The UK Electricity Distribution Network Cannot Cope With EVs
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ray Sanders
Stephen Broderick is a Doctor of Engineering at Southampton University. He submitted this written to evidence to Parliament in 2017.
Written evidence from Stephen Broderick (EVD0062)
Basis of Opinion: This is my doctoral research area at Southampton University. The work is as yet incomplete (I am in my final year). To research the topic, I have developed a system able to simulate, study and manage networks with EVs undertaking various trip duties. Further, the below is informed opinion based on observing / modelling likely UK situations but not proven in practice.
Comments are the authors own and relate to home charging of EVs on existing Low Voltage (LV mains) distribution networks.
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Summary: The UK Distribution network "as is" is adequate for immediate needs, but will be substantively overtaxed by unconstrained EV home charging (by up to 7:1), for EVs draw c. 7 kW for hours. These issues follow uptake of EVs i.e. minimal at first then overwhelming as years pass.
Consequences will depend on local circumstances, but have potential to include:
• power cuts (overloads of supply equipment => power equipment "blowing fuses")
• brown-outs (loss of sufficient voltage) potentially causing:
◦ home appliance damage and
◦ household fires
• potentially, a move to restrict EVs to (say) 1 in 7 homes.
Two general methods are seen to alleviate these situations:
- reinforcement of the networks (asset replacement) – expensive, slow, disruptive
- use of a control system capable of managing EV home charging.
Further, the EVs would need to obey the issued commands; this is not assured.
Note that the ICT / SG method does not provide a complete solution, but is expected to defer major costs for decades.
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Background information to assist the reader:
- A brief summary of technical terms is appended.
- The UK “electricity grid” is a set of millions of connected components, individually selected to affordably perform a given goal. These parts have been installed in an as-needed / piecemeal manner since c. 1900. Many parts date from the 1950 / 1960’s
- The grid can be broken into 3 main sections:
- Supply (the making of electricity)
- Transmission (sending electricity at high voltage around the country e.g. National Grid)
- Distribution (of power at medium and low voltage to customers e.g. "mains" 230 V)
- Many papers have been published concerning EVs and "the grid"; however most relate to US networks – similar to the UK only at higher levels. The lower Distribution level is different, so to meet the challenges of different situations.
• US: adequate (occasionally challenged) Generation and Transmission. Strong Distribution which can provide 8 – 14 kW to each home simultaneously, the major load being Air Conditioning.
• The US Distribution system typically uses many “near-home” local transformers each supplying 1 – 4 houses;
• UK: adequate Generation, strong Transmission. Adequate Distribution (for present loads) able to provide 1 – 2 kW to each home simultaneously.
• The UK Distribution system typically uses a small number of “substations” with a transformer, each supplying 1 – 100’s of houses.
Reiterating the US / UK difference in Distribution capability:
◦ US: 8 – 14 kW per home, able to sustain peak loads for long periods vs.
◦ UK: 1 – 2 kW per home on average, able to support occasional higher loads due to averaging over many customers
Most published papers originate from the US so silently assume the US model. However the respective Distribution networks have quite different characteristics.
* * * Overseas studies and experience-based advice may not relate to the UK.
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Some Numbers:
a) there are about 250,000 Distribution networks in the UK, each of individual nature;
b) the design of these has historically been guided by a measure called "ADMD" which has been set variously to c. 1 to 2 kW per supplied home. This is a statistical measure and assumes customers take random loads at random times;
c) to drive an "average" day’s distance (c. 27 mpd) an EV consumes c. 9 kWh at the wheel;
d) (at the time of writing) batteries loose c. 8% on charging and the same on discharging; the inverter electronics lose a similar percentage;
e) the daily average EV power draw (at the home charging point) is then consumed power plus losses i.e.
9 * 1.08 * 1.08 * 1.08 = 11.3 kWh
Other aspects cause losses; 12 kWh is a reasonable "EV supply average daily demand".
f) driving distances are, in general, dependant on location / nearness to a city. RAC studies suggest the following mileage ratios:
City : Urban : Rural of 1 : 1.4 : 2 (i.e. country dwellers drive twice as far as those in the city)
g) a modern EV home charger draws 7 kW.
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A 100 Home Illustration
A 100 home development built in 2017 has an LV distribution network fitted to supply 150 kW simultaneously. An overload of c. 50% is possible for up to 8 hours (following this a period of cooling / low load is necessary). This network includes:
• substation (with transformer and switching)
• in-road cabling (3-phase 230 V per phase)
which has an asset value of c. £ 30 – 45 k.
If 100 EVs arrive in the evening and start to charge, the peak load is 700 kW and the distribution assets go into immediate substantive overload.
However the EVs require (on average) 100 * 12 kWh => 1,200 kWh of energy, which if supplied in a staggered manner over 10 hours is 120 kW continuous load thus doable.
This suggests that a local rationing or management system (able to pace demand intelligently) would help. A simplified version of this was successfully trialled in 2015 (My Electric Avenue).
Yet this has ignored the usual demand of the households; in winter they will need power for home use. In extremis, it may be necessary to upgrade (reinforce) local substations and cables.
Such reinforcement includes:
• replacing the transformer
• digging up the road and relaying cables
• a spend of c. £45 k per 100 served homes i.e.
25 million * £ 450 = £11.25 billion (approx assets costs; a "broad-brush" estimate)
Which, after manpower costs plus profit is added may be perhaps x 2 or x3 as much.
Note that the politics to this falls into three sections:
- the money – who pays?
- the inconvenience, primarily digging up the roads to relay cables (especially in cities)
- the manpower – with the best will in the world, this is a project which may take a decade or more – with present manpower. To achieve this faster requires more hands.
Hence, a new generation of electrical engineers and technicians are needed.
The initial threat though is simultaneous arrival and charging; even with 1 in 7 of homes having an EV the system is at full capacity in the early evening.
NOTE This ignores home-heating by Heat Pumps (HP) scheduled from c. 2040 on as part of the UK’s CO2 minimisation initiative.
** HP alone impose more load than EVs; immediate reinforcement will be necessary **
As he notes, his calculations do not include heat pumps, which overload the grid even further.
Other factors which will exacerbate the problem is the number of 2-car households. His figures, of course, only look at the number of households.
There will be massive variations from place to place. Many inner cities will have very little offstreet parking, so these will have fewer grid problems.
On the other hand though, rural and suburban dwellers drive many more miles than city ones, as he points out. Grid overloads there will be much worse as a result.
And some areas may have grids close to overloads already.
Given that EV drivers will likely to required to only charge during low demand periods at night during times of short supply, this will compress further Broderick’s 10-hour window – maybe to just six.
The CCC recommended years ago that the nations’ distribution grid should be upgraded all in one go, rather than in small increments. It obviously is better to dig up the roads once than ten times!
Meanwhile nobody in Parliament appears to have given this any thought at all, content to kick the can down the road and leave the cost and blame for their successors.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“The CCC recommended years ago that the nations’ distribution grid should be upgraded all in one go, rather than in small increments. It obviously is better to dig up the roads once than ten times!”
Can you imagine the utter chaos digging up all the roads in one go would create.
The only problem with the authors analysis is that it is very unlikely that all the households would need to charge their EVs at the same time, because they would all be travelling different distances in vehicles with different ranges with different amounts of “charge”.
Not only the chaos, where will the necessary equipment & manpower come from?
Householders would generally charge at the same time, come home from work/a day out & plug in. Set the timer to whenever the cheap(er) electricity period is.
If we all have EVs and we all charge them at the same time, that’s not going to be a cheap time. EV charging will be “peak”.
This is the same chap I have mentioned on other related posts who had an email conversation with a representative of v2g. In that he said that the cost of digging up nearly all the non motorway roads in the country had been estimated a some while back as £60 billion.
Undoubtedly much more now.
You beat me to it!
The CCC are practicing electrical utility engineers?
The CCC has one target – achieve Net Zero. This highlights a huge problem in the UK: most quangos have a single target. But every choice involves trade-offs. So we have a fundamental conflict between reality and the quangos.
But the whole point is that nearly all households would be attempting to heat their homes simultaneously via high power heat pumps……as well as charge their BEVs.
Smart meters say “No”.
I think that last paragraph makes it worse, because it means there won’t be a perfect averaging. Instead there will be peaks and troughs
It will also be a bit different from everybody putting a kettle on at the end of a particularly gripping episode of Coronation Street or whatever. Which used to be the main concern of grid management
But that’s the problem, we don’t know how people will behave. Will everyone just plug in when thry get hone, so there’s always maximum charge? Will people wait until 30% charged or enough to get to work and charge threre? I’d bet that most people will charge every evening (assuming range doesn’t increase significantly) because otherwise you will get caught out in any emergency e.g. a longish trip to a relative in trouble at 11pm.
“it is very unlikely that all the households would need to charge their EVs at the same time“
On the contrary, if everybody leaves work around the same time, they will arrive home at a similar time (people will typically time it to get home around dinner time). Given that it takes hours to recharge an EV, it’s clear that substantially all of them will be plugged in simultaneously. Some sort of rationing would be absolutely essential to avoid crashing the grid.
If as the CCC suggest it is all to be done in one go the country will look like it did before the D-Day landings, with the whole country covered with reels of copper cabling (how will we source it and how much will it cost) and the new substation transformers that will be needed. As I understand it they are not an ‘off the shelf’ item and have a long order to delivery time. Is there a trained workforce willing and able to do the heavy work involved? I think the activists pushing the agenda will be finding excuses not to be included.
An interesting little factoid re the UK post war rebuilding. Copper was in such short supply that in order to get houses wired quickly and cheaply we invented the “Ring Main”. By putting the fuse in each appliance’s plug top it reduced the number of individually fused circuits reducing cable required. In Europe they persevered with the “traditional” system hence the different plugs with no fuses in them.
The downside to the ring main is that a breakage at any point in the circuits leaves two “open live” circuits that can readily overload.
But more to your point is that it takes one person about an hour to fit an electricity smart meter and yet we are years behind schedule. How many people does it take to fit a full heat pump installation and how long?! How many people and how long does it take to dig up the roads?1 How many people and how long to do the necessary rewiring? How many people and how long does it take to build and fit transformers?! etc etc etc.
Just ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.
At the national level we can learn a lot from the pattern of petrol sales over a year. For the most part they are remarkably even, with peaks ahead of major holidays. There are some regional differences: sales in the SW in summer are significantly higher than in winter due to the grockels and emmets for example.
The takeup of EVs is not very even geographically.
But neither are petrol sales
We’ve had 21 power cuts over last three years all related to the local distribution network. The engineers that have come out say its knocking on 70 years old and its just getting very degraded and less resilient to transient faults on the network. They say its kept going this long as its never been operated in overload mode for very long but reckon failures will emerge if EV charging and heat pumps are added. From my dog walking around the patch theres very few EVs so far so we can probably solder on. Im also encouraged that most people I know won’t have any truck with an EV but some feel a hybrid is a possibility.
“…probably solder on…”
Oh dear! I hope we are not tampering with the wiring.
“The grid can be broken into three sections.”
Why not just leave it at: “The grid can be broken.” ?
OTT: Natural cycles continuing, whatever we human pipsqueaks think or do!
and
https://www.sidc.be/SILSO/dayssnplot
Sir Kneeler Flip Flop U-turn Starmer is likely to cop all the problems – although there is an idea floated out that he might need to form a coalition with Potato Ed’s LimpDumbs – especially as they set their target even earlier than the socialist Tories. I can see a common refrain for the coming government being ‘But you said you would fix…..’ as it doesn’t improve anything.
It’s a good job Ofgem is there to ensure it will all work smoothly, with no blackouts or brownouts and plenty of dispatchable capcity to ensure no shortage of electricity when demanded.
OFGEM lost the plot when Jonathan Brearley, co writer of the climate change act, got the top job. No longer looking after customers by keeping prices down, UK has highest cost of electricity in the world. If only they had resisted the net zero we would all be better off. If only Christine Farnish had been put in charge.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/17/ofgem-director-christine-farnish-quits-over-energy-price-cap
UK has highest cost of electricity in the world.
It would be interesting to see comparison costs with a “model” grid where baseload generation is by a fleet of Sizewell B PWRs and a fleet of HELE coal-fired. Perhaps some gas for peak-lopping.
Prof Kelly of Cambridge U gave an excellent presentation on this on the ICSF website. Figures were for Ireland but proportions are same for UK.
Professor Kelly, former Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department for Communities and Local Government, covers the UK in this presentation…
‘#31 – Michael Kelly: An engineer shows us what net zero would really mean’ [October 2022]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkImqOxMqvU&t=320s
The UK Distribution network “as is” is adequate for immediate needs,…
An assumption which may not be true in all locations…
‘Capacity crunch: why the UK doesn’t have the power to solve the housing crisis’ [May 2024]:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/04/capacity-crunch-why-the-uk-doesnt-have-the-power-to-solve-housing-crisis
Off thread but take a look at the Met Office pressure maps which show a lack of wind all week. Much five knots where I live.
1.8 gigs as I write!
Yes I noticed that. Also we seem to be taking a lot of electricity from European incomers at the moment. Over 7 GW compared with 7.6GW from gas and 5.4 from wind/solar.
I hope the young man’s PhD supervisor will try to persuade him not to write “the below is …”
But the engineering arguments seem sound to me (though I confess I am not an electrical engineer).
Detailed sums are valuable though, in truth, the whole Nut Zero madness can be dispatched with a few back-of-the-envelope scribbles. What we should do about the Nut Zero-ites is another question.
Actually I’ve seen his photo and he’s nearly as old as me!
the whole Nut Zero madness can be dispatched with a few back-of-the-envelope scribbles.
But the scribbles don’t get publicity.
I am sceptical that UK homes can take only 1-2 kW on average. Surely this is incorrect?
I would think many households have electric cookers so this figure would be exceeded by that alone in the early evening, as things stand now.
So bot, you are saying that Professor Steve Broderick is wrong are you? Can’t bots read reports properly or is your FUD programme not functioning correctly today?
Show me evidence. It just does not seem reasonable to me. If it doesn’t seem reasonable to me, it won’t seem reasonable to lots of others also.
You are a bot!
You still need to address the argument though. Which you are not doing.
The OFGEM cap is based on 8kWh per day usage in average home, that is 0.3kW per hour. So the 1-2kW is in the ball park. Sure an electric cooker or shower can take up 7kW, but they are not on continuously, the cooker cycles on/off and showers on for 5 minutes.
There is a problem with charging a BEV, waiting for the mythical cheap rate, and all switching on at the same time, so not cheap anymore and overloads the local substation. They have not mentioned heat pumps which take 5kW per hour and you get the equivalent of 12.5kW of heat (COP at 2.5) that is just over a third of a typical gas boiler.(Mine is 30kW).
The evidence is that you have no idea of electrical distribution, so you should take notice of the many experienced electrical engineers on this site.
Believe me, relying on renewable electricity to achieve Net Zero is not possible without considerable sacrifice, going back 100 years in our living standards.
I don’t have much knowledge of electricity transmission and distribution, that is true. I do have a hard science degree and I’m employed in a scientific role.
That being the case, when I see some numbers that don’t look reasonable I tend to question them. If the person responsible can explain them in detail I will give way to their greater expertise. But I’m not getting that.
“If the person responsible can explain them in detail I will give way to their greater expertise. But I’m not getting that.”
Get this BOT. You have above a copy of written evidence to a parliamentary committee from an electrical engineering professor at Southampton University who has a large number of published and peer reviewed works. And yet you (with self proclaimed no expertise) claim to be sceptical. Jeez how badly are you bots programmed these days?
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steve-Broderick
Secondly, by definition, it is not possible to make an “Ad hominem” to a non human.
“8kWh per day usage in average home, that is 0.3kW per hour”
No, it’s 0.3kWh per hour i.e. consumption of 0.3kW on average.
“I do have a hard science degree” – one that didn’t need secondary school physics?
He didn’t say ‘can take’. He said that on average the local distribution supplies each home with 1 – 2kW. He also said at times some homes require more.
I think the minimum rating for homes is 14kVA, and new homes 20kVA. That doesn’t mean they draw that load continuously, and the rating is to allow for a sudden peak load when an appliance – particularly with a motor – is switched on. This lasts maybe for a split second but would be enough to trip fuses if the rating were not high enough.
kzb – just looked – our average electricity usage is just under 300W. Admittedly, we have a gas hob and gas central heating, so will not be using as much as some folks, but the average power usage for both gas and electricity is still only just over 1kW.
If Mrs B is doing the ironing while I’m using both ovens and the kettle, bread-maker, dishwasher and washing machine are all on then the peak will be much higher. It has happened, usually to celebrate Earth Hour!
40% of homes don’t have off street parking, and that percentage will be increasing as people are crammed into flats instead of houses. Those people will need to try and find an operational charger elsewhere and pay through the nose for it.
So that takes a lot of load off the early evening charging peak.
People generally don’t do stuff that costs them lots of money.
If you have to use public chargers in Germany it is now more expensive to run your battery car than either a petrol or diesel one.
I believe this is the case in the UK also. But it isn’t what we are discussing, which is the effect on peak load on the grid. The author seems to assume that everyone will be charging at home in the evening, when the fact is, at least 40% of households do not have this capability.
“The author seems to assume that everyone will be charging at home in the evening, when the fact is, at least 40% of households do not have this capability.”
No he doesn’t, just seems bots can’t read reports very well.
Quote me the section of the article where it says this.
The nearest I can see is that he uses 25 million for the number of households, when the correct figure is nearer 28.2 million. I took this to be the number of households that own a car, i.e. 88.7% of households own at least one car.
But it does not take into account the 40% that don’t have off-street parking does it. That would take the figure to something like 16-17 million.
The 40% is irrelevant they will tend to be in their own little grids.
Remember we are typically looking at networks of 200 houses or so. A typical housing estate will have the same type of houses, ie all will have drives or none will.
The problem of distribution networks is entirely a local one. The fact that a lot of houses don’t have off street parking five miles has no relevance to your own local grid
Thank you Paul for this considered reply. It is a good point.
When I first came across this site, I thought, this is good, a British site that perhaps won’t have the same idiots and ad-hominem comments that you get on US sites. We should be playing the ball, not the person.
Many forums have rules about ad-hominem comments, first you get a polite warning, and then suspensions leading up to a permanent ban for continued infringements.
My reason for questioning things on here is because you need to be able to counter these arguments from the other side. Otherwise you will be dismissed out of hand.
The fact that people dont have off-street parking does not mean they wont be charging from their home electric supply. In my local (very old) village many people park on the roadside. Several have now installed conduits taking a cable to their car. Many of the village lanes do not have footpaths. Some of the cables are fully underground in pipes but the latest trend is to put in a surface water type drain with removable covers (ie: 3inch deep x 3inch wide drain). The cable can then be removed if needed daily in minutes. One chap who parks on the lane side across from his house is negotiating with Oxford County Council highways to put one of these culverts across the lane (20mph speed limit). Being a Lib-Green council they have indicated he’ll likely get permission.
So who knows how many of the 40% will still charge at home?
Its OK the judiciary will sort it out, they have the expertise don’t you know.
They will charge on their way home from work, or a lot will anyway. Charge times don’t fit in with recharging on the way to work in the morning.
National Grid seem confident that they can cope with the charging of EVs
https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero-stories/can-grid-cope-extra-demand-electric-cars
On the other hand I seem to remember recently that NG said they need £60 billion to upgrade the grid for the so called energy transition.
The whole point of Steve Broderick’s report is that the District Networks cannot take the loads. National Grid ESO are only responsible for the high voltage transmission network which is less than 2% of the cabling mileage.
NG ESO can claim whatever they wish for their part of the network but not for the rest of it.
NG ESO can claim whatever they wish for their part of the network
If I’ve understood the NG statement correctly, that’s 60 billion £££ to upgrade less than 2% of the UK cabling mileage. I wonder what the cost would be for upgrading the other 98% Will it be a few trillion £££ ?
I did a calculation regarding recabling every street in the UK and, yes, anything from £200 billion to £1 trillion.
Yes Micky, that’s a point I often try to get across. The initial cabling of the UK spanned over multiple decades and increased with new builds. To re-cable the 80%+ that needs it will definitely cost £trillions but everyone tries to brush the problem under the carpet. Every serious electrical engineer knows the problem but even a nuclear reactor can’t burn “handwavium”.
I did a calculation…
The back of my envelope got to two trillion £££ , but my knowledge of the process for LV cable change under roads/streets is lacking e.g. would this generally be “pull in” from cable chamber to cable chamber, or would this generally be dig/lay/cover/connect ?
My local roads/pavements have just been treated to fibre cabling. I assumed that the contractor would be able to pull in the new cable from BT (or GPO!) chamber to chamber, but there was far more digging than I expected.
Dr Steve Broderick is a “mature” old school practical engineer who clearly knows what he is talking about and tells it like it is. This is refreshingly different to the modern variant of impractical wishful thinkers who tell it like they want you to believe it is, regardless of the truth.
In stark contrast this website is run by a much younger Dr Andrew Crossland who lays claim to high level engineering accreditation. His auto biography states:
“I am an multidisciplinary energy specialist (I do financing, engineering and modelling all in one). My goal in life is to help enable decarbonisation. I believe that doing so will make energy more affordable and owned once again by the people. This was the focus of my PhD. I now work on projects around the world integrating energy storage into electricity systems and developing low carbon energy projects.”
He also produces this website
https://www.mygridgb.co.uk/
In addition to the usual (incorrect) representation of GB generation he has further “Carbon Intensity” data. This allegedly shows how emissions per kWh measured in grams CO2 equivalent have reduced from 308g in 2016 to 200g in 2023
https://www.mygridgb.co.uk/last-12-months/
I personally challenged him on how he was accounting for the emissions of imported electricity which are obviously a dramatically growing element of supply (at times currently 25%of demand). His answer was that it wasn’t possible to do that. He then, somewhat sarcastically, tried to turn my questioning back on me to suggest how I thought it could possibly be done……I ignored his stupidity.
So he feels it is acceptable to continue to dismiss known significant emissions in a graph specifically designed to show measured emissions!
Apparently it is now okay for the new younger generation claiming “authority” to deceive. How sad these changes are becoming.
My goal in life is to help enable decarbonisation. I believe that doing so will make energy more affordable and owned once again by the people.
What a sad ignorant man he is – setting his life goal as something that is pointless and that all the evidence shows makes energy much more expensive for people as well as costing many of them their jobs.
My Tesla owning friend tells me his in-home Tesla charger is programmable. He plugs his car in when he gets home, but the charger may or may not come on, depending on the battery state. He does set ToD for it to come on.
So, with high penetration of EVs in the British market, it’s quite possible blackouts could be caused by EVERYONE’S Tesla charger kicking on at 2200, or whatever time rates drop. Few will set theirs to start charging at 2201, etc.
The dynamic price will depend on the amount of power available versus what is being consumed. The car charger app will detect when the price is low enough and kick in then. So the question of amount generated being sufficient is automatically taken care of.
But there is still the question of the local distribution network not being able to cope. That seems to be a problem going by this article.
Equally the car charger Apps could cause price spikes and blackouts. If you set a price level in the program for charging to start you may find you never get charged as the price doesnt fall low enough on a high demand evening. So those who need a charged car in the morning will have to set a program that at a certain point will start to charge at any price. As everyone’s Bots now play in this bidding war for the inadequate electric supply a runaway price spike may ensue. Dynamic pricing will only work while there is adequate supply. As supply runs short at all times this short-term fix will fail.
We see this failure often on overcrowded roads. People move their journey times but then too many move and the 5pm rush jam is now also a 4pm jam. Driving on a sunday evening used to be a Monday jam avoid measure, but not anymore on high demand roads. We now have Sunday jams as well.
The only true solution is build more capacity, or encourage an alternate. In the case of grid overload this means encouraging ICE cars and gas boilers to solve the problems.
Hey GC you’ve been BOTted! Lucky you.
Bot believe Tesla chargers do pricing analysis.
Never had a gas pump ask me, “Do you really want to fill up now?”
This pricing dance with chargers makes me think of Capt Kirk arguing with a computer.
”Meanwhile nobody in Parliament appears to have given this any thought at all…”
Because they don’t have to.
This is now the established feature of Government – as seen during the Covid calamity – a ‘must do’ objective is declared with no consideration of what is required to achieve it or if it is even practically possible, or the cost and consequences.
This is so because those in charge just don’t care. The cost and consequences won’t fall on them, so it’s a case of moral hazard. Besides… Government has the monopoly on violence so it can do what it likes, plunder its population to pay for its fantasies.
Elections? Ha! Swapping tyrannies = tyranny.
The grid is starting to creak at the seams right now, from parasitic harmonic pollution, to a high risk loss of inertia, at some point, it will fall over with rolling blackouts and enforced rationing via ToU tariffs etc
Our 1970s estate has in the last year had new gas pipes then new electric supplies. In the case of electric it was less intrusive than might be thought. The connection from the street to the house was done by digging a 3ft deep hole at the edge of the garden then another hike beside the house. A mole tunnelling machine made a tunnel between the holes for the new cable to go through. Took a few hours for my house. This system could be used in most garden. Our subsoil is a dense clay with frequent embedded stones of various sizes. If it works there it will work in almost any ground conditions. We now have a 3 phase supply though currently only using one phase. It is still a big upgrade on the original setup. To cut down on tunnelling and cable the original 1970s supply was a cable to my house which then split and supplied both the other half of my semi and the adjacent semi. I have no idea what the cost of our recent upgrade was. For a ballpark figure. Our estate has approx 200 houses and there was a team of about 8 guys working for around 6 months. Roughly 8 man days per house. This included all the prep work recabling the streets before the final connection to houses. 8 man days at £250 per day. £2000 per house.
X 25 million households £50bn Not including materials.