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Comment by EwanToo | Hacker News Reader

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EwanToo·

London had a -8C night earlier this year

https://www.mylondon.news/weather/london-weather-coldest-nig...

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as noted in the article - a once in 12 ish year event. So, 1/4000...

But then it’s nasty blackout. Somebody still needs to design electricity grid for one of these very rare events.

A whole lot of other electricity demands drop massively at night, so while it needs to be planned for, the coldest nighttime period is also the time the electricity grid currently sees the lowest demand.

People are also typically asleep under a ton of duvets. It's not an issue if your home drops to say 10-15c overnight and is warmer in the day.

True. Growing up in Norway I often even preferred sleeping with my bedroom window open during winter.

Burn some fossil fuels from a "national emergency reserve". Perfect is the enemy of good.

I'd just whack the wood burner on. It makes sense for people to have a backup.

TBF that's not an option in London, or in apartments.

But - other comments have noted, some backup generation capability that use less green resources should be acceptable for such rare contingencies.

I live in London and used mine in the winter, gas prices were insane.

Probably a good half of our homes have fireplaces and chimneys.

It's not cost effective for everyone to have a wood burner but if only a small percentage used them on the cold days we'd be fine.

People obsess a bit about pollution, as a response to rare events it's fine.

Yeah we'll be fine unless extreme weather events become more common.

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