Tag: Generators

Cannes Film Festival Blackout Averted by Portable Generators

This festival was reportedly dominated by visions of imaginary apocalypse, including climate crisis films.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

This festival was reportedly dominated by visions of imaginary apocalypse, including climate crisis films.

Cannes Film Festival Power Restored After 5-Hour Outage Across South of France With Foul Play Suspected, Closing Ceremony to ‘Proceed as Planned’

By Ellise Shafer
May 24, 2025 3:06am PT

The city of Cannes was hit by a five-hour power outage on Saturday morning ahead of the film festival’s awards ceremony, with electricity finally returning around 3:30 p.m. local time. Despite the technical challenges, a festival rep previously told Variety that the closing ceremony would “proceed as planned” after the Palais des Festivals “switched to an independent power supply.”

According to Franceinfo, the cause of the outage may be foul play with two arson acts reported overnight and several power lines pylons were discovered to have been sawn off in the Alpes-Maritimes.

…Read more: 

https://variety.com/2025/film/festivals/cannes-film-festival-power-outage-awards-ceremony-1236409107/

What is this mysterious “independent power supply”? Western media sources might be coy about naming the agency which rescued Cannes, but on this occasion the French media were up to the challenge of reporting the news.

Power failure in Cannes and in the Alpes-Maritimes: “serious acts of degradation” are at the origin of the incident

Two arsons were reported, while three pillars of an electric pylon located in Villeneuve-Loubet were then sawn Saturday morning.

Article written byfranceinfo
France Televisions
Published on 24/05/2025 12:17 Updated on 05/24/025 16:30

…

From generators at the Palais des Festivals

This incident had consequences on the Cannes Film Festival, which must end in the late afternoon with the presentation of the Palme d’Or. The screening of the film Sirât was interrupted on the Croisette on Saturday morning, reports France 3 Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (New window), which also reports disruptions in the city and at the station. But the situation is improving in the city since AFP journalists noticed the resumption of traffic lights around the Palais des Festivals in the early afternoon.

The palace is currently powered by generators – three groups will be used for the proper holding of the closing ceremony at 6 p.m.Read more (French, translated by Apple): https://www.franceinfo.fr/faits-divers/direct-panne-de-courant-a-cannes-et-dans-les-alpes-maritimes-des-actes-malveillants-sont-a-l-origine-de-l-incident_7269978.html

What makes this more amusing, the 2025 Cannes film festival, which owes its successful conclusion to portable fossil fuel power, was dominated by depictions of imaginary apocalypse – including the fake climate crisis.

It’s the end of the world and the Cannes Film Festival does not feel fine

BY  JAKE COYLE
Updated 1:33 AM AEST, May 20, 2025

CANNES, France (AP) — “Is this what the end of the world feels like?”

…

As much as Cannes basks in the Côte d’Azur sunshine, storm clouds have been all over its movie screens at the festival, which on Monday passed the halfway point. Portents of geopolitical doom are everywhere in a lineup that’s felt unusually in sync with the moment. Tom Cruise, in “Mission: Impossible – Final Awakening,” has battled the AI apocalypse. Raoul Peck, in “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5,” has summoned the author’s totalitarianism warnings for today. Even the new Wes Anderson (“The Phoenician Scheme”) is about an oligarch.

…

It’s not just geopolitical tremors quaking on movie screens in Cannes. Climate change and natural disasters are on the minds of filmmakers, too, sometimes in the most unlikely of movies.

…Read more: 

https://apnews.com/article/cannes-2025-doom-gloom-movies-mood-ff276fba43706e6ac48833112795ffc4

There is no news yet on the identity or motivation of the pylon saboteurs. They might have been metal thieves – metal theft is a serious problem in Europe. But who knows, perhaps they were just ordinary people who were fed up with unwatchable films which lecture the audience about the director’s woke delusions.

Why Wind Farm Constraint Payments Are Not the Same as CCGT Ones

Further to the post on constraint payments, it is worth reading John Constable’s excellent explanation below.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Further to the post on constraint payments, it is worth reading John Constable’s excellent explanation below.

It ha\s often been claimed by the wind lobby that gas generators are paid for constraint, so why pick on wind farms? John has the answer:

Generators may be asked to reduce generation, even if they are contracted in to the market, because there is an error in the demand forecast, and less electricity is required than was expected. In such cases, a conventional fossil-fuelled generator will actually pay to reduce its output, because it is saving fuel. The generator’s financial position is protected because it retains that part of its price over and above the fuel cost. In other words when it is contracted into the market and is for some reason then compelled by National Grid to stop generating it does not lose income.

Constraint payments to wind farms to reduce output started in 2010. Prior to that, National Grid usually called on gas and coal power stations to reduce electricity output which is the cheaper option for the reason described above. There is a fundamental difference between costs of reducing output between conventional power stations and wind powered generators. If a fossil-fuelled power station reduces output, savings are made on the cost of the fuel which need not be used. As a result of this, fossil-fuelled power stations submit negative bids to the system operator indicating they will pay National Grid a certain sum per MWh if asked to reduce output. Conversely, wind farms do not have fuel costs, but if they are called upon to reduce output, they lose subsidies such as the Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROC) and (prior to 1 August 2015) the Climate Change Levy Exemption Certificates (referred to as Levy Exemption Certificates, LECs). This, in part, explains why wind generator participants in the Balancing Mechanism submit positive bids to the system operator indicating that they need to be paid by National Grid to reduce output.

John’s full analysis is here.

The important point he stresses is that all generators receive the income for the electricity they have contracted to supply, even if they switch off at the request of the grid. For a gas generator, this means they still get their income, but don’t have to pay for fuel. They are therefore more than happy to pay the Grid to switch off.

Wind farms are the opposite. If they switch off they lose their subsidies, which are payable over and above the market price they will receive anyway.

For those not familiar with John’s Renewable Energy Foundation, it provides a wealth of data on renewable energy generation, drilled down to the individual generators themselves.

Bookmark his site here: