Comment by eftychis
3 years ago
To the commenters saying that wind farms should move South or blaming wind farms or other energy producers. (My opinion and knowledge follows.)
That is the whole idea of a robust and efficient transmission network: to transfer power from where it is cheaply generated across even countries; and mitigate any power production or transmission network failures.
Say there is bad weather/physical catastrophe/heat wave in X area? No problem, we produce it in Y and deliver via Z. Pricier to produce in Y on time t, no problem produce in cheaper X and send to Y.
My read: Somehow U.K. managed to cheapskate on that front and we are now surprised it is more costly when extremely cheap gas is a thing of the past.
I am simply surprised that Scotland and England are not extra tightly interconnected. We can't really afford wasting or curtailing energy in Europe. Ideally U.K. should have been exporting that extra power.
P.S. It seems to me that U.K. has a quite fragmented transmission network "by design." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_network_operator#... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Power_Networks I think that is a terrible idea. P.S.2 To the U.S. readers: they pulled a "Texas."
UK has managed to cheap skate on many different fronts. When money was cheap they went on a cost cutting spree for a decade when they should have been using all of that money to invest in services and infrastructure. Now everything is crumbling.
Scotland has a different legal system and even historically insisted upon separate versions of otherwise national concerns - for example that is why there is a "National Trust"[1] and a separate "Scottish National Trust".
Since the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament this tendency has only accelerated.
[1] A charity that maintains stately homes and other historic artefacts
Interesting and informative. Thank you!