As I predicted, so the Guardian produced on Thursday 21 December.



I'm not sure what the Guardian means by "generates 21.8 GW in half an hour", but it has never been my first option for science. There's a proverb that says something like "Good news arrives on horseback, bad news on foot", or if there isn't, there should be. You didn't see this sort of coverage at the beginning of the month, when wind power didn't get above 3 GW for three days.


How much more pumped storage is a moot point. Dinorwig will knock out 1.7 GW for about 6 hours. Coire Glas will add a bit more than that, but we get stalled high pressure systems with precious little wind every year that can last for days on end , including over a week last March, and nearly a fortnight in December 2022. Dinorwig, the existing other smaller pumped hydro plants and the putative Coire Gals would make little difference, representing as they do a mere fraction of the installed capacity of our wind fleet. Their biggest value is in reacting to short-term load variations to maintain frequency, like the million kettles after Eastenders. They do not regenerate during the day, so if used early remain empty. That role will continue when the country finally achieves an even load around the clock, but they are a form of back-up that still needs back-up. A true switch to net zero will entail doubling our electricity demand at the most conservative estimate, and we will need that load day and night, with more in winter. Pumped storage will help manage that, not provide backup at any meaningful level.

That period covers the tenure of three first ministers of Scotland, all of whom seem to the sassenach in the street to have been trying to establish the country as a deep-fried banana republic, financed by the onshore wind industry. The middle of the three was the first to complain about the waste of excess electricity because of the inadequate connection to the south, and the last to try to do anything about it. Options including paying to upgrade the link or stopping building more were ignored in favour of complaining about the Westminster government not sending more money. For some reason, industry seemed reluctant to establish industries north of the border to use this bonanza, and I suspect this may be influencing thinking on Coire Glas.

SSE^‡(resolve) seems to be waiting for the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) government to stump up cash so that it can build something that will enable it to sell its own electricity to itself before waiting until the price is high, then selling it to the rest of us. But a few days ago, National Grid and Scottish Power announced contracts worth £1.8 billion to build a 2GW 525 kV HVDC link between Torness and County Durham, something that could see a significant reduction in excess power north of the border. At the same time, the growth of electric vehicles could introduce battery storage to households across the UK. Some models, including the Nissan Leaf but not, alas, mine, allow for bi-directional flow along the charging cable. Using the car battery to power the house when at home, then charging it cheaply after bedtime, could mean many of us evening out our own supply, with no need for another pumped storage facility. Maybe there was no hurry after all?

Some big decisions needed on electrification here. Surely, we can't have yet another stop-gap fleet of anything still needing diesel?

This evening is one of wind's better times, at almost 17 GW^▸ (Great Western) output, or about half of the installed capacity. Gas is down to about 2.5 GW and we're not actually burning coal. I strongly suspect that jubilant press releases will be popping up in editors' inboxes, and the hydrogen lobby will not be slow to join in - even though the figures could be reversed by the time the papers hit the street.

Spare wind power is capricious and the value of building infrastructure of any kind to use it is likely to be marginal at best. For the moment, the real slack times are overnight, so the price of electricity falls. When it gets down to 7.5p per kWh, my car starts to charge its battery, along with a small proportion of the nation's car fleet. As that proportion grows, more of that "spare" electricity will be used, making me wonder if whoever wants to build a new pumped storage has worked that into the equation. It isn't just private vehicles - First Bus in Bristol has a planning application in for expansion of the Hengrove depot, to include chargers for 130 buses. I make that about 19.5 MW when they are all plugged in. Imagine if 100 other depots in different areas of the country do the same, something almost certain to happen within a few years. Suddenly, two-thirds of a new nuclear power station is spoken for, and Coire Glas will be a very expensive muddy puddle unless it pays the same 7.5p. I suspect it will go ahead, even if it needs a lot of public money, because pumped storage is the closest thing we have to an instant injection of power.

Half of town gas was hydrogen, true, with carbon monoxide in more or less equal measure. It was thus very leaky and poisonous in more or less equal measure, and had less than half the calorific value of natural gas. Its manufacture was as a by-product of turning the coal we no longer mine into the coke for the steel we no longer produce at any scale, and gas works were easily found should you have cause to visit - "Just follow your nose, Sir". It is often cited in support of hydrogen as a boiler fuel, but we are well rid of it.

Without a doubt, the country needs rewiring, and there's another mammoth task. The Hinkley Point C Connection project, which has seen those cute T-pylons spring up across parts of Somerset, has taken 14 so far years from the first planning meeting, cost £900 million, and covers 57 km of cable. Actual building started in 2021, and has more than another year to go. We are going to need an awful lot more than that.

Gold hydrogen is indeed starting to excite people in the industry. Time will tell if it is achievable, or a chimera, but even then, the problems of storage and transport will prevail. My own thought is that industries such as ammonia and steel will spring up around any usable deposits, rather than having international transport of the gas.

Carbon dioxide from the distilling industries just goes to show what a damn fine drink gin really is - the answer to, and cause of, many of life's problems.

I think we are going to have to rename our lightest element as Hype-o-gen, given all the lobbying going on. A lot of money is being spent on extolling the virtues of multi-megawatt electrolysers to people who have no idea what one of them is, presumably in the hope that a picture of Rachel Riley will have us all writing to our MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) demanding one on every street corner.  Yes, green hydrogen will be of use to industry as a replacement for the much cheaper (but still not cheap any more) current supplies obtained by steam reforming of methane, but it will come at a cost. The very idea of using precious hydrogen to heat homes is ridiculous, unless you own a gas pipe network. Then, it becomes a last gasp attempt to find a purpose for your £20 billion pipeline asset, which without gas running through it will be worth slightly below zero pounds. Hence why the biggest proponent of the abandoned Redcar experiment was Northern Gas Networks, and the only one of the many scientific reports on the subject to find that hydrogen would be good in household boilers was sponsored by Cadent.  The most efficient way to use hydrogen in home heating would be to power a heat pump via a fuel cell, which would be nonsensical given that you could just use the electricity expended on making the hydrogen instead, and save all the losses.

Hydrogen as a home energy source is an expensive way of turning a lot of energy into a lot less energy. That becomes more farcical when the electricity used to make the hydrogen comes from burning gas, whether it is done directly, or indirectly by using wind energy that could have supplied the grid. We are nowhere near the point where all of our daily electricity is made by clean means, and that is without the extra that will be needed to power 30 million vehicles, 60% of the railway, and the replacement of 25 million gas boilers. Our very rough average of 30 GW^▸ (Great Western) demand is going to be closer to 100 GW when (if) we ever get close to net zero, and there won't be much by way of off-peak electricity when the nights are given over to heating water cylinders and charging vehicles.

Ammonia production uses lots and lots of hydrogen, and the CO2 currently made as a by-product has a substantial market, although almost all of it ends up in the atmosphere in the end. You may recall that the increased price of gas almost did for our domestic NH₃/CO₂ industry, with government having to throw money at it, so what the change to green hydrogen will do is anyone's guess. Most of the hydrogen made in this country doesn't leave the compound where it is made, but goes straight into the next step of the manufacturing process. This avoids the need for transport over any distance, and thus the need for extreme cooling or extreme pressurisation. Gas pipe networks are going to need a lot of work to carry hydrogen safely in such volumes as will be needed to match methane. If I lived in an area where the experiment was to take place, I would opt for a heat pump. I have looked into it already, but our boiler is only 5 years old, and I don't like the idea of scrapping something that good.

"The government therefore still plans to take a decision in 2026 on whether, and if so how, hydrogen will contribute to heating decarbonisation." That won't be this current government. The other likely contenders seem to have a feel for hydrogen too, although not so passionately so. One day, we are going to have to ask people who did the same physics and chemistry O-levels as me, but took the education further than I did, to explain to our politicians in words of one or two syllables exactly what those pesky laws of physics say about all this. For me, it's a dead duck, but still quacking loudly.

Are tickets on sale yet?

I've charged the car up, just in case. We should be OK today, because it's windy. When it gets like last week, where we had practically no wind for 3 days, things could be a bit trickier, especially as we'll be burning a lot more gas to keep homes warm. Thankfully, we still have a bit of coal left for the few remaining power stations.

The perils of our energy policy over the past three decades are apparent. Let's hope we don't make more of the same mistakes, and especially don't build in reliance on other countries to the same extent.

If push comes to shove, I'll go back to bed until it's all over.

I certainly wonder. But GCE O-level Physics in 1972 only just equips me with enough knowledge to grasp the basic theory, even if I did get top grade. I believe it effectively doubles the voltage applied to the engine by using split phase power and using the return current from the rail, at not much extra cost, but I'm sure someone will do a far better job of covering the point than that.

I thought that word was deemed derogatory after Bernard Manning ceased to be on TV?

At last - a use for AI that no-one can criticise! Good for them, and I hope the company gets big on the proceeds. It will still need someone to actually act on the information, of course, which could be the weak link here.

I love the way that even the Commons library puts "re-invest" in inverted commas.

It would seem to be "not an accident", given the offered option of a download of Signalls Pad.

I doubt it would be the cruise companies promoting rail traffic. I have been on a few cruises, and know that most companies will miss no chance to dip their hands into your pocket. Excursions and transfers can have substantial additions to the price by local public transport, often with little added benefit. We have caught the train from Rome to the port of Civitavecchia rather than the official transfer (€11 as opposed to nearly £50), rode into Athens from Piraeus on the Metro (€1), spending more time than the guided group we saw being herded around the Acropolis for fifty quid each, and caught the train from Katakolon to Olympia for a fraction of the excursion price, enjoying more time and a lovely ride through stunning scenery. My favourite was in Japan - we were quoted $200 for a taxi from the port at Yokohama to our hotel in Tokyo, or £55 each for the official coach to a bus station some distance away. Google Maps showed a metro station practically on the doorstep. We took the (unadvertised) free shuttle bus to Yokohama station, and spent a little under £3 on a direct ride. It surprises me that more people don't do the same, although Scotland clearly bucks that trend.

Thinking of a local comparison - imagine a cruise ship arriving in Avonmouth. With all due respect, there isn't much there for the tourist. An excursion to see the historic sights of Bristol and Bath would cost a travelling couple north of a hundred, but there is the train for £3 return each. Off to Temple Meads, ferry ride through the docks or train to Bath, a full day out with no hanging around for everyone else, then back in time for pre-embarkation cocktails, canapés and dancing in the local pub in Avonmouth. (OK, cider, crisps and a punch-up).

This is another example of how passenger estimates for new rail services prove to be a lot lower than what actually happens, while the reverse is more often the case for cheaper alternatives. The integrated bus service shows the sort of joined-up thinking we need to see more of. If anyone at Devon County Council is watching, please take this as a plug for a similar initiative between Tiverton and its eponymous Parkway. The town is growing fast, and the current provision means travelling to the station by car is the only sensible option. I am sure other towns would be able to make similar pleas with equal justification.

I also thought it rather underwhelming. GBR will probably continue whatever the outcome of the election. The rest is tinkering, with the exception of the animal bill. I thought that had been enacted years ago.