holly_1948

A big consideration is that Scotland presently exports about a quarter of its generated electricity to England. Since publically owned electricity was sold off the new owners appear to have decided that spare capacity to cope with peaks is for wimps and is incompatible with maximising profit.

All of which puts an independent Scotland in a very strong position because it can avoid peak demand blackouts by only exporting what is surplus and at same time driving the price up astronomically for the electricity that actually does get exported. The English will pay dearly for having disposed of the electricity industry at fire-sale prices.

Pulaski

Unless money grows on trees in Scotland, £53,000,000 a week (2.75Billion a year) will bankrupt the Scottish government.

If that happens (the price rises "astronomically"), simple economics will fix that. Alternative cheaper sources will be developed and Scotland's export market will disappear. Of course that is assuming that Scotland nationalises it's power generating capacity because as things stand a Scottish government has no more authority to direct private generators where to sell Scottish electricity than it does to direct whisky distillers where to sell their Scotch.

neilcumming

And a lot of people in Scotland dont like Maggie Thatcher,oh the irony!

Mr Weeze

Because Scotland owns the power plants?

holly_1948

Because government regulates power plants and government has the power to tax. "The Power to Tax Is the Power to Destroy" (McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819))

With power plants (and the rest of electricity infrastructure) it is not something you can pick up and move. And it's not something you can build another one of in just a year or three. At least four years of actual construction not including selecting the location, designing or planning and financing delays, another half year to to come on stream. Five years minimum, ten years typical. Market forces will fix things eventually, but the money that can be extorted during the transition phase is essentially unbounded unless government intercedes. Because when you need electricity you need it now, not later today but now within minutes and most people will pay whatever it costs to get electricity. Witness California in 1999.

But it's not so much the price of the electricity (though that is a big consideration). It's that Scotland, especially its commerce, would have a reliable supply and England would not. Under Scots independence.

Mr Weeze

So you're telling me a verdict in the US has a bearing on Scottish law? Are you in Colorado by any chance?

scrubbedexpat099

So say in 5 years a reasonable case could be made that the populace of Scotland would be 10 Scottish Punts or or whatever better off by being in the UK then they should seek to rejoin?

scrubbedexpat099

There is also the supply line from France, I assumed they had long term contracts.

Transporting electricity is very inefficient and with the switch to renewables it would be logical that they are situated near the demand.

Hotscot

Salmond McScrooge...

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politic...cism-1-3280080

holly_1948

They do. It does. Both.

The problem is that UK electricity was sold off to interests who are primarily interested in short term profit and don't really care one way or the other about meeting long term needs. Also commercial industry has much to gain and little to lose from an under-supply.

Back in the glory days of CEGB there was supply to meet perhaps 125% of the maximum peak that actually happened in order to cope for a theoretical demand that never actually happened. Nowadays there is very little spare peak supply and it grows less each year. Ironically, the incentives given to alternative energy, especially the small scale stuff like solar panels on houses has made it less and less financially attractive to build baseline plants that don't have variable output. As a result the system is increasingly fragile as it is ever more likely that peak demand will one day coincide with a windless, sunless day and a neap tide in a period of drought and so on.

One of the biggest disadvantages of alternative energy is that our incompetent scientists have not yet figured out how to make the sun shine at night.

In Britain all the above is compounded by two factors. (1) Being an island makes it awkward to import electricity
(2) When the CEGB grand plans were developed in the 1960s and 1970s it was believed that the biggest demands would be from industry and industry would have not only a large but also a growing share of demand as houses became better insulated and so on. It didn't happen that way of course. But as a consequence of the work of CEGB electric power in UK has largely been flowing Southwards for decades (because industry used to be disproportionately in the North).

Consequently UK is in a dangerous situation with regard to electricity supply that cannot really be fixed except by renationalisation which is politically impossible. And losing Scotland as a source would make things still worse, a lot worse.

scrubbedexpat099

You didn't expect him to stay in a Holiday Inn Express did you.

But it is symptomatic, there will be a lot of added costs.

scrubbedexpat099

Not so much an issue of ownership, but certainly one of direction.

Being realistic the system nearly fell over a year or so ago and with the closing of coal plants it is just a matter of time before it does happen.

Quite what happens when we add in all the electric cars that are replacing petrol engines is another issue.

Pulaski

It's all moot unless the pro-independence camp can find 50% more votes.

Hotscot

Of course not but some moderation would have been appropriate.

scrubbedexpat099

We are talking about the next King of Scotland.