The power in my house died, with a faint groan, like the ghost of electricity trying to tell me something. Was it the boiler, the fridge, or the freezer that made that sad, alarming, desolate sound? Or was it the desktop computer, or the laptop
? Or the kitchen fan?
It was early morning and just about light, so at least we were not groping for a torch. But almost everything I rely on to live as I do – especially, nowadays, computers – depends utterly on a reliable power supply. I thought the moment I had long feared had arrived.
Britain's power system trembles all the time on the edge of a disastrous blackout which could take days to repair and could send our economy stumbling over the precipice.
Anybody who pays attention knows this. But here I was, like any fool, unable to work, facing who knew how long without the spark of energy which makes our world keep rolling.
Soon, all the batteries would run down too. I cursed myself, as I often do, for ignoring my own fears for years.
In Baghdad and Mogadishu I had seen what happens to modern life when the power goes. I knew that the long-running Net Zero attack on what was once a solid and reliable National Grid had left us in danger of darkness and silence. But I still hadn't done anything about installing a back-up.
Britain's power system trembles on the edge of a disastrous blackout which could take days to repair and could send our economy stumbling over the precipice, writes Peter Hitchens
In Baghdad and Mogadishu I had seen what happens to modern life when the power goes. I knew that the long-running Net Zero attack on what was once a solid and reliable National Grid had left us in danger of darkness and silence
In Baghdad, war, neglect and looting had made the power hopelessly unreliable, but in my small hotel you could count on the generator snarling into life within seconds of the main system failing.
If you were working on a computer you just had to keep saving your stuff over and over again to avoid losing your work. In Mogadishu, those in the darkened, nightmare city who had their own power were aristocrats amid the powerless poor – powerless in both senses of the word.
So what was this? I live in a 1930s suburb of Oxford and I suspect the cabling and substations must be getting a little tired. Perhaps they were just conking out.
So I called my power suppliers, who are called something like Welsh and Eastern, though I am nowhere near Wales or the East, and cannot actually remember how I ended up buying my volts amps, watts and ohms from them. Aren't these privatised utilities supposed to be more helpful than the old state ones?
Miraculously, I got through. A voice demanded my postcode. I provided it. Then it demanded the first line of my address. I gave it. Then it wanted my name. Had they, I wondered, only cut off the power of people whose names began with 'H'? I said I couldn't see how that could help. I knew that if I asked the voice's name, he would decline to give it to me under data protection rules.
But after a short pause, he weakened on the name issue and informed me: 'You have a power cut.' Well, there, you see – privatisation has definitely made the utility companies more user-friendly. I still don't entirely know why the power failed. I pursued the matter later, and was told that somebody had cut into a mains cable. Was this just one of my neighbours, digging for potatoes, or perhaps for coal?
Or was it one of those broadband cable companies who excavate the streets and pavements almost every day, chewing up the roots of mature trees as they go, providing yet more ways of welcoming trashy streaming channels into my home? I do not know.
As it turned out the power came back on a few hours later. And the closedown was wholly local.
But at any time, the British grid is highly vulnerable, far more than it used to be.
On June 23, there was definitely a crisis in power transmission in this country. Experts argue about how bad it was, but it was undoubtedly a warning. When a power grid trips and collapses, the effects are huge; when it doesn't, nobody notices outside the control rooms.
On that date a major nuclear station, Sizewell B, was offline. The amazing 'electric mountain' at Dinorwig in Snowdonia – which can produce high power at high speed by pouring millions of gallons of stored water into hydro-electric generators – was partly offline for maintenance. A large chunk of the usually reliable gas generation was struggling because of the same hot weather which was causing high power demand.
Some internal power lines were already too heavily loaded, so they could not be used to switch energy from Scotland to the south. Huge batteries, which astonishingly can now provide emergency electricity in large quantities, can supply it only for short periods.
On June 23, there was definitely a crisis in power transmission in this country. On that date a major nuclear station, Sizewell B in Suffolk (pictured), was offline
It turned out to be easier, in the end, to avoid a meltdown by importing power under the Channel from France. Some of this was nuclear, thanks to that country's long-ago decision to build a huge network of nuclear stations, and some of it from French equivalents of Dinorwig's magic mountain.
It worked. But we went nearly all the way through the multiple safeguards and back-ups. What if one more thing had gone wrong, or France had not been able to help?
These conditions, or something like them, could happen again. It might not work out so well the next time.
My own view is that this risk is a direct result of dogma. Britain had – until recently – a reliable fleet of coal-fired power stations, much as China, India and America do now.
Like nuclear, gas and hydro-power, coal-based generation provides what is called 'inertia', a steadiness in current which prevents the power system from tripping and failing when things go wrong. Wind and solar power do not provide this. On August 9, 2019, this problem almost certainly played a part in a serious blackout which cut off a million British customers and halted many trains.
But, driven by the anti-carbon dogma long ago adopted by this country, we have not just mothballed our coal-burning fleet in case we need them one day. We have totally closed and, in most cases, demolished 19 coal-fired power stations, capable of providing 40 per cent of the country's electricity needs. Several, including Didcot A, not far from where I live, have actually been blown up with high explosives.
I heard the Didcot blast from ten miles away and felt a chill of apprehension which has not left me since. I thought then and think now that this was an act of dogmatic self-harm, meaningless when set against the vast and continuing expansion of coal-burning in China.
I will never be surprised to hear that soft, sinister, ghostly groan as my electricity dies and I am shoved out of the modern world into a sort of apocalypse where everything we rely on has become a lifeless piece of plastic or metal.
I really must do something about getting that generator.
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