Keep an eye on this
Power outages over a huge swathe of the UK today. There are three things going on here:
Aging infrastructure. They haven’t been maintaining the old suppliers of electricity like they should. This is in large part because:
Push for green alternatives. They’re scrabbling to replace reliable, old-fashioned sources like coal and nuclear with windpower, wavepower and solar. Not only are these things inherently unable to pull the cart, but the old fossil fuel plants aren’t allowed to be maintained properly or upgraded.
But mostly because there are a lot more people on this little island than they’re letting on. The official figure is somewhere around 60 million, but lots of people think it’s at least 10 million more than that. Based on quantifiable data like housing shortages and stock movement in the big supermarket chains. (On an unrelated note, they pulled something like another 30 ‘migrants’ out of the water near us today alone).
It was pretty messy, because it essentially knocked out all transportation. On a Friday. People were using their phones to light their way out of the subway, at least one lady got stuck in a carriage because the doors wouldn’t open (where was the backup power to basic emergency services? Good question).
Expect more of this. But hey, I expect the enthusiasm for green energy to wane when Jemima can’t charge her iphone.
And yes we lost power, but just long enough to turn off our computers and not long enough that we noticed until we noticed our computers were off. Good weekend, everyone!
August 9, 2019 — 10:29 pm
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