Grid Pays Wind Farms £50m To Stop Working, Hires Gas Plants To Continue
Britain’s power system has reportedly discovered the benefits of paying one workforce to leave while recruiting another to do the same job.
BRITAIN, The national electricity grid spent nearly £50m in one day balancing the country’s power supply. Transmission bottlenecks meant wind farms in oversupplied areas were paid to stop, while gas plants elsewhere were brought online.
The Office of Energetic Contradictions called it a landmark achievement: electricity was prevented from travelling anywhere, then replaced by electricity made nearby. Officials said the system was working exactly as designed, assuming the design had been written on the back of a takeaway receipt during a fire drill.
“We are delighted to announce that the wind has been successfully prevented from doing anything,” said Myrtle Quibble, deputy director of the National Bureau for Renewable Inaction. “Every gust can now be managed, invoiced and asked to sit quietly.”
“The wind has been successfully prevented from doing anything.”
The balancing process pays wind farms to reduce generation when local networks cannot carry the available power. Gas plants are then fired up elsewhere to meet demand. Britain therefore pays one set of machines for silence and another for noise, which is at least consistent with much of public life.
A man standing nearby said it resembled a restaurant paying its chefs to close the kitchen, then ordering takeaway from next door. He declined to give his name. A smart meter had already asked him for identification, and he saw no reason to encourage it.
The Treasury’s newly established Committee for Expensive Solutions said the bill should be understood as an investment in national confidence. Its chair, Professor Ludo Fennel, said energy security required power stations ready to start, wires ready to obstruct them, and sufficient money to apologise afterwards.
And the turbines remain available. They can resume work whenever the grid has room for them, although several were reportedly using the pause to update their CVs. The gas plants were praised for arriving at short notice and behaving as though the arrangement had been planned all along.
Linda Sources reports that Britain’s electricity system is now looking for a third kind of power station. It would generate power only while the other two are receiving money to refrain from doing so. Applications are expected from a row of hand-cranked lamps and one extremely confident potato.