Unelected bureaucrats get paid millions to defraud the British public with the insane ‘net zero’ pricing and supply racket that will inevitably cause power cuts
There is a game on NESO’s website that illustrates how the ‘prices are rigged’ – power cuts and higher electricity prices inevitable!
PETER HALLIGAN
From here:
The little-known government body accused of covering up how close Britain came to heatwave blackout
“Neso was created under the previous Conservative government’s Energy Act 2023, taking over many of the functions previously carried out by the private company, National Grid ESO, with two principal objectives: to ensure the lights stay on and to prepare the national grid for the transition to Net Zero.
Based in an unassuming office block in Warwick, Neso employs around 2,200 people. According to its own calculations, it costs the average household £6.46 a year through energy bills.
Yet its 2024-25 annual report also recorded a loss of £409million, which will have had to be covered by taxpayers.
While Neso manages our energy system, it owns little of it. The pylons, substations and infrastructure remain in private hands. Nor does it own the country’s power stations, wind farms or solar farms, all of which are also owned and operated privately. Instead, Neso acts as a glue holding together this patchwork of private assets, coordinating them into what is supposed to function as a single, seamless network.
“Although often described as ‘independent’ of government, Neso is a company with a single shareholder: the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, currently Ed Miliband.
In other words, it is a public sector body, although the pay packages of its senior staff might not suggest it. In 2024-25, chief executive Slye received a basic salary of £288,167 – more than £100,000 higher than the Prime Minister’s. Once pension contributions and performance-related payments were included, his total remuneration reached £773,650. Chief operating officer Kayte O’Neill received £564,311, while chief financial officer Charlie Pate was paid £317,451.”
Pretty fancy salaries in order to make a loss of £400 million and oversee rigged monopoly pricing!
There is a game you can play that demonstrates how clever the price gougers are.
“If you’re wondering what Neso’s 2,200 staff do all day, look no further than the interactive game on its website, which invites visitors to ‘run the national grid yourself’.
Even this simplified version conveys the extraordinary complexity of the task.
At every moment, electricity supply has to be matched almost perfectly with demand. In front of you is a dial showing the frequency at which the grid is operating. Britain’s mains electricity uses alternating current, meaning the flow of electrons through the wires continually reverses direction. The number of times this happens each second is measured in hertz (Hz).
Note that renewables do not supply alternating current, they supply direct current – so there is that!
“What you cannot do – and this illustrates why running the grid is becoming harder – is simply manipulate renewable generation at will. ‘You can’t control renewables’, the game explains (in real life you can turn them off but not up if there’s no sun or wind). ‘But keep an eye on the weather forecast so you can adjust the other energy sources accordingly.’
Therein lies the problem. As Britain moves towards a carbon-free electricity system, around 80 per cent of generation is expected to come from wind and solar. The greater the share supplied by weather-dependent sources, the smaller the proportion of the system that grid operators can directly control when balancing supply and demand.
“The biggest hiccup came when I was suddenly informed that a heatwave had led to all solar farms having to be switched off to prevent the heat from damaging them. This, coincidentally, is close to what seems to have happened on June 23.
According to Kathryn Porter, who runs independent energy consultancy Watt-Logic, on several occasions that day, the frequency of the grid dropped dangerously below 50Hz, suggesting that not enough power was being supplied. This was despite Neso issuing a ‘margin call’ in advance: a request for help put out to electricity generators when there is a predicted imbalance between supply and demand.
With a heatwave anticipated, Neso expected a surge in demand for electricity-guzzling air con units. At the same time, the excessive heat was expected to cause problems for solar farms.
To absorb sudden changes in frequency and voltage, our energy grid relies on buffers in the form of heavy spinning turbines. But these turbines mostly operate in traditional power plants (such as coal, gas, or nuclear).
So when solar generation dominates, as it did on the day the Spanish grid failed, there are too few of these ‘buffering’ turbines working to cushion the system against sudden disturbances.
At the time of Spain’s blackout, solar was supplying around 58 per cent of its electricity. We’ll have to wait to see what Neso’s independent inquiry turns up about last month’s events. But if it really is struggling to balance the grid now, what happens when the system is even more heavily dependent on wind and solar?
“There is another nasty surprise contained within Neso’s plans.
To achieve a 95 per cent carbon-free electricity system by 2030, it says Britain will require between ten and 12 gigawatts of ‘consumer-led flexibility‘.
That means encouraging – or forcing – people to reduce their energy use at peak times, perhaps through surges in the electricity price when the supply is struggling to keep up with demand.
One way or another – through blackouts or price gouging – Neso will make sure it is customers paying the price of the transition to a carbon-free grid.
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This article (Unelected bureaucrats get paid millions to defraud the British public with the insane ‘net zero’ pricing and supply racket that will inevitably cause power cuts) was created and published by Peter Halligan and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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