Many people never think about electricity. It is just something that is there when we turn the lights on or want to turn up the heating, and we never give it any further consideration.
Nonetheless, according to a report on January 6th, the UK market is “showing signs of strain”. It stated that for the fourth time this winter just past, National Grid warned that the buffer needed to keep the lights on and ensure continuity of supply was too small. The report continued that, as on Wednesday that week, when the wind didn’t blow and cold weather boosted demand at the same time that several nuclear plants were offline, the grid operator was scrambling to avoid blackouts.
Furthermore, things are only likely to get worse. The government is planning to quadruple the amount of offshore wind capacity in the next nine years. And when the winds don’t blow, those turbines will produce nothing. Certainly, there are backup systems in place, but National Grid needs to get better at balancing the system when the renewables are not functioning.
According to Weijie Mak, project leader at Aurora Energy Research Ltd, “As the U.K. continues to rely on intermittent renewables, you need to have more and more backup capacities in place. You get into this issue where it’s harder and harder to manage the system.”
This all seems to indicate that power outages are going to become more common rather than less. Sure, if the power goes down for an hour or two while you are watching Corrie, it can be frustrating, but it is hardly life-changing. You can always catch up with it later.
However, if you run a business and the power goes down in the middle of a manufacturing process it can at the least cost you lost hours of work, and at the worst may cost thousands if the product you are creating is not able to be finished and you have to start all over with a fresh set of materials.
The answer is to have a standby generator or two and if you want to buy new generators in the UK you need to talk to Blades Power Generation. As specialists in the sale and supply of generators, we have a full range of generators that will do everything from keeping Corrie running to keeping a full factory running – many with ATS (Automatic Transfer switch) so that you will be back to full power within seconds of the utility going down. Talk to us if you want to buy new generators in the UK.
