Dave Takes It On 
The National Grid was built upon fossil fuels. But as those become politically and economically unviable, is it time for a radical rethink? Aging infrastructure, increased demand, and a lack of investment have all contributed to the energy crisis we’re facing today. But it’s not all doom and gloom – there are steps we can take to fix the National Grid and ensure a sustainable energy future. In this video, we’ll explore the root causes of the energy crisis, from outdated infrastructure to climate-related disruptions, and discuss the energy reform measures needed to get us back on track. From upgrading our transmission lines to investing in renewable energy sources, we’ll examine the solutions that can help us overcome the national grid’s infrastructure issues and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Join us as we delve into the complex issues surrounding the National Grid and discover the ways in which we can work together to create a more resilient and sustainable energy system.
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About The Author
The reason the grid needs massive upgrades is because we're switching from power stations close to cities to off-shore wind farms hundreds of miles from where it's needed. The windiest part of the UK is the sea north of Scotland but most of the power is used in the south east, 500 miles away. Some people are calling for regional pricing, but it's not clear that it could happen fast enough to drive the change we need.
It's true there's a massive backlog of grid connections, but most of that is speculative and will never be built. You can tell because we use about 30GW, and the backlog of applications for grid connections is now over 700GW. Applying for a connection is relatively cheap, so energy developers apply for the connection before they buy/lease the land or apply for planning permission.
I didn't really understand who your plan for a zero emissions mandate for power would apply to, but it sounds like it's basically a carbon tax. That's something that lots of people have been calling for, for years.
Also, please stop saying "the wind doesn't always blow". It does, it just moves around. It might be calm where you are, but it's windy a few hundred miles away. Have a look at http://Windy.com over a few weeks to see that there's always wind somewhere around the UK.
We should NOT be even looking at nuclear energy!! Look at what happened in Chernobyl!! We just DO NOT need it!!
And that’s without the possibility of a Chernobyl Disaster in England!! It’s time for a government to shut down the nuclear power stations that EDF wants to build!!
Another thing we could use is hydro electricity – that’s nearly as green as solar and wind energy. More hydro electric power would be very much better than nuclear!!
A glaringly obvious way to help us get more renewable energy and storage without costing the government a penny, would be to legislate that all new builds, domestic and commercial must have say a minimum of 80% of need matched by solar and battery storage for each build. There are newer types of cables that carry considerably more power than much of the installed grid. I believe the National Grid are already installing these as it requires no new pylons or planning permission. Another part of the solution will be geothermal and tidal. This won't reach the levels of solar and wind but it will give a modest part of our supply a better level of predictability.
17 days of storage for average UK household energy use is around 5 billion kwh of battery capacity.I haven't tried to work out the physical size of those batteries but it certainly seems like it would be unfathomable large.
No way should a business have its own nuclear power station. It would be open to terrorist attacks and a danger to the general public.
You are not clear in distinguushing between generation (the amount of power demand) and distribution which is the cables etc that get the power from generators to customers.
It used to be that the old national company would look at poulation, industry, coal availability of the whole country coal transport and roughly design a grid which would be sort of efficient bearing in mind that distribution losses are about 8% so think about coal going by rail from the mines etc etc.
Then comes gas with all its supply costs from well or terminal.
Should the generators be closer to the fuel source or the customer demand.
Rapidly introducing renewables into the mix means that energy can only be transported from wind sites to customers by cable. That is a problem because the wincd sites are along way from the customers and there is no existing cabling to transport it so it all has to be new, and there is a lot to do.
I was never for privitisation of any essential services for the reasons mentioned. Water is a great example.
There is a third component to the electrical network. The suppliers. They "sell" quantities of electricity that the generators generate to customers using the "grid" as their transport mechanism. Some providers are also generators.
I like to think therecare two grids. The physical grid which is all the generators and cables bringing electrons to the customers building and the financial grid which is all the meters and accounting systems which make the money flow.
Providers like Octopus who are real experts in running the market are tremendously influential in shaping energy use and matching generation capacity to demand with their tariffs . I think it would hard for any government to come up with such a system so that customers use energy when it is available and not continually on demand.
What is needed is more cables to connect the wind sites with the population and industrial centres and for everybody to get solar on their roofs. At worse solar is a useful reduction in demand in winter during the day, at best it is a huge generator allowing wind energy to be stored.
Interesting fact.
When a generator is swirched on before transferring power it is perfectly synchronised with the grid. National Grid became national in the thirties and has not failed since.
There are no generators from those days but the 50 hz signal which started at the very beginning is still going, being passed on like a baton in a relay race where many of the team have passed away and most of the team have yet to be born. It cpuld go on to the end of the world.
I find that sort of romantic.
~12:00 Your grid, our (US) grid, all the grids, really do need a lot of upgrading, right down to the foundations. That's not just because of increasing use of renewable energy. Modernization is an ongoing process. No crash program is needed (although, of course, some acceleration is needed in some places). Equipment is always in need of replacement, as it wears out or becomes out of date. Use those events to update those items that need it.
Listening to Trump he couldn't care less about clean energy.He really wants to stop in the dark ages no vision.
The profit motive of the Nation Grid is at odds with its mission to transition to a network powered by a distributed energy supply from intermittent renewables. This is why many of us who live remote rural area cannot get a G99 generation application past our DNOs (also the National Grid in our area) – the infrastructure is simply not up to it. When there is a clear choice between paying investors a dividend or replacing decades old electricity cables, it comes as no surprise to any of us that the former always wins.
I cannot see any government going toe to toe with the gigantic businesses running the 'National Grid' they are just too financially powerful to take on. It would be better for businesses and private homes, where possible to install their own solar and battery storage, homes need at least 12kWh of storage, businesses need to calculate their day to day use to produce the right size of storage they need to operate. Connection delays should be exposed and enquiries set up to discover what the delays were, lets shine a spotlight on the DNO's to see who they are, who owns them and why its taking so long for connections. If they cannot make connections within a reasonable period of time their operating licenses need reviewing.
Did you say there was a link below and a report we can read? I can’t see the link? Repost please.
The UK, like California mentioned in the video, generates more electrical energy from renewables than fossil-fuels today.
The grid themselves have stated hey are on track to be carbon neutral, meaning mainly renewable and low carbon (biomass etc) with offsetting, by 2035 and fully Net Zero by 2050. The later being the government/OFGEMs goal and 2035 the grids own initiative.
The UKs battery capacity was 5GW up to the end of last year, another 4GW this year, and 95GW (confirmed pipeline) by 2030.
The National Grid themselves have flagged the connection issue, have ramped up their own resources to meet demand but face a slow regulation system in getting connections approved.
Basically everyone generators, storage, consumers and the grids are shouting for change – lets hope the government listens and funds such it the forthcoming budget.
Funny how not so long ago people were saying the grid is fine and can cope with the demands of the EV and heat pumps. I don’t buy AI being that heavy demand.
Very Interesting subject.Thank you Dave 👍👍
2023 saw the Earth that used to absorb 30% of CO2 not absorb any!!! Earth temps now up to 1.64c above pre industrial!!! Geo Thermal is an exciting addition to Wind/Solar/Storage and needs investing in and can be used at existing Fossil Power Stations and has a very small footprint!! Sub Stations could need renewing to add local capacity and let energy flow "both ways"!!
Renewable energy has been mis-sold. There is no "Saudi Arabia of Wind power" as claimed by renewable energy fanatics. The Saudi's most efficient wells take oil out of the ground for $10 per barrel, sell it for $70, and pocket $60. Wind and solar and all the necessary back-iup generation, grid stabilization, energy storage, and hugely expanded grid is so expensive it needs to be subsidised, there is no net gain for Britain, just incredibly expensive energy for everyone, expect peak time electricity to cost £1 per kWh, and the elimination of all energy intensive manufacturing. In a renewables powered Britain, even bread will become a luxury. Nuclear is the only hope for non-oil & gas producing countries.
What about hydro? Pretty sure at least part of our renewable energy is generated by that?
I still think the likes of GA Drilling (Geothermal Anywhere) and Quaise Energy could be the answer to our ling-term energy needs.
Sorry Dave nearly all your stats are in the USA particularly google and nuclear power story! I don’t believe any uk government, even the Tories, would allow that😮! In the uk power is not generated by the national grid but by the power companies- NG basically balances demand against supply and has no control over the types of generation. Yes I agree NG has a lot of work to do to match the new supply offerings particularly off shore that is nowhere near a grid connection. As I’ve said before we need to use the old Power Station sites as wind/solar/battery locations but that isn’t the grids decision- Generating companies make those decisions! What the grid could do is add battery storage to its larger substation sites which could be used to balance demand!
It’s not just like moving a fly lead from one patch panel to another! The biggest issue is getting connections to these new wind farms, planning applications delay everything!
They have stated that they want to move to micro grids, this would mean, something like adding batteries next to the new solar farm so that itthey would have no need to upgrade the supply line as the batteries could send all day the lower line level whilst storing anything in excess during the day. I would hope that this means we would be able to get as much storage as we want in our homes. This also then acts as more grid storage for them.
Something needs to be done to get all of these works connected efficiently.
The only certain thing to me is that we will move to renewables and that pace is increasing as costs are falling for this, where the olf fossil fuel ones will just become more and more expensive.
Ok, so here's one for you and I've heard almost nothing on this idea!
Most people, in most countries are probably using streamed data in some way, everyday.
Whether it be on the many platforms like YouTube via a mobile, laptop or on their own home TV's, the fact is, they use their data to watch and the broadcaster uses data to create the broadcast.
In a world where we are seemingly quite concerned about energy use, why are we able to freely create/watch content/films in 2k,4k/8k??? There is no real need for it! 4k, maybe 8k in cinemas I can understand.
I watch on a 15.6 screen laptop with 480p, as it's enough. I do up it sometimes to 720p for live financial charts on YT, but it's only for about 1% of my laptop time. I do not need any higher resolution.
I get, the bigger the screen, the higher resolution helps for a good picture, but we now have ridiculously large TV screens, some so big, that 2k is probably the minimum most people would use for clarity!
Perhaps Governments ought to set a maximum size of TV screens to 55 – 60 inches, which is very big compared to 30 years ago. I would not say lower than 55 inch, as TV screen can carry a multitude of detail these days.
But also limit all TV, laptop, mobile screens to 2k max. This also has to mean limiting broadcasts to 2k max.
Then also add proportion, to it; a 40 inch TV screen is very clear, running at 1080p. Even if the broadcast is in 2k, there is still energy saving at the viewers end!
There must be millions watching things in a higher wasteful resolution, because nothing stops them or never think about reducing resolution to a level that's still quite clear! You see where I'm going with this by now?
For example; a 1hr video made in 4k, with me watching in 4k takes about 5 times more electric to produce and be watched once, than made in 1080p and watched in 1080p. And that one video could be watched 100,000 times!!
My main point….a massive saving on electricity currently being used!
If you ever see my comments on this channel, I genuinely mean them and am not here to be an arse!
I have made a couple of angry comments, but only when I see very biased content.
I do drop the odd sarcastic reply to a few over the top comments, but often end it with a 'lol'
All I ever try to convey, is that with EV's, we are still running before we can walk!
Tony Seba says every country can run on solar wind and batteries https://youtu.be/A9McWXZA5wc?si=cNVbHj3FCFutNhew
There are actually two 'grids' in the UK – The 'National' Grid (which is currently undergoing a 40 -50 Billion pound upgrade) and the local 'Distribution' grids (which takes power from substations to your home). It's the Distribution Grids which are the problem, it was recently reported that if (when) everybody has an EV /heat pump/ solar panels/a personal power (battery) storage system, the Local Grids would be incapable of carrying the requisite loadings. To upgrade the Local grids it was stated it would take 25 -30 years and cost upwards of 300 Billion which would have to be funded by a surcharge on bills.
Dave what is this about vat going on public charging