Slightly off-topic, but mentioned in an earlier post above, National Grid say the peak-time margin of supply over demand is likely to be a slim 1.2% this winter, and that for the 2016-17 winter there may well have to be heavy users taken offline to "keep the lights on". ( These heavy users will of course be paid for their sacrifice)
Further coal-fired power stations are due to close next year, and no new generating capacity is likely to start up. There are apparently a few mothballed smaller gas-fired stations that might be brought into use, again if the owners are paid by National Grid so to do.
So, just wait for the station announcement during your winter rush -hour home.... " We apologise to the delay in our services, we are waiting for the electricity supply to be sufficient to actually run your train...."
Anyone else like me think that we are sleep walking into an electricity supply crisis?
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Network Rail will be exempt from the need to disconnect larger users, and in any case, the way the grid capacity is determined is an almighty fudge with wind being effectively ignored on the basis that extreme cold weather which causes a surge in electricity demand is accompanied by low wind speed conditions which reduce the amount of wind energy available.
There's also the known issue of photovoltaic and home wind not being accurately reported, and only being able to be estimated from forecast demand compared to actual demand, and some sales data being added in.
What will also happen, but which isn't modelled, is that during extreme cold weather events, industrial demand is likely to drop as factories close due to staff being unable to reach work, railway demand drops as some services are cancelled or reduced in speed and so on.
I notice National Grid put out a requirement for 500MW of additional capacity on Wednesday, when wind generation was down to 300MW, but we've had a couple of days this autumn already where wind was in excess 5GW of total production, and it's sitting at 2.4GW right now. There's plenty of capacity and probably more importantly, more than enough carbon credits to go around, thanks to the fairly decent wind production figures this year so far.
As an aside, I would like to see Network Rail build and rebuild more platform canopies with solar panels and wind turbines. Stations in lots of areas have huge amounts of south facing roof space available.