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UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

nationalgrid.com

81–90 of 142 posts

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#81
post #79

Time to phase out that last coal generator! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_coal-fired_powe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratcliffe-on-Soar_Power_Statio... Edit: interconnector already ramped to 800MW importing to the UK. Let’s gooooooooo!

Can we just agree to a phase down of that coal generator instead?

For how long would it need to be mothballed before you’d be comfortable demolishing it? Important to be conservative wrt grid stability, but at some point, burn the ships so there is no going back.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#82
post #77
post #74

I posted 1.5 months ago about how a potentially catastrophic grid event three years ago instead showed how successful the EU cooperation is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38251463 As an aside, the UK is still part of this but thanks to Brexit they got the opportunity to finance this interconnector by themselves and not avail themselves to the vast funds from the European Energy Programme for Recovery. For exam…

> but thanks to Brexit they got the opportunity to finance this interconnector by themselves and not avail themselves to the vast funds from the European Energy Programme for Recovery the UK was a net contributor to the EU everything it "received" from the EU was paid for by itself https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48256318

sigh

The UK’s net EU budget contribution in 2014 was £9.8 billion https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

Meanwhile the UK exported $276 billion worth of good to the EU more than half of its total https://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import-...

Not counting anything else just these two we could say the EU had a 3.6% tariff on UK imports (insanely low! check https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/daily_update_e/ta... -- and note the post brexit deal only created a 0% tariff on goods and not services). And even that is a severe exaggeration because there were other benefits to this.

On the other hand, the way these things went it's very likely the UK already contributed to the EERP but got nothing out of it.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#83
post #79

Time to phase out that last coal generator! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_coal-fired_powe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratcliffe-on-Soar_Power_Statio... Edit: interconnector already ramped to 800MW importing to the UK. Let’s gooooooooo!

Can we just agree to a phase down of that coal generator instead?

they can't, or else british clocks wouldn't be ahead :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bij-JjzCa7o

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#84
post #82
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but thanks to Brexit they got the opportunity to finance this interconnector by themselves and not avail themselves to the vast funds from the European Energy Programme for Recovery the UK was a net contributor to the EU everything it "received" from the EU was paid for by itself https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48256318

sigh The UK’s net EU budget contribution in 2014 was £9.8 billion https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... Meanwhile the UK exported $276 billion worth of good to the EU more than half of its total https://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import-... Not counting anything else just these two we could say the EU had a 3.6% tariff on UK imports (insanely low! check https://www.wto.org/…

> very likely the UK already contributed to the EERP but *got nothing out of it*.

I for one am swimming in all the surplus cash not going to the EU any more, as well as all those upwards revisions to GDP and employment, and our pound soaring to new highs improving my purchasing power.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#85
post #79

Time to phase out that last coal generator! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_coal-fired_powe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratcliffe-on-Soar_Power_Statio... Edit: interconnector already ramped to 800MW importing to the UK. Let’s gooooooooo!

Can we just agree to a phase down of that coal generator instead?

Meh we're down to 1.1% of generation being coal in the last year; low enough to stop worrying about. Lets worry about how to get rid of the 33.5% of gas!

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#86
post #82
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but thanks to Brexit they got the opportunity to finance this interconnector by themselves and not avail themselves to the vast funds from the European Energy Programme for Recovery the UK was a net contributor to the EU everything it "received" from the EU was paid for by itself https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48256318

sigh The UK’s net EU budget contribution in 2014 was £9.8 billion https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... Meanwhile the UK exported $276 billion worth of good to the EU more than half of its total https://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import-... Not counting anything else just these two we could say the EU had a 3.6% tariff on UK imports (insanely low! check https://www.wto.org/…

> The UK’s net EU budget contribution in 2014 was £9.8 billion

the state’s budget contribution. aka taxes and other income of the state.

> Meanwhile the UK exported $276 billion worth of good to the EU more than half of its total

not the UK, not the state. the opposite. the private sector.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#87
post #70

Are there any safety concerns around 1.4GW flowing through a cable surrounded by salt water? I’m entirely uneducated in the ways of zap juice, but that sounds like a recipe for spontaneous electrocution if that cable breaks anywhere.

The power cable operators don't want to waste any energy and will have power monitoring systems at least at both ends, so much as with a fusebox at home, I'm sure that the cable would be switched off very quickly if that happened. In addition, the power would be dissipated close around the source of the breakage by the (not insignificant) electrical resistance of water. Since the North Sea is about 100 metres deep, the only victims in such event would be fish and other seabed creatures. I don't tend to chew power lines, though, so don't worry about me.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#88

The choice of a .com TLD instead of a .uk for a thing called "national" is really odd to me.

.com is short for 'commercial'. The USA has their own .us TLD, but for some reason the Americans never particularly wanted to use it.

National Grid Ventures is registered in the UK, so they would be eligible for a *.uk domain if they wanted one.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#89
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we just agree to a phase down of that coal generator instead?

Meh we're down to 1.1% of generation being coal in the last year; low enough to stop worrying about. Lets worry about how to get rid of the 33.5% of gas!

We've gone over a month without burning any coal, but then the Ukraine war happened and we were at risks of blackouts. That 1.1% is likely heavily concentrated as a much higher percentage on a relatively small days over winter and/or where wind levels were low.

We probably want to be sure if gas imports are heavily hit again or a major interconnector goes down we'll be fine before entirely demolishing it.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#90
post #82
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but thanks to Brexit they got the opportunity to finance this interconnector by themselves and not avail themselves to the vast funds from the European Energy Programme for Recovery the UK was a net contributor to the EU everything it "received" from the EU was paid for by itself https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48256318

sigh The UK’s net EU budget contribution in 2014 was £9.8 billion https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... Meanwhile the UK exported $276 billion worth of good to the EU more than half of its total https://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import-... Not counting anything else just these two we could say the EU had a 3.6% tariff on UK imports (insanely low! check https://www.wto.org/…

> Not counting anything else just these two we could say the EU had a 3.6% tariff on UK imports

this "analysis" makes the infamous Boris bus number look almost honest by comparison

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