It is 11th August 2022, and the sky is clear blue and good for solar. There is a high pressure over the North Sea that is really bad for wind. We have in excess of 7,000 wind turbines on and offshore. On a good day when a reasonable wind is blowing evenly across the country we can squeeze as much as 14GW from the wind farms for a short while. On a bad day they are rubbish.

On Monday at 14.45 hours the electricity generation was as follows;-

Demand 34.3GW

• CCGT (Gas) 14.67GW 42.8%
• Solar 8.14GW 28.73%
• Nuclear 4.15GW 13.15%
• Biomass 2.28GW 8.86%
• Wind 1.7GW 4.95%.
• Coal 0.38GW 1.06%

In the future the Tories and their successors are going to quadruple the number of wind turbines. That means for an enormous expense they could be achieving as little as 6.8GW on a day like this in future. That means they will still need 40GW of other continuously rated generation so where will they get it from?

As for the government hoping to be able to use the continental interconnects totalling 5.8GW this winter, it isn’t going to happen because all of Europe is now starved of energy.

That means this winter when it is an overcast sky, very cold and little wind, the demand could be in excess of 45GW, and we won't be able to achieve more than 40GW. So, there will be 10% of the country blacked out, unless of course they fire up all those diesel generators. There is just no logic to dogma.

The UK Independence Party action plan:

We would press for the Drax power station in Yorkshire to be reconverted from burning wood chips to burn coal again and could be producing 3.6GW within a year, provided UK mines or imports can provide the coal.

The demand the moratorium on fracking to be lifted as soon as the new PM is in post and could be producing industrial amounts of gas within 2 years from onshore wells, with offshore ones to follow a year or two later.

Hinkley point C will not be on-line until June 2027 and will provide continuous 3.26GW of electricity.

Small Modular Reactors are waiting for government approval expected in 2024 then 5 years to build and being brought on-line in 2029 generating 470MW each. We need 10 of them urgently.

Antony Nailer

UK Independence Party - Spokesman for Energy, Environment, Transport, & Treasury