When Will the Lights Go Out?

Derek Birkett lays bare the facts of power engineering. He assesses the viability of the Government's renewable energy policy and expectations and explains why official targets and pronouncements are essentially illusory. Since the later 1990s the public and political mind has been preoccupied with global warming. In a bid to develop 'renewable' energy sources, the damaging costs already being inflicted on the electricity consumer, domestic and commercial, have been obscured. Simultaneously, such novel technologies have come to threaten the stability of the nation's electricity supply. Birkett's study reveals that the lavish incentives offered to developers of new technologies are only one of the many costs being passed on to the customer in the country's scramble to meet pledges on reduction of carbon emissions. Furthermore, renewable energy technologies - notably wind power - are creating widespread uncertainty in the electricity supply chain, resulting in an ever greater dependency

Derek BIRKETT Derek Birkett is the former Grid Control Engineer of Northern Scotland. He has a lifetime of experience in electricity supply throughout Britain and has been involved in the installation and commissioning of several power stations, whether coal-fired, hydro or nuclear, including Dounreay.