In article ,
Do Little2 wrote:
Well, actually, our " little island ", as you so quaintly put it, is
actually connected to many millions of other users in mainland Europe,
to form a hedged power distribution system


On this side of the pond "many millions" is not even close to 330
million +.

So you think the population of Europe is tiny compared to the US?

which doesn't suffer from cascade
failure when the weather gets a bit cold, or major outages when the sun
flares a bit ... ; -)

True, but think about the enormous length of the electricity network in
the US and Canada compared to the UK. The UK (and that part of
Europe that the UK could possible support) would easily fit about
10 times in Ontario alone....

It's an exchange scheme. Like all proper grids with multiple power
stations feeding them.

Just out of curiosity: How many Megawatts of electricity is
the UK capable of exporting before its own network collapses?

Dunno - it's never happened. The whole idea of a grid is that you share
power, so any fault is likely to be local. And in event of a grid failure,
the power may be routed in a different way.

FWIW, I can't remember an outage here in this part of London. Nor do I
have or need an UPS etc. Of course there are rural parts that still may
have problems due to overhead lines etc.

--
*Why does the sun lighten our hair, but darken our skin?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.