Britain peak power demand (from BBC TV series: Britain from Above) on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2013–2026.
documentary · evergreen
A clip from the BBC series Britain from Above showing UK peak power demand. It shows a grid engineer preparing for the surge as millions put the kettle on when a popular show ends.
HN cites it as the canonical illustration of TV pickup and grid balancing, and as a must-see example of demand spikes.
“Here's a great movie illustrating how the grid is balanced”
12 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
With the obligatory, must see, BBC Britain from Above segment in which Andrew Marr fly on the wall narrates the most challenging part of a live load engineer (UK)'s day ... <doof, doof, doof> the East Enders kettle break. * ▶ this video
in “Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests” · View on HN
This reminds me of this YouTube video: ▶ this video . There's a monitoring room to make sure people are ready to switch backups and reroute in case of some kind of grid failure, but also in very specific scenarios. Britain being filled with Brits, what would happen is that once the show was over, half the nation got up from the couch to turn on the kettle for a cup of tea. Those electric kettles are quite demanding, especially if millions of them turn on at the same time. So every time there was a major event, dedicated people are monitoring the grid frequency, power plants on standby and foreign contracts at the ready when needed, just to increase capacity at the right time. You can't just schedule this stuff, because if a football match runs over its allotted time, you may suddenly add power to the grid without any load, causing all kinds of problems like the grid frequency increasing and making digital clocks run ahead. There is a temporary demand of gigawatts of power that rises within five minutes and lasts until the kettles are done. The YouTube video provides an example of 600MW of power being requested from France... for the end of an episode of Eastenders. I always knew the British like their tea and that there's some kind of planning going on for events like street lights turning on, but the combination of the two is a great example of complex behaviour that's easy to overlook.
in “Mystery Blips” · View on HN
Here's a great movie illustrating how the grid is balanced when a popular tv show ends and millions of people want a cup of hot tea: ▶ this video
in “Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental European Power System” · View on HN
Technically yes, economically difficult for most nations, if it's approached at this level. Germany has had an interesting approach to solar, where they subsidized solar panels for homeowners. I think it is the smarter approach because you incentives individuals to go green, rather than trying to implement a top down solution. And even so, we will need to keep power plants on call for redundancy and high load purposes. There is a video about peak power usage in England which I found fascinating (though this is a rather unique case) ▶ this video
in “NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise” · View on HN
Here's a video showing an engineer at the national grid bringing hydro-electric plants online at the closing credits of a popular soap opera in anticipation of the millions of kettle that are about to be switched on! ▶ this video
in “My car charger can boil water really fast [video]” · View on HN
Reminds me of the 3 giga watt surge in Britain when a popular tv show ends and everyone goes and makes tea..the BBC had a bit on it (and the grid) ▶ this video
in “The Beauty of Batteries” · View on HN
The UK has a unique problem with demand spikes for electricity during commercial breaks, due to the British penchant for using high-power electric kettles to make tea. In the worst case, demand could rise and fall by gigawatts within a matter of minutes. [link] ▶ this video
in “Veo 3 and Imagen 4, and a new tool for filmmaking called Flow” · View on HN
An example of how frequency is closely monitored before energy demand surge in Britain due to Tea Time: ▶ this video [link]
in “Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental European Power System” · View on HN
I'd love to see a citation for that level of accuracy, I can't believe it's that good, maybe to within +/- 4 cycles? If you watch this: ▶ this video This is about how the UK National Grid manage power availability at peak times. Over here we're running 50Hz rather than 60, but one of the key goals is to keep the grid frequency as close to 50Hz as possible. At around 2m15s into the clip they lose power from a French on-demand provider and the frequency takes a "nose-dive" to 49.6Hz causing the operator to call on backup from a Welsh hydro-station to keep up with demand. Theoretically in the UK we should get 4,320,000 cycles per day, but I suspect it's probably + or - 3 cycles. Unless of course it eventually balances out over the course of several days. Happy to be corrected though.
in “The Clock” · View on HN
There's literally a single person who adjusts the whole power grid according to second-by-second fluctuations in power which result from half the nation boiling water for tea after the most popular TV shows finish: ▶ this video
in “U.K. National Grid status” · View on HN
I'm skeptical about the energy claims. How much of a difference is the continuous cooling of a can of beverage going to cost when you still have to keep the refrigerator running anyway? Plus energy grids prefer a gradual and predictable energy draw than a sudden spike. Otherwise we end up with scenarios like this: ▶ this video
in “Reverse Microwave Chills Beer In 45 Seconds” · View on HN
They have a man watch the telly to hit the button to turn on the power for all the teapots going on. ▶ this video
in “How I got my laser eye injury” · View on HN