ELECTRICITY needs INERTIA

 

I just wonder if Loony Ed Milliband has ever heard of the ‘Spinning Grid’. Our entire National Grid Electricity Generating system was built around 500 ton turbine driven alternators, spinning at exactly 3,000 r.p.m. Originally, all our Power Stations had coal-fired boilers generating masses of superheated steam which then fed into massive spinning Turbines; which were connected directly to those huge Alternators: from whence came the electrical power to feed the Nation’s lights, businesses, homes, cities. The one thing which all these Power Stations had in common was ‘Inertia’. Just imagine the force, the delicate balancing of 500-ton rotating Alternator Rotors to spin at exactly 3,000 r.p.m. But once you have achieved that speed, it takes an awful lot of force to slow that ‘spinning’ rotor down from the magic 3,000 r.p.m. So, your Alternators are generating electricity at 50 Hertz (or Cycles per Second). The Grid Engineers knew that they could rely upon their ‘Spinning’ Power systems to deliver exactly what they were designed for,

But, in this magic industrialised land we used to inhabit, change is always necessary. Engineers were able to swap oil for coal in the nation’s Power Station boilers, and coal became less popular, although still necessary as a last standby source. Power stations with boilers fuelled entirely by oil became the new standard; and after North Sea Gas was discovered around our very own shores, the huge boilers were made redundant, as Gas-Fired Turbines were found to be both economical and extremely trustworthy. An extra benefit was found to be that the huge amounts of heat generated by the Gas Turbines could also be utilised as a secondary power source by piping that heat towards Steam Turbines which also drove more ‘Spinning Alternators’.

The reason why the ‘Spinning Grid’ has remained as the bedrock policy of power generation for nearly 80 years is because Electrical and Mechanical Engineers appreciate that the Electricity Supply to GB&NI is at 50 Hertz (or Cycles per Second). That is known in engineering terms as the frequency. If the engineers of the National Grid wish to bring on to the Grid another Power Station’s output, they know that the new Station’s engineers will have brought their new Generators up to speed and hence ‘Frequency’ and all the Grid engineers have to do is match the new ‘Power’ to the existing Grid ‘Power’; close the massive circuit breakers: and ‘Voila’, extra Power is instantly available if, say, its winter time, and people are cooking dinners, or switching lights or electric fires on, and the extra Power is seamlessly absorbed.

But there is always a ‘But’. Some well-meaning pseudo-scientists cam up with the lunatic idea of ‘Climate Change’, or blaming an apparent planet-wide temperature increase on mankind’s pumping Carbon Dioxide (or CO2) into the atmosphere from coal, oil and gas-fired Power Stations; and persuaded some gullible politicians that their theories were correct, that all this extra (apparent) heat was melting glaciers, and melting Arctic ice fields; thus meaning that all the ice would melt, and drive floods into our coastal cities, and: well, I don’t really need to go on, do I?

But, (there’s that ‘But) again; we still need electricity. Modern day life could not run without electric power. So those same pseudo-scientists came up with an idea: “What if we generate power from the wind?. Suddenly, a new Industry was born, making ever larger three-bladed wind generating sets, plant them on huge towers on hillsides where the wind is known to blow most of the time, and use THAT electricity instead of all that nasty Coal, Oil and Gas-Fired Electricity, which, in the new ‘Religion’ was not very nice to the planet. So they got politicians from all over to agree that CO2 wasn’t a ‘Nice thing’, and they should all build these wonderful new ‘Renewable’ wind turbines all over the landscape: oh, and just by-the-way; these Renewables are very costly to build and install, so the people who actually USE this wonderful Wind Power have to pay either three or four times the normal cost of Electricity, because its “SAVING THE PLANET” So these politicians of all colours huddled amongst themselves, and decided that they would simply MAKE people understand that it was simply necessary to have this really pricey ‘Renewable Electricity” because it was all about ‘Saving the Planet’ and stopping any more heat escaping; which over time became known as ‘NET ZERO’. 

The ONE thing which politicians forgot, or possibly didn’t know was needed was that vital INERTIA. If a wind turbine, or even a field of turbines, has to switch itself off because ‘THE WIND IS TOO STRONG’, then there is nothing to take the place of the ‘Inertia’ which has suddenly disappeared.When a turbine-alternator string has to go offline, it is still there, spinning at 3,000 r.p.m. ready the be switched back into circuit. The problem with reliance on wind was demonstrated just few days ago when all of Spain, along with about half of Portugal, suffered massive blackouts is because Spain is now almost totally reliant upon wind energy for all their generation needs. It sounds similar to the South Australian blackout of 2016. Once a few wind or solar generators trip out for some reason, the voltage or frequency shocks in the system cause other generators to drop out and interconnectors to disconnect. There is no inherent stability in the system because they lack the heavy spinning turbines. Our entire national grids were designed around heavy 500 ton turbines which spin at 3,000 revolutions per minute (or 3,600 RPM in the USA). That’s an awesome amount of inertia, and all that stability was “free” — it was just part of the grid. But the subsidized market, and the pagan fixation on “renewables”, because they supposedly stop storms next century, guarantees that reliable turbines get pushed out of the market. The crazy-balloon has filled the room.

There were other avenues for electricity generation, such as nuclear power, but although the nuclear route could also be said ‘clean’ or ‘renewable’ the costs of such stations, and the super-expensive electricity generated therein, makes them unrealistic for future planning. There are also ‘Solar’ panels, which convert the sun’s heat into electricity, but they are mainly sourced from China, made with slave labour, and only popular with Loon Ed Milliband because the CO2 produced in their manufacture is made in China, and therefore they only take up vast acres of farmland, and Farmers don’t count anymore.

So here we are in England, with a Labour Party in Government, with all these truly expensive ‘Climate Change going on, and the Local Council Elections have just shown that if Sir Two-Tier Kier Starmer had ever thought that he and his Labour Party would govern on and on, the Reform UK Party have just demonstrated just how unpopular they really are. But will he change? Starmer isn’t daft, but is he wedded to the paths he has planned? The policies he and his Cabinet have decided upon are the most unpopular in decades, and the most unpopular are those which condemn British people to pay the highest prices for Electricity in the world. Loony Ed Milliband is in his element, a demagogue of the first water; but does Starmer have the courage to sack him, loosen the bonds on Oil and Gas exploration, allow Fracking for the trillions locked up in gas beneath our own land, and get Britain back on to a firm path towards a cheaper, warmer future?