And it seems to me that we live our lives like a candle in the wind, never knowing who to cling to when the Net Zero rot sets in.
Your graphs vividly show the energy mix candle burning, until that candle sputters and dies in the near future, beneath the red line of harsh reality and when, ironically, it's not the wind which is blowing, but the wind which is not blowing which will result in the lights going out and all of us having to use wax candles to light our cold houses on dark, cold winter nights.
I see adverts on the back of our local buses saying "Get Ready for Winter" and then going on to talk about blackouts. Thus it seems that some in authority know only too well what hell our senior politicians are unleashing on society through their energy policies.
Thank you David, a short, concise and accurate summary of our fragile grid, already suffering low inertia and high parasitic harmonic pollution from intermittent renewable
You would think the need for NGESO, Ofgem and suppliers to be peddling demand side reductions, via (small) payments to smart meter consumers, to move cooking & washing etc, to off peak times, would be ringing some alarm bells at DESNZ, but, it seems not
Energy incompetent politicians are driving irrational net zero policies, that both the regulator and ESO are desperately trying to implement
If the net zero push for battery cars and heat pumps is realised (with increasingly punitive Govt fines for suppliers), even at a 10% national level, those power outages will likely happen well before 2030
I expect that once the results of the Capacity Market auctions are in they will have some useful analysis on their blog which is always worth a read. The T-1 auction ran over 14-15 Feb, with results due to be published 8 days later, when the T-4 auction will be run with results a week later. Results will be published here
The T-4 auction is expected to clear at prices close to the cap of £75/kW/a (£75m/GW/a for grid scale units) for the year to procure a notional 44GW including derated contributions from renewables and interconnectors.
That's probably enough for at least an OCGT plant, but for investors the risk is political. If they are going to be forced to add CCS they will be looking to have that cost de-risked, if not funded up front. That would require perhaps another £50m/GW/a, plus 30% extra fuel, which would push up power prices.
They've got away with it so far because demand has been depressed by high prices and Industrial closure. But as prices normalise, and there is less industry left to shut, and as maybe even there is some demand increase from EVs the crunch is coming.
Wasn’t this decarbonise the grid by 2030 a mad Miliband policy? I think the dropping of the £28bn green investment policy is a sign that mad Milly has been sidelined.
Firstly there are no coal stations (ie more than one!!) there is only Ratcliffe left but she can still deliver 1.5GW and has done so on numerous occasions this winter despite being over 50years old by the way! What's interesting is that even in high wind situations she has been called onto the grid. This i believe is partly to do with voltage and reactive power support which is mission critical to keeping grid stable. Demand is in central England and thats where the power stations were but offshore wind and interconnectors are connected at the periphery of the grid and the transmission system is just not man enough to move the power to where its needed. NG know this which is why they say they need to spend 70B modifying it. This is mission critical for the fantasy 2030 deadline but has no chance of being achieved so thats one prop out from 2030. So in the short term even with more wind (even whats planned is slipping back let alone projects being cancelled or still not FID) ESO will need CCGTs to keep the grid stable. There more chance of blackouts from grid instability than a generation shortage in the short term. Personally this will trump any issue and for whatever nonsense Labour spout they will row back from it in the end. There just saying it to try and the Greenies on side following the 28B deferral.
Furthermore most of the CCGTs have capacity agreements stretching out towards end of the decade so they wouldn't have put plant forward if they though it wasn't going to be available so majority will keep going for a while yet. In the longer run the current remit for the CM is reducing teh amount of gas that can be procured so will certainly start reducing CCGT capacity late 2020's unless they change the generation mix. They can do this through T-1 agreements and that kept a few coal stations on the system in W22 as an example. The ESO actually has plenty of options at its disposal (i) access to over 2GW of STOR (gas peakers) generation (ii) demand side response which can save potentially 3GW short terms (iii) voltage reductions upto 10% say another 3GW. All these come at high cost but the ESO unconstrained by cost is very adept at avoiding blackouts and are a very conservative (small c) and don't take risks with the mantar of "keeping the lights on at all cost". Personally i hope we do get a few blackouts as we need something thats people affecting to make the populous wake us and see what happening but as i say ESO are very good at what they do so don't underestimate their ability.
What absolutely must happen is that CCGTs aren't just demolished the day after someone says they aren't needed they must at least be mothballed unlike the coal station which were destroyed just so a politician could get a photo op.
As usual what a great thought provoking blog again.
What's curious is that the media are now referring to the possibility of a snowstorm as an "Arctic blackout". I can't work out whether this is a nod to the woke diversity crowd who might object to the racist colonialist term 'whiteout' (on account of the inconvenient fact that snow is white) or whether they are hinting that severe winter weather now is going to mean blackouts - real blackouts.
Beautiful in its awfulness. Nicely done, even if you are playing to an empty stadium, the ticket holders all having left to load up on torches and pitchforks with which to chase down vampires and witches.
This warning should have been sounded years ago, as soon as people became aware of wind droughts that persist and extend over large areas, like Western Europe and SE Australia. In fact the warning was sounded by Australians over a decade ago and still hardly anyone is taking any notice.
Timera has a blog today on National Grid's efforts to keep the lights on using batteries. We have I think a new record for payments in the Balancing Mechanism as a result:
The Open Balancing Platform (OBP) went live on December 12th 2023 with the launch of the bulk dispatch capability for small BMUs and BESS units through the small BMU and battery zones respectively. This allows ESO control room engineers to simultaneously dispatch multiple units, reducing the need for manual intervention.
On December 15th, 2023, the battery zone was temporarily removed due to manifest errors arising from the inadvertent acceptance of a small number of high priced actions, reaching £99,000/MWh. On January 8th 2024, the battery zone was successfully re-introduced to bulk dispatch and has been up and running since.
Further instances of high price BOAs being accepted in the battery zone have occurred since January 8th due to insufficient warnings given by OBP to control room engineers. A fix for this issue has been implemented as of 6th February. In total 11 instances of high priced BOA acceptance have occurred since OBP launch.
Imagine being charged £350,000 a year for your household electricity. Competence seems to be lacking.
Obviously, don't shut down any nuclear plants. They can run far longer. All the scare bullshit is just that.
Stupid makes its own bed.
And it seems to me that we live our lives like a candle in the wind, never knowing who to cling to when the Net Zero rot sets in.
Your graphs vividly show the energy mix candle burning, until that candle sputters and dies in the near future, beneath the red line of harsh reality and when, ironically, it's not the wind which is blowing, but the wind which is not blowing which will result in the lights going out and all of us having to use wax candles to light our cold houses on dark, cold winter nights.
I see adverts on the back of our local buses saying "Get Ready for Winter" and then going on to talk about blackouts. Thus it seems that some in authority know only too well what hell our senior politicians are unleashing on society through their energy policies.
Thank you David, a short, concise and accurate summary of our fragile grid, already suffering low inertia and high parasitic harmonic pollution from intermittent renewable
You would think the need for NGESO, Ofgem and suppliers to be peddling demand side reductions, via (small) payments to smart meter consumers, to move cooking & washing etc, to off peak times, would be ringing some alarm bells at DESNZ, but, it seems not
Energy incompetent politicians are driving irrational net zero policies, that both the regulator and ESO are desperately trying to implement
If the net zero push for battery cars and heat pumps is realised (with increasingly punitive Govt fines for suppliers), even at a 10% national level, those power outages will likely happen well before 2030
Timera produced this chart of the impending capacity deficit a couple of years ago on their blog.
https://timera-energy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/chart1-4.png
I expect that once the results of the Capacity Market auctions are in they will have some useful analysis on their blog which is always worth a read. The T-1 auction ran over 14-15 Feb, with results due to be published 8 days later, when the T-4 auction will be run with results a week later. Results will be published here
https://www.emrdeliverybody.com/CM/Capacity%20Auction%20Information.aspx
The T-4 auction is expected to clear at prices close to the cap of £75/kW/a (£75m/GW/a for grid scale units) for the year to procure a notional 44GW including derated contributions from renewables and interconnectors.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/capacity-market-auction-parameters-letter-to-national-grid-eso-january-2024/final-auction-parameters-t-1-and-t-4-capacity-market-auctions
That's probably enough for at least an OCGT plant, but for investors the risk is political. If they are going to be forced to add CCS they will be looking to have that cost de-risked, if not funded up front. That would require perhaps another £50m/GW/a, plus 30% extra fuel, which would push up power prices.
They've got away with it so far because demand has been depressed by high prices and Industrial closure. But as prices normalise, and there is less industry left to shut, and as maybe even there is some demand increase from EVs the crunch is coming.
Wasn’t this decarbonise the grid by 2030 a mad Miliband policy? I think the dropping of the £28bn green investment policy is a sign that mad Milly has been sidelined.
Firstly there are no coal stations (ie more than one!!) there is only Ratcliffe left but she can still deliver 1.5GW and has done so on numerous occasions this winter despite being over 50years old by the way! What's interesting is that even in high wind situations she has been called onto the grid. This i believe is partly to do with voltage and reactive power support which is mission critical to keeping grid stable. Demand is in central England and thats where the power stations were but offshore wind and interconnectors are connected at the periphery of the grid and the transmission system is just not man enough to move the power to where its needed. NG know this which is why they say they need to spend 70B modifying it. This is mission critical for the fantasy 2030 deadline but has no chance of being achieved so thats one prop out from 2030. So in the short term even with more wind (even whats planned is slipping back let alone projects being cancelled or still not FID) ESO will need CCGTs to keep the grid stable. There more chance of blackouts from grid instability than a generation shortage in the short term. Personally this will trump any issue and for whatever nonsense Labour spout they will row back from it in the end. There just saying it to try and the Greenies on side following the 28B deferral.
Furthermore most of the CCGTs have capacity agreements stretching out towards end of the decade so they wouldn't have put plant forward if they though it wasn't going to be available so majority will keep going for a while yet. In the longer run the current remit for the CM is reducing teh amount of gas that can be procured so will certainly start reducing CCGT capacity late 2020's unless they change the generation mix. They can do this through T-1 agreements and that kept a few coal stations on the system in W22 as an example. The ESO actually has plenty of options at its disposal (i) access to over 2GW of STOR (gas peakers) generation (ii) demand side response which can save potentially 3GW short terms (iii) voltage reductions upto 10% say another 3GW. All these come at high cost but the ESO unconstrained by cost is very adept at avoiding blackouts and are a very conservative (small c) and don't take risks with the mantar of "keeping the lights on at all cost". Personally i hope we do get a few blackouts as we need something thats people affecting to make the populous wake us and see what happening but as i say ESO are very good at what they do so don't underestimate their ability.
What absolutely must happen is that CCGTs aren't just demolished the day after someone says they aren't needed they must at least be mothballed unlike the coal station which were destroyed just so a politician could get a photo op.
As usual what a great thought provoking blog again.
What's curious is that the media are now referring to the possibility of a snowstorm as an "Arctic blackout". I can't work out whether this is a nod to the woke diversity crowd who might object to the racist colonialist term 'whiteout' (on account of the inconvenient fact that snow is white) or whether they are hinting that severe winter weather now is going to mean blackouts - real blackouts.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/weather/1867308/new-weather-maps-arctic-blackout-snow
Nice piece!
When the music's over...
Beautiful in its awfulness. Nicely done, even if you are playing to an empty stadium, the ticket holders all having left to load up on torches and pitchforks with which to chase down vampires and witches.
This warning should have been sounded years ago, as soon as people became aware of wind droughts that persist and extend over large areas, like Western Europe and SE Australia. In fact the warning was sounded by Australians over a decade ago and still hardly anyone is taking any notice.
https://newcatallaxy.blog/2023/07/11/approaching-the-tipping-point/
https://www.flickerpower.com/index.php/search/categories/general/the-energy-crisis-how-we-got-here-and-how-to-move-on
Timera has a blog today on National Grid's efforts to keep the lights on using batteries. We have I think a new record for payments in the Balancing Mechanism as a result:
The Open Balancing Platform (OBP) went live on December 12th 2023 with the launch of the bulk dispatch capability for small BMUs and BESS units through the small BMU and battery zones respectively. This allows ESO control room engineers to simultaneously dispatch multiple units, reducing the need for manual intervention.
On December 15th, 2023, the battery zone was temporarily removed due to manifest errors arising from the inadvertent acceptance of a small number of high priced actions, reaching £99,000/MWh. On January 8th 2024, the battery zone was successfully re-introduced to bulk dispatch and has been up and running since.
Further instances of high price BOAs being accepted in the battery zone have occurred since January 8th due to insufficient warnings given by OBP to control room engineers. A fix for this issue has been implemented as of 6th February. In total 11 instances of high priced BOA acceptance have occurred since OBP launch.
Imagine being charged £350,000 a year for your household electricity. Competence seems to be lacking.
Collapse is the aim. See the government strategy: "Absolute Zero".
Net Zero is not the destination.