Electric

One thing leads to another. A stone hit the car window - who knows how long ago. The chip led to a crack; the crack got bigger; it started to intrude on our field of vision when driving. I called the insurance company

Separately, a couple of days ago, an unidentifiable warning light on the dashboard. MrsM and the manual said 'Emission control system failure'. I called the garage and fixed an appointment with the computer

'Twas on a Tuesday morning that I found myself in the industrial/commercial backwoods of Banbury, leaving the car with a taciturn windscreen man for "two or three hours". He assumed I would head for the shopping district and cafe. I went the other way, finding little jittys, footpaths, scruffy back roads that locals use as short-cuts. 

It was a rich two hours; more to see than one blip can hold: a huge, milky-green Tramac company railhead, unloading stone rubble; some graffiti: "Your Worth. Her eyes spoke words she coudnt [sic] express"; the reservoir and sailing club where I was once a weekly visitor; a riverside nature reserve, full of birdsong; the Oxford canal, with a boat called 'Sweet Basil'; a fledgling jay, just growing its electric blue wing feathers; a canal-side house where the owners have mounted a blown up photograph of themselves on the outside wall; three places where people have pitched tents as their home

And this. Banbury Power Station. Who knew?! I looked it up, and found a list of 173 gas power plants in UK; this is one of them. The biggest is in Pembroke, beside the deep water port of the Milford Haven estuary, 2,200Megawatts (MW). The smallest is Squabb Wood, Hampshire, 1MW. Banbury, operated by Welsh Power (naturally), is six units (six chimneys) of 2MW each - 12MW total - none of it actually generating today. Outside a locked gate was a friendly technician from a gas company; based in Leeds, he had travelled down and stayed in a local hotel, but he must wait for someone from Centrica to let him in; he didn't sound confident they would turn up

So many questions. How do you manage 173 plants, each with their own operator, and multiple layers of sub-contractors? How do the economics, and technologies, of 2,200MW compare with 12GW or 1GW? Who switches it off and on, and how - do they need a match? 

Head spinning, I went back to the quiet man; the windscreen was done. I started the car and the warning light did not come on. I drove home and rang the garage...