In a remarkable few minutes this evening, BBC Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs programme with Evan Davis (PM) spent some time (at just under half an hour in) discussing the current cold and snowy weather, and talking about the problems suffered by old people at this time and the pressure cold weather (plus people falling on snow and ice and injuring themselves) adds to the winter woes of the NHS. Then Mr Davis went on to discuss the weather with Liz Bentley, Chief Executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, before giving us this short interchange:

ED: When people talk about Britain moving to Net Zero, Liz, and having more electricity, and more of it powered by wind, they sometimes say the problem is gonna be in January when you get a week of very cold weather and no wind, and then you’re not gonna have enough electricity to heat everyone’s homes. Would this be one of those weeks? I think it’s called the dunkelflaute…

LB:…Yes….

ED:…the windless cold weather.

LB: Yeah, so, actually we’ve had quite a bit of wind this week, and that’s been I think a problem, particularly across Scotland – a lot of drifting of snow because of the wind and blizzards as that snow gets blown around. So, we haven’t seen the kind of complete calm conditions that you often get in those, as you described, where, you know, it’s very cold, but also very calm. We have had the wind this week. But, you know, inevitably, those will become periods of time when we will have issues from renewables, particularly wind energy, when the wind just drops out completely, but no, it wouldn’t be an issue this week…..[my emphasis].

I was still recovering from shock at a prime time acknowledgement by the BBC of the dunkelflaute problem for renewables when Mr Davis moved on to talk about the attack on energy infrastructure in Berlin by “radical left anarchists with a strong bent towards climate protest” (in the words of his interviewee) and the problems that has caused to local residents in freezing weather conditions.

Did the earth just move?

7 Comments

  1. No, the BEEB have been forced by the public/scandal’s to row back on the bias.

    Can’t remember the wording exactly, but between BBC progs recently we get something like this –

    “The BBC is funded by you, so thank you”.

    Like

  3. Jit,

    At 11.35 am the price is £233.01 per MWh, with gas producing 57.5%; solar 4.1%; wind 20.2%; and the interconnectors nothing (net). Interestingly we are receiving no electricity from Norway and we are sending a small amount to France.

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  5. PAUL BURGESS is the king of the wind drought hill!

    https://substack.com/home/post/p-180089713 This is a killer video, and a chilling warning about impending disaster for Britain due to suicidal energy policies since the Theresa May government.

    The wind industry must be the only enterprise that ever survived without caring about the reliability of the supply chain for the major input.

    The combination of wind droughts and the cost of grid-scale storage guarantees that there will never be a transition to wind and solar.

    Dirt farmers are alert to the threat of rain droughts, but meteorologists never issued wind drought warnings and the wind farmers never checked the reliability of the wind supply.

    https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/the-sinister-threat-of-wind-droughts

    Why did nobody take any notice of the Dunkelflautes observed for years on the North Sea oil and gas rigs? And Britain and Germany bet the farm on wind, especially offshore wind!

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/a-curious-tale-of-the-north-sea-winds/

    The Australian pioneer wind watchers sounded an alarm but not even the Australian authorities and journalists took any notice.

    Severe rain droughts in the country impact the whole of the local community, not just the farmers. Citizens in countries where the government has “bet the farm” on wind power have all unwittingly become part of the “wind farming community.” We had better become sensitive to wind droughts by checking your local grid at breakfast and dinner time to see if we will get a hot meal during a severe wind drought, if there is no coal power in the grid.

    https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/will-windpower-heat-your-breakfast

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Rafe C,

    Quite apart from the severe problem of dunkelflautes, I have posted elsewhere on Cliscep about the fact that the Met Office reports a gradually declining trend in wind speeds. Put the two issues together, and betting the (energy) farm on a problematic source of energy doesn’t like a good plan, nor does it on the face of it offer the UK energy security.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. I think the situation is desperate. Look at the disastrous consequences of failing to check the supply chain for the most important input to the wind power industry.

    Insert “for want of checking the wind supply” in this unhappy story.

    For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
    For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

    And then the rider, the message, the battle and the kingdom

    Now the once-proud industrial kingdoms of Britain and Germany are virtually lost, and Australia is circling the drain.

    Liked by 2 people

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