[philipallstar]

> the inevitable capacity meltdowns

Capacity is constantly being hit by very large population growth. Just like water and housing. Money available is lowered by state-enforced price caps. Purchase prices are raised by state-mandated net zero rules that subsidise green sources.

[leoedin]

> Capacity is constantly being hit by very large population growth.

Is this really true in the UK? Electricity production in the UK peaked in 2005. It's down 20% on that today. The issue here is that in 2005 electricity was primarily produced in large power stations reasonably close to where it was consumed, while in 2025 it's increasingly produced in locations far from population centres. The actual ability of the grid to deliver power to the last mile isn't really a problem. The problem is that most of the houses are in the South, and increasingly large amounts of generation are in the North.

[tomrod]

Texas solved this with the CREZ

[ZeroConcerns]

> Capacity is constantly being hit by very large population growth

Europe has not been 'hit by a very large population growth' by any stretch of the imagination in recent years. Capacity issues are mostly due to deprecating natural gas, which has lead to an increase in solar, but that's just a minor issue when you look at industry migrating from furnaces to heat pumps.

> Just like water and housing

Water is squarely an agriculture thing and housing has been a shitshow forever. But thanks for bringing those up as well -- it's like a dogwhistle trifecta!

> state-enforced price caps, state-mandated net zero rules

Most parts of Europe lack those entirely. There are (less and less) 'green subsidies', sure, but funnily enough, the increasing cost of fossil fuels is doing most of the work here.

[adolph]

> Capacity is constantly being hit by very large population growth.

What population growth?

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/uk-population...

[mytailorisrich]

The UK has experienced the 2 largest annual growth on record in the last 5 years, with +755k mid-23 to mid-2024 alone [1]. Even your link shows about 11% growth since 2010 and higher growth rates since ~2004.

So we can argue about what "very large" means, but population growth is significant.

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...

[onraglanroad]

> about 11% growth since 2010

So much less than 1% a year.

> we can argue about what "very large" means

Yeah, you can argue that less than 1% a year is "very large". I'm not sure anyone else will be convinced.

[mytailorisrich]

The UK does have record population growth, the rest is semantics as mentioned. That certainly does not help with all the infrastructure issues the country has. That's it. Please refrain from flamebaits and political assumptions, and let's have a substantive discussion instead.

[onraglanroad]

No, it's not semantic it's numeric. It's less than 1%.

And I didn't make any political assumptions. Didn't even mention them. Might want to tighten the cord there, looks like a mask is slipping.