energy

[harryagain]

Program about energy on BBC1 @ 1930. (Tonight Mar 10th)

Might be a bit shit, dunno. Bimbos, and what can you say in a half hour?

[Dave Liquorice]

Inside Out? Which region as that is an opt out slot.

[Nightjar]

Bang Goes the Theory. I'm not sure I like the new format though. It was more interesting when each presenter spoke about a different subject, rather than having a whole programme on one subject, with the main presenter being the only one whose degree is not in science. Still, at least they did make the point that one answer to the looming energy crisis would be to give up on the government's carbon reduction targets.

Colin Bignell

[spuorgelgoog]

I think they forgot to mention that at about this time last year we only ha d about 6 hours' of natural gas left in the country. March 2006 and Jan 201

0 had alert status too.

They also seemed to think that smart metering would reduce total demand ove r time, when it will generally only reduce maximum instantaneous demand. Wh atever is turned off by the smart meter (heating, air con etc) will usually need to work harder to catch up later.

Owain

[Nightjar]

They also claimed we were buying gas from Russia, which we are not, at least not in any quantity and not directly. We buy some gas from Belgium and about 2% of their gas comes from Russia.

That may be all that is needed though. If they can reduce the evening peak, will it matter if demand is then higher overnight?

Colin Bignell

[Dave Liquorice]

instantaneous

Define "smart metering". Do you mean a "smart meter" that just has a customer display that shows instananeous use, they may have a slight long demand reduction effect, but you can only switch off so much or change so many llight bulbs.

Or do you mean a "smart meter" that reports use and can be instructed to cut off the supply (that'll go down well...). AFAIK there are no fridges or freezers that can take instructions from the meter and not run their compressor, unless they really have to for food safety grounds. This sort of control is still blue sky thinking, they haven't even got an agreed standard supplier meter protocol sorted out the last I heard.

The energy still has to come from somewhere, all peak trimming does is reduce the amount of capacity required for short periods. Overall the amount of energy required probably isn't affected that much.

[The Natural Philosopher]

However that peak trimming could just knock 2-3GW - a whole BIG power station - off night time peaks.

They said when they built Dinorwig that it saved a whole nuclear power station, and they may not have been far wrong.

Anything that gives or saves 2-3GW for an hour or two removes the need for one peaking power stations. so its a good thing.

And you don't need a smart meter to do that either. Simply monitor mains frequency, and if it drifts below 50hz, keep the fridge off until its above..

Apply that to all non time critical stuff like hot water and refrigeration, and its actually a Good Thing.

[Nightjar]

The programme is available on BBC iPlayer. They were with a supplier who was disconnecting specific non-essential items, such as air-conditioning units, at a large number of places, such as hotels and hospitals, at the request of National Grid, to limit peak demand. The discussion went on to the possibility, in the future, of individual domestic appliances being able to switch themselves off on request.

The point being made in the programme was that, within 10-20 years, we might not have enough capacity to meet the peak demands. Therefore, peak trimming would become more important than overall consumption.

Colin Bignell

[Dave Liquorice]

Overall

That's what I said "reduce the amount of capacity required for short periods".

The context of this thread is "6 hours of gas left" not grid capacity to meet peak demand. How is knocking the peak off going to extend that 6 hours when every thing starts playing catch up?

[dennis]

That was an error then, they didn't need to save a nuclear plant.

[Nightjar]

The context of the thread is a BBC programme about the looming energy deficit, which was quite wide ranging and surprisingly even handed.

They did not mention the six hours of gas left, possibly because it is something of a red herring. The Crown Estates, who own the rights to undersea caverns where gas is stored, said they were down to six hours worth of stored gas, which is what made the headlines. The official figures, which include other storage facilities, are that we were down to two days worth. That was, however, a very unusual situation. It was the end of winter, when stored gas levels are always low; a processing plant in Norway, which normally supplies pipeline gas had problems; and there had been disruptions in the piped gas from Belgium. The piped gas supply problems meant that we had used more stored gas than we normally would have.

Colin Bignell

[bert]

In message , Nightjar writes

If we are that close to peak capacity then if one plant goes down we are in the sh**. If two plants go down .....

Just what our economy needs to get us out of recession - power shortages. Politicians have been pissing around with energy supplies for 40 years.

20 years is long enough to get a couple of good sized nukes into service with a few more close behind.

[Johny B Good]

It's just a way of flattening the demand curve which helps considerably in maintaining power generation at maximum efficiency. Such 'power management' may effect a small reduction in demand but the overall daily energy consumption will remain largely the same (although fuel consumption will be reduced by the more efficient operation even if it remained exactly the same).

Are you including the oft overlooked Ffestiniog Pumped storage facility (4 90MW turbines - 360MW total)?

In these days of seperate accounting for each division of a large, once monolithic publicly owned, company, the PSPs literally justify their existance by turning a profit on buying in cheap off peak electricity to recharge their reserviours overnight from the National Grid and the sale of stored power at the more expensive on peak rate at periods of peak demand.

In times past, before Maggie Thatcher's misguided attempts at encouraging economic growth through competition by private enterprsie and 'Market Forces' when these PSP facilities wer owned and run by the Electricity Boards, such 'accounting' would have been merely an internal exercise in determining next year's budgetary requirements for a facility that had already justified its very existence as a vital part of the grid at the very start of the planning stage.

It is indeed. It's a pity there aren't any other locations in the UK that can offer the opportunity to build another "Dinorwig" (or even a Ffestiniog) PSP.

That's data we _all_ have access to and it's a more than sufficently accurate guide for such 'smart monitoring' for any such domestic appliances to respond to.

Agreed, and not a single 'Smart Meter' in sight for any of this to work.

[charles]

and Cruachan in Argyll which can supply 440MW

[Johny B Good]

Not a lot, as it turned out. Just the usual glossed over 'facts' and oversimplification (well, it _is_ a BBC ONE audience after all, 'We don't want to overtax their tiny little minds at the expense of their enjoyment of "Bum Enders" and similar programmes of 'Dross').

There was no mention, afaicr, of Dinorwig and its vital role (what chance then of a mention for the Ffestiog PSP?). There was a brief reference or two to one more Nuclear Power station being built which wasn't likely to come on line before 2025 but nothing said about its design (Cold war tech or LFTR).

It seems they missed an opportunity to push the vastly safer LFTR breed of modern Nuclear Power technology to help set aside the BBC ONE audience's, largely irrational, fears of nuclear power to help pave the way towards the only rational solution to an impending power shortage being driven by HMG's compliance on meeting carbon emissions targets.

The only thing it did achieve was to provide their audience with slightly more than a 'vague inkling' of trouble ahead in meeting the UK's future demand for electrical energy.

Overall, I'd say this first epeisode of the new series of "Bang Goes The Theory" was on a par with its previous series showings. That is, you could get some perverse pleasure out of 'Filling in the Gaps" if you had a modicum of knowledge of the subject in hand.

[Brian Gaff]

I heard it, but nothing there that has not already been said.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

I think they were out to explain it as simply as possible though as I know there are lots of people out there who just don't understand there is a problem, and the best time to know is before the next election.

Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

think there are a couple more in scotland as well

[Johny B Good]

Forgot about that one (I knew Scotland had some hydro but wasn't sure whether that included PSP). I've just googled it and discovered that it was "The world's first high head reversible pumped storage hydro scheme" a claim that seems to be a spurious one since the Ffestiniog one was commisioned in 1963 and this one wasn't officiall opened by the Queen until 15 Oct 1965.

Next time, if there ever _is_ a next time (it looks like my daughter and SiL and the twins may be moving back from Glagow later in the year), I'll make a point of visiting it.

I've already done the 'guided tours' of Ffestiniog and Dinorwic (in that order) and if the quality of the tour is as good as the Ffestiniog one, I'll be well pleased.

Although the scale of the machine hall at Dinorwic is very impressive, the same couldn't be said of the tour guide's expertise who I think were just 'tour guides' rather than an engineer pulling 'double duty' to entertain the visitors.

Between the three of them, that's a total of 2.78GW capacity for the UK. I know it takes a max of 60 seconds to bring up Ffestiniog's output from zero to full capacity. The quoted response time for Dinorwic's generators is 16 seconds but they keep a hot spare spinning in air (which sacrifices 4MW maintenance power) which can be brought up to full output in a mere 12 seconds. I believe it's still the fastest response time for any such Pumped Storage facility worldwide.

I notice that the Ben Cruachan Power Station startup times are 2 minutes from a standing start and 30 seconds from hot spare (spinning at synchro speed in compressed air). Although Ffestiniog only takes 60 seconds from standing start, it doesn't provide a hot standby (spinning in air) feature afaicr. However, in common with Dinorwig (not sure about Ffestiniog) it is equiped to perform a "Black Start

Sizeable Hydro electricity power stations whether Pumped storage or primary power sources are an obvious choice for equipping with Black Start facilites since the parasitic loads are somewhat less than those of a coal fired or nuclear power station.

Since Ffestiniog predates Dinorwic by just over two decades I might have expected it to have had a Black Start facility even if that's no longer true today. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any reference to this feature in the Ffestiniog plant so that remains an open question.