 3 times over with renewables in that time. And nuclear is not cheap.

 

[aries]

Batteries are still way way too expensive to be practical on a large scale. That’s the major issue.

Some generational breakthrough, not just a better lithium ion battery, will need to happen to enable storing wind or solar energy for usage at night or non windy days at a power generation level.

We have several technologies, one is Calcium Antimony batteries. They have two main advantages, they degrade far less over time and are really suited to repeated deep cycling, the raw elements are readily available and cheap. The catch is it's just not cheap enough to make them ubiquitous but that's a manufacturing at scale issue. There is a 250MW CaSb battery system powering a data centre in Reno on trial atm which would make it the 4th largest battery system in the world.

The other alternative is hydrogen storage. Again most of the tech needed for this one exists it's just making it cheap enough at scale to make viable affordable systems.

The same was true of Lithium Ion batteries, no traditional battery manufacturer wanted to invest in Sony's idea, so Sony had to build their own manufacturing capability. And now they are everywhere. That technology was at a more advanced stage but we really aren't far away.

We have to move away from Lithium batteries anyway because the price of Lithium is going to go through the roof plus getting rid of old ones is an environmental hot potato.

 

[650lb Sumo]

Why do they keep banging on about nuclear? It took 11 years from approval to build our latest reactor Hinckley C. And it's not even online yet, last official report was it would be ready in 2027, that's 15 years after approval. And the lastest rumour is it might not be ready until 2037, which would be 25 years. We could have carpeted the whole of the UK 3 times over with renewables in that time. And nuclear is not cheap.

Interestingly all 5 active UK nuclear power stations are owned by the French Government - the power stations belong to EDF Energy, a British company, which belongs to Électricité de France, which belongs to the French Government. The 4 new ones which are planned to be built are planned to be built by EDF and China General Nuclear Power Group, which is owned by the Chinese Government.

As an aside, my local bus operator is owned by the German Government, and the train operator was owned by the German Government until 2020, when it was nationalised due to poor performance.

 

[650lb Sumo]

Expanding the remit of this thread further, it seems one of the reasons for the UK's lack of electricity and high prices is mass theft of electricity by cannabis farmers and bitcoin miners. I think theft is actually only when you take possession of a physical object, so this is technically not that. Unlawful abstraction?

‘Honest folk are paying for this’: the fight against Britain’s billion-pound energy heist

From raids on marijuana farms to illegal bitcoin miners, suppliers are finding new ways to tackle the rise in gas and electricity theft

www.theguardian.com

By the time a team of police officers and engineers stormed a disused office block in Wigan, Greater Manchester, on a November morning last year, the building had been abandoned.

Left behind were rooms filled with thousands of cannabis plants: a nursery on the first floor, the growing crop on the second, and leaves drying out on the third. The criminal gang behind the marijuana farm is thought to have fled after the grid operator cut off the stolen electricity used to power scores of LED lamps.



“This was a proper setup,” said one engineer at the network operator Electricity North West, who took part in the raid. “It had a kitchen, television, several beds and even a treadmill. This [was] an incredibly professional set up on an industrial scale.”

The engineer, who asked not to be named, is part of a team set up by the grid company to crack down on Britain’s billion-pound energy heist. Across the country about £1.5bn worth of gas and electricity is estimated to be stolen every year, piling an extra £50 a year on to the nation’s household bills.

The team at Electricity North West began their investigation after fuses started blowing at a local power substation in the middle of the night. After the substation sensors showed that the power load was unusually high, and thermal imaging cameras confirmed buildings nearby were unusually warm, the police were called in.

“It is a growing problem. Good honest folk in this country are paying for this theft,” a second energy engineer said. The engineer also asked to remain anonymous because they routinely work with police to enter homes and businesses suspected of stealing energy to replace the damaged metering equipment. At the moment their employer responds to 900 calls a month.

Many cases of energy theft involve desperate people struggling to pay their bills as energy debts in the UK rise to record highs. But there are also concerns that energy is increasingly being stolen by organised criminal gangs to power marijuana farms or the servers behind illegal bitcoin mining, loading even higher costs on to bills that are paid.

Gas theft has also ripped through communities. David Garner,

the director of safety at the gas network company Cadent, leads a team of engineers who investigate suspected gas theft.

He said: “If you don’t know what you’re doing when you tamper with your pipework, you can create a gas leak which accumulates to an explosive level. All it takes to ignite this is a light switch, and you face devastating consequences for the whole community."

Last month, a group of eight criminals were jailed by a judge in Liverpool for cutting into the electricity mains and connecting power cables to nearby warehouses being used as marijuana farms by Albanian crime gangs.

The company is increasingly relying on data analytics to monitor changes in the power grid’s frequency to track unusual activity which might suggest a surge in stolen electricity used for marijuana farming.

In Blackpool, more than 1,600 cannabis plants were found growing in the rooms of an abandoned hotel in 2023. Engineers discovered the electricity meter had been bypassed in three locations, including the pavement outside.

In another instance, the owners of a smallholding in Lancashire ran their own cable up the pole of an overhead power line to connect directly to a power transformer. They hadn’t been paying bills to their energy supplier, and had also begun farming marijuana.

Across the Midlands, a new source of energy theft has emerged: cryptocurrency miners.

In 2021, West Midlands police swooped on what they had presumed was a marijuana farm after drones detected a considerable heat source consistent with plant heaters. Instead, they found about 100 computers wired together being used to “mine” bitcoin, a process in which computers use vast amounts of energy to solve complex mathematical puzzles. In Leicestershire, a cryptocurrency trader was jailed in the same year for stealing electricity worth up to £32,000 at two sites where he operated bitcoin mining machines.

 

[curryjunkie]

Expanding the remit of this thread further, it seems one of the reasons for the UK's lack of electricity and high prices is mass theft of electricity by cannabis farmers and bitcoin miners. I think theft is actually only when you take possession of a physical object, so this is technically not that. Unlawful abstraction?

‘Honest folk are paying for this’: the fight against Britain’s billion-pound energy heist

From raids on marijuana farms to illegal bitcoin miners, suppliers are finding new ways to tackle the rise in gas and electricity theft

www.theguardian.com

By the time a team of police officers and engineers stormed a disused office block in Wigan, Greater Manchester, on a November morning last year, the building had been abandoned.

Left behind were rooms filled with thousands of cannabis plants: a nursery on the first floor, the growing crop on the second, and leaves drying out on the third. The criminal gang behind the marijuana farm is thought to have fled after the grid operator cut off the stolen electricity used to power scores of LED lamps.



“This was a proper setup,” said one engineer at the network operator Electricity North West, who took part in the raid. “It had a kitchen, television, several beds and even a treadmill. This [was] an incredibly professional set up on an industrial scale.”

The engineer, who asked not to be named, is part of a team set up by the grid company to crack down on Britain’s billion-pound energy heist. Across the country about £1.5bn worth of gas and electricity is estimated to be stolen every year, piling an extra £50 a year on to the nation’s household bills.

The team at Electricity North West began their investigation after fuses started blowing at a local power substation in the middle of the night. After the substation sensors showed that the power load was unusually high, and thermal imaging cameras confirmed buildings nearby were unusually warm, the police were called in.

“It is a growing problem. Good honest folk in this country are paying for this theft,” a second energy engineer said. The engineer also asked to remain anonymous because they routinely work with police to enter homes and businesses suspected of stealing energy to replace the damaged metering equipment. At the moment their employer responds to 900 calls a month.

Many cases of energy theft involve desperate people struggling to pay their bills as energy debts in the UK rise to record highs. But there are also concerns that energy is increasingly being stolen by organised criminal gangs to power marijuana farms or the servers behind illegal bitcoin mining, loading even higher costs on to bills that are paid.

Gas theft has also ripped through communities. David Garner,

the director of safety at the gas network company Cadent, leads a team of engineers who investigate suspected gas theft.

He said: “If you don’t know what you’re doing when you tamper with your pipework, you can create a gas leak which accumulates to an explosive level. All it takes to ignite this is a light switch, and you face devastating consequences for the whole community."

Last month, a group of eight criminals were jailed by a judge in Liverpool for cutting into the electricity mains and connecting power cables to nearby warehouses being used as marijuana farms by Albanian crime gangs.

The company is increasingly relying on data analytics to monitor changes in the power grid’s frequency to track unusual activity which might suggest a surge in stolen electricity used for marijuana farming.

In Blackpool, more than 1,600 cannabis plants were found growing in the rooms of an abandoned hotel in 2023. Engineers discovered the electricity meter had been bypassed in three locations, including the pavement outside.

In another instance, the owners of a smallholding in Lancashire ran their own cable up the pole of an overhead power line to connect directly to a power transformer. They hadn’t been paying bills to their energy supplier, and had also begun farming marijuana.

Across the Midlands, a new source of energy theft has emerged: cryptocurrency miners.

In 2021, West Midlands police swooped on what they had presumed was a marijuana farm after drones detected a considerable heat source consistent with plant heaters. Instead, they found about 100 computers wired together being used to “mine” bitcoin, a process in which computers use vast amounts of energy to solve complex mathematical puzzles. In Leicestershire, a cryptocurrency trader was jailed in the same year for stealing electricity worth up to £32,000 at two sites where he operated bitcoin mining machines.

what has weed farming got to do with national energy infrastructure?

 

[Rob Battisti]

Expanding the remit of this thread further, it seems one of the reasons for the UK's lack of electricity and high prices is mass theft of electricity by cannabis farmers and bitcoin miners. I think theft is actually only when you take possession of a physical object, so this is technically not that. Unlawful abstraction?

‘Honest folk are paying for this’: the fight against Britain’s billion-pound energy heist

From raids on marijuana farms to illegal bitcoin miners, suppliers are finding new ways to tackle the rise in gas and electricity theft

www.theguardian.com

By the time a team of police officers and engineers stormed a disused office block in Wigan, Greater Manchester, on a November morning last year, the building had been abandoned.

Left behind were rooms filled with thousands of cannabis plants: a nursery on the first floor, the growing crop on the second, and leaves drying out on the third. The criminal gang behind the marijuana farm is thought to have fled after the grid operator cut off the stolen electricity used to power scores of LED lamps.



“This was a proper setup,” said one engineer at the network operator Electricity North West, who took part in the raid. “It had a kitchen, television, several beds and even a treadmill. This [was] an incredibly professional set up on an industrial scale.”

The engineer, who asked not to be named, is part of a team set up by the grid company to crack down on Britain’s billion-pound energy heist. Across the country about £1.5bn worth of gas and electricity is estimated to be stolen every year, piling an extra £50 a year on to the nation’s household bills.

The team at Electricity North West began their investigation after fuses started blowing at a local power substation in the middle of the night. After the substation sensors showed that the power load was unusually high, and thermal imaging cameras confirmed buildings nearby were unusually warm, the police were called in.

“It is a growing problem. Good honest folk in this country are paying for this theft,” a second energy engineer said. The engineer also asked to remain anonymous because they routinely work with police to enter homes and businesses suspected of stealing energy to replace the damaged metering equipment. At the moment their employer responds to 900 calls a month.

Many cases of energy theft involve desperate people struggling to pay their bills as energy debts in the UK rise to record highs. But there are also concerns that energy is increasingly being stolen by organised criminal gangs to power marijuana farms or the servers behind illegal bitcoin mining, loading even higher costs on to bills that are paid.

Gas theft has also ripped through communities. David Garner,

the director of safety at the gas network company Cadent, leads a team of engineers who investigate suspected gas theft.

He said: “If you don’t know what you’re doing when you tamper with your pipework, you can create a gas leak which accumulates to an explosive level. All it takes to ignite this is a light switch, and you face devastating consequences for the whole community."

Last month, a group of eight criminals were jailed by a judge in Liverpool for cutting into the electricity mains and connecting power cables to nearby warehouses being used as marijuana farms by Albanian crime gangs.

The company is increasingly relying on data analytics to monitor changes in the power grid’s frequency to track unusual activity which might suggest a surge in stolen electricity used for marijuana farming.

In Blackpool, more than 1,600 cannabis plants were found growing in the rooms of an abandoned hotel in 2023. Engineers discovered the electricity meter had been bypassed in three locations, including the pavement outside.

In another instance, the owners of a smallholding in Lancashire ran their own cable up the pole of an overhead power line to connect directly to a power transformer. They hadn’t been paying bills to their energy supplier, and had also begun farming marijuana.

Across the Midlands, a new source of energy theft has emerged: cryptocurrency miners.

In 2021, West Midlands police swooped on what they had presumed was a marijuana farm after drones detected a considerable heat source consistent with plant heaters. Instead, they found about 100 computers wired together being used to “mine” bitcoin, a process in which computers use vast amounts of energy to solve complex mathematical puzzles. In Leicestershire, a cryptocurrency trader was jailed in the same year for stealing electricity worth up to £32,000 at two sites where he operated bitcoin mining machines.

Sure let’s blame bitcoin

 

[jefferz]

Expanding the remit of this thread further, it seems one of the reasons for the UK's lack of electricity and high prices is mass theft of electricity by cannabis farmers and bitcoin miners. I think theft is actually only when you take possession of a physical object, so this is technically not that. Unlawful abstraction?

‘Honest folk are paying for this’: the fight against Britain’s billion-pound energy heist

From raids on marijuana farms to illegal bitcoin miners, suppliers are finding new ways to tackle the rise in gas and electricity theft

www.theguardian.com

By the time a team of police officers and engineers stormed a disused office block in Wigan, Greater Manchester, on a November morning last year, the building had been abandoned.

Left behind were rooms filled with thousands of cannabis plants: a nursery on the first floor, the growing crop on the second, and leaves drying out on the third. The criminal gang behind the marijuana farm is thought to have fled after the grid operator cut off the stolen electricity used to power scores of LED lamps.



“This was a proper setup,” said one engineer at the network operator Electricity North West, who took part in the raid. “It had a kitchen, television, several beds and even a treadmill. This [was] an incredibly professional set up on an industrial scale.”

The engineer, who asked not to be named, is part of a team set up by the grid company to crack down on Britain’s billion-pound energy heist. Across the country about £1.5bn worth of gas and electricity is estimated to be stolen every year, piling an extra £50 a year on to the nation’s household bills.

The team at Electricity North West began their investigation after fuses started blowing at a local power substation in the middle of the night. After the substation sensors showed that the power load was unusually high, and thermal imaging cameras confirmed buildings nearby were unusually warm, the police were called in.

“It is a growing problem. Good honest folk in this country are paying for this theft,” a second energy engineer said. The engineer also asked to remain anonymous because they routinely work with police to enter homes and businesses suspected of stealing energy to replace the damaged metering equipment. At the moment their employer responds to 900 calls a month.

Many cases of energy theft involve desperate people struggling to pay their bills as energy debts in the UK rise to record highs. But there are also concerns that energy is increasingly being stolen by organised criminal gangs to power marijuana farms or the servers behind illegal bitcoin mining, loading even higher costs on to bills that are paid.

Gas theft has also ripped through communities. David Garner,

the director of safety at the gas network company Cadent, leads a team of engineers who investigate suspected gas theft.

He said: “If you don’t know what you’re doing when you tamper with your pipework, you can create a gas leak which accumulates to an explosive level. All it takes to ignite this is a light switch, and you face devastating consequences for the whole community."

Last month, a group of eight criminals were jailed by a judge in Liverpool for cutting into the electricity mains and connecting power cables to nearby warehouses being used as marijuana farms by Albanian crime gangs.

The company is increasingly relying on data analytics to monitor changes in the power grid’s frequency to track unusual activity which might suggest a surge in stolen electricity used for marijuana farming.

In Blackpool, more than 1,600 cannabis plants were found growing in the rooms of an abandoned hotel in 2023. Engineers discovered the electricity meter had been bypassed in three locations, including the pavement outside.

In another instance, the owners of a smallholding in Lancashire ran their own cable up the pole of an overhead power line to connect directly to a power transformer. They hadn’t been paying bills to their energy supplier, and had also begun farming marijuana.

Across the Midlands, a new source of energy theft has emerged: cryptocurrency miners.

In 2021, West Midlands police swooped on what they had presumed was a marijuana farm after drones detected a considerable heat source consistent with plant heaters. Instead, they found about 100 computers wired together being used to “mine” bitcoin, a process in which computers use vast amounts of energy to solve complex mathematical puzzles. In Leicestershire, a cryptocurrency trader was jailed in the same year for stealing electricity worth up to £32,000 at two sites where he operated bitcoin mining machines.

Blaming their energy problems on pot farms is ridiculous.
They’re not using 400w metal halides anymore.

 

[Osculater]

Those fools were sucking the free juice!

 

[Natural Order]

So wait, lots of electricity is being stolen, but they still make too much to use.

Let them grow!

 

[ColemanwastheGOAT]

Uh-oh @650lb Sumo, you kicked the sherdog drug addict hornets' nest.

 

[curryjunkie]

Uh-oh @650lb Sumo, you kicked the sherdog drug addict hornets' nest.

Dipshit says what?

 

[Whippy McGee]

They have immigrants to spend their money on... electricity? Meh.....

 

[650lb Sumo]

They have immigrants to spend their money on... electricity? Meh.....

I pulled up the names of the accused/convicted in the first few results for 'cannabis farm prosecution', where the names were printed:

Spoiler: Links

https://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk...rone-cannabis-farm-RULEZZQN7BFFVDTAEPIPDUVEEQ

Scammers used landlords' homes for cannabis farms worth over £4.5 million

Mirel Neatu and Marius Nedelcu have now been jailed

www.leeds-live.co.uk

'Gangsters trafficked me to grow cannabis after £300m gambling debt,' trial hears

A Vietnamese man accused of cultivating cannabis plants claims he was trafficked to the UK and forced to water the plants by gangsters.

www.oxfordmail.co.uk

'Significant' cannabis farm was found after police raid along with 'gardener'

A “considerable and significant” cannabis farm was discovered after a police raid at a house in which a “gardener” was also found.

www.burytimes.co.uk

92 cannabis plants seized from Caithness mansion where pair deny running drugs farm

Two Caithness men have gone on trial accused of operating a cannabis farm at a historic mansion in the county.

www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk

Man in court after police bust £60,000 cannabis farm in Rotherham

A MAN is facing prosecution after Rotherham police swooped on a cannabis farm with plants worth around £60,000 being cultivated.

www.rotherhamadvertiser.co.uk

Fake workmen who dug up roads to power cannabis farms jailed

Police say the gang were paid to supply electricity to a multi-million pound cannabis farms network.

www.bbc.co.uk

Three men to face trial following discovery of cannabis farm

Three men are to face trial over a cannabis farm discovered in Brighouse.

www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk

Greg Black
Lewin Charles
Aiden Doran
Damon Mackay
Ross McGinn
Philip Nicholson
Andrew Roberts
Jack Sherry

Glendian Daci
Seyan Debnath
Admir Doku
Arjan Gjeta
Jobukas Jasikonis
Vygandas Kuzminskas
Mirel Neatu
Marius Nedelcu
Nam Nguyen
Phuong Nguyen
Tuan Le Viet
Antonj Selami
Cong Van Le
Colin White (there was a photo)
Aurel Xhoka

 

[Arkain2K]

Green energy gets switched off as power systems fail to keep up​

Wind and solar generators stop production at rising rates as grids and battery storage lags

Green energy gets switched off as power systems fail to keep up

Wind and solar generators stop production at rising rates as grids and battery storage lags

www.ft.com

 

[no fat chicks]

We don't invest in major infrastructure projects like we used to

 

[Wrath of Foamy]

We don't invest in major infrastructure projects like we used to

When have we ever invested in anything?

Water, the railroads, roads, all of them charge us extortionate amounts every year, do shit repair jobs then bill us extra the next year so that they can do the same thing.

They'll never be truly fixed.

 

[Seano]

what has weed farming got to do with national energy infrastructure?

He literally spells it out his point in the first sentence of his post.

 

[curryjunkie]

He literally spells it out his point in the first sentence of his post.

a few weed farms has fuck all to do with the grid coping with wind powered output you spanner