Christopher Booker,Telegraph
Politicians are complaining about rises in fuel bills that are largely the result of their own actions
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What the BBC and everyone else seemed to miss was the small print in which National Grid insisted that the lights wouldn’t be going out, because it now has “the tools” to cover any shortfall. One reason for its confidence was the story reported here before, of how National Grid has been quietly signing up thousands of diesel generators, linked by computers to the grid, which can be automatically switched on at a moment’s notice to cover for any power shortage. And their main purpose, although National Grid tries to deny it, is to make up for the unreliability of that ever-increasing number of heavily subsidised wind farms the Government wants to see built, in its efforts to “de-carbonise” our electricity supply.
Although National Grid may try to keep quiet about it, the companies piling in to sign up for this scheme – attracted by the colossal sums it is offering to build up its “Short Term Operating Reserve” – make no secret on their websites and planning applications of the fact that it is designed to cover for the disastrous intermittencies of wind power. Even National Grid admits that, within six years, it hopes to have expanded its emergency reserve from 3.5GW to 8GW, equivalent to the output of four large conventional power plants. This is why firms such as Green Frog, Fulcrum Power and Power Balancing Services are pouring millions into building “mini-power stations” – container parks full of diesel generators – to qualify for “availability payments” so lavish that, in proportion, that they make the subsidy bonanza enjoyed by wind-farm operators look like chicken feed."
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