Actually, even the organisers keep saying that this is really more of a symbolic thing to get people talking.

Why - technical reasons of Science and Engineering mean that very little CO2 would be saved for that one hour - sadly.

You have to burn the coal to make the steam well in advance of any given point of time that you want to spin the turbines to make the normal amount of "electrickery". So you have already released the same amount of CO2 'as normal'.

You have to burn the coal to make the steam well in advance of any given point of time that you want to spin the turbines to make the normal "electrickery" that will be used back at the normal amount' once people switch the stuff back on an hour later - or else you will get massive 'brownouts' cause the system now cannot handle the heavier load.

Incidentally, it has been calculated from those signing up, that the actual 'instantaneous dip in demand' will be less than when everybody gets up from the TV football during an ad and boils the kettle, etc.

So the coal is still being burnt at the same rate, the stem is still being generated at the same rate, the turbine are still spinning at the same rate - cause their speed determines the 50 cycles per second mains frequency.

The only difference is that a lower load (and incidentally less income - thus a loss!) is being taken. This means that, at best, the engineers crank back the electrical feedback control to dump excess energy in the system so as to not cause the generators to explode - but the same amount of CO2 is generated.

The time lag in the system between burning the coal and getting the electrickery out is probably at least an hour.

Any old sailors who served on Steam powered warships here? You will understand. In order to steam at 'full throttle' - flank speed, or whatever, you have to have spent an hour or so stoking the fires to get the boilers working to have sufficient steam pressure .... :-)




So don't get too excited over just one hour - as the organisers themselves have said on radio and TV - it is mainly symbolic...