Britain becomes net electricity exporter

[Swwils]

Ready access to energy is the cornerstone of civilization. There is a reason that Anglo Saxons used Roman glass and couldn't make their own.

Arbitrary blackouts or deindustrialisation make alot of people very unhappy very fast.

Get that, but don’t ‘we’ have a responsibility to use it sensibly - this winter, with the price rises, have made people consider their usage.

Why wasn’t this occurring already - we're generally too frivolous with resources.

It's a shame smart meter and IHD is so bungled. Having live consumption figures really helps! The HAN for appliances to talk too was also great.

[Marcus]

Ready access to energy is the cornerstone of civilization. There is a reason that Anglo Saxons used Roman glass and couldn't make their own.

Arbitrary blackouts or deindustrialisation make alot of people very unhappy very fast.

Get that, but don’t ‘we’ have a responsibility to use it sensibly - this winter, with the price rises, have made people consider their usage.

Why wasn’t this occurring already - we're generally too frivolous with resources.

The fact is that there are a lot of people out there who care about themselves and their money and as long as they're not short of money they just don't care about the planet

In the past I've explained the reality of climate change to people who are still wasing energy with halogen lamps and hot, poorly insulated homes, and they just shrug, say 'yeah, i do feel a bit sorry for my kids, but I'll be dead when it happens so why should i care?'
Then the price of fuel goes up and suddenly they're asking about insulation, and trading in their big cars for something cheaper to run; the price of electricity goes up and they start asking is it worth them fitting solar panels? But even now, with climate changing before our eyes, they they are still basically motivated by saving themselves money.

So I'm just as happy for energy prices to stay high.

[dan_b]

Humans are terrible at planning for the future. It's probably something to do with our caveman ancestry. Most people can't cope with the concept of doing something now to prevent something happening in 10-20-30 years time.
But if something hurts us in the here and now (fuel costs gone up) - most people can understand that.

At least we are now at the point where renewable/green technology is actually now competing on price, and not just "it'll save some CO2 for future generations to not be so badly off"

[Adokforme]

While we've been importing from France mostly in this last week I see that just now we're exporting almost 3GW to them. Have one of their nukes gone down or is it just extremely cold over there accounting for increased demand!

[nowty]

While we've been importing from France mostly in this last week I see that just now we're exporting almost 3GW to them. Have one of their nukes gone down or is it just extremely cold over there accounting for increased demand!

I've been trying to work that out myself.

From memory from yesterday I think their demand is up and their wind is down.
But we have a nice blow down the north sea today over the offshore generating areas.

Friday will be an interesting day as wind will be low in most of Europe and it will still be cold.

[Swwils]

Low wind and high demand due to electrical heating. Countries with gas heating have more stable demand profile during cold snaps.

We only really export gas generated power to them.

[Moxi]

EDF workers were also reportedly planning strike action as part of their negotiated pay round so maybe theres a bit of work to rule going on too ?

Lord doesnt it feel a smidge like the 1970's again ?

Moxi