Britain peak power demand (from BBC TV series: Britain from Above)

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Strong rec defrost · 2026-06 · on “Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests”

With the obligatory, must see, BBC Britain from Above segment in which Andrew Marr fly on the wall narrates the most challenging part of a live load engineer (UK)'s day ... <doof, doof, doof> the East Enders kettle break. * [this video]

Recommends XaYdEk · 2016-10 · on “NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise”

Technically yes, economically difficult for most nations, if it's approached at this level. Germany has had an interesting approach to solar, where they subsidized solar panels for homeowners. I think it is the smarter approach because you incentives individuals to go green, rather than trying to implement a top down solution. And even so, we will need to keep power plants on call for redundancy and high load purposes. There is a video about peak power usage in England which I found fascinating (though this is a rather unique case) [this video]

Recommends vincentdm · 2018-03 · on “Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental European Power System”

Here's a great movie illustrating how the grid is balanced when a popular tv show ends and millions of people want a cup of hot tea: [this video]

Recommends jeroenhd · 2022-11 · on “Mystery Blips”

This reminds me of this YouTube video: [this video] . There's a monitoring room to make sure people are ready to switch backups and reroute in case of some kind of grid failure, but also in very specific scenarios. Britain being filled with Brits, what would happen is that once the show was over, half the nation got up from the couch to turn on the kettle for a cup of tea. Those electric kettles are quite demanding, especially if millions of them turn on at the same time. So every time there was a major event, dedicated people are monitoring the grid frequency, power plants on standby and foreign contracts at the ready when needed, just to increase capacity at the right time. You can't just sched

Cites lumberjack · 2013-10 · on “Reverse Microwave Chills Beer In 45 Seconds”

I'm skeptical about the energy claims. How much of a difference is the continuous cooling of a can of beverage going to cost when you still have to keep the refrigerator running anyway? Plus energy grids prefer a gradual and predictable energy draw than a sudden spike. Otherwise we end up with scenarios like this: [this video]

Cites sanityinc · 2014-07 · on “U.K. National Grid status”

There's literally a single person who adjusts the whole power grid according to second-by-second fluctuations in power which result from half the nation boiling water for tea after the most popular TV shows finish: [this video]

Cites teh_klev · 2015-01 · on “The Clock”

I'd love to see a citation for that level of accuracy, I can't believe it's that good, maybe to within +/- 4 cycles? If you watch this: [this video] This is about how the UK National Grid manage power availability at peak times. Over here we're running 50Hz rather than 60, but one of the key goals is to keep the grid frequency as close to 50Hz as possible. At around 2m15s into the clip they lose power from a French on-demand provider and the frequency takes a "nose-dive" to 49.6Hz causing the operator to call on backup from a Welsh hydro-station to keep up with demand. Theoretically in the UK we should get 4,320,000 cycles per day, but I suspect it's probably + or - 3 cycles. Unless of course it

Cites wojt_eu · 2018-03 · on “Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental European Power System”

An example of how frequency is closely monitored before energy demand surge in Britain due to Tea Time: [this video] [LINK]