I notice on grid watch the power requirement at the moment (17:30) is
55.41 GW. Nuclear as usual is flat out, Coal is rising and looks near its limit, CCGT (I presume this is gas) also looks to be near its limit and Wind, well as usual when it is needed it is rubbish. The other generation and imports does not amount to much.Just How much can the UK generate in GW and how near are we to its limit, also what happens if we go over our maximum generation limit?
Barry
In article , Corporal Jones scribeth thus
I'm sure TNP who was responsible for that site will be able to tell you but AIUI when the going gets rough they ask or demand some large industrial consumers to slow down or shut down..
Or they connect up the thermocouple they have in the house of Commons and that tides 'em over;!...
Firstly, assuming there's no more scope to import anymore, some large industrial consumers are cut off - they buy electricity at a cheaper rate on the condition it can be cut off when supplies are short. (Same happens for some gas customers, and since gas is used to generate electricity, this often happens together as a shortage of one can cause a shortage of the other.)
The other thing that can be done is a reduction in the supply voltage, but this is nowhere near as effective today as it was
10 or more years ago, as many more loads are constant power.Having lived through some earlier periods of shortage, a plea to use less is likely to go out in the media.
Ultimately, if these measures don't resolve any shortage, then we're into planned rolling power cuts. If the loss of supply is unplanned (e.g. a power station drops off when there's no spare capacity), then you get unplanned load shedding - an area will be cut off to keep the rest of the grid running. This will either resolve by restoration of the supply, or it will turn into planned rolling power cuts if the supply can't be increased (and none of the above measures can make up for it).
As I've said before, we're probably coming to the end of a long period (decades) of reliable supply in this country, because we haven't maintained the investment prior to privatisation of the industry which got us into the position of having one of the most stable supplies in the world.
There's a fair bit more gas in reserve (20GW in total I think), but that's about if for coal.
there's a bit of oil and OCGT and even diesel lying around.
But I agree. Its early in the year to be pulling that much grid-juice. Does not bode well.
And one mad green political knee jerk after another has destroyed the business case for investment in kit that actually works, as opposed to kit that siphons green subsidy out of consumers.
this may amuse you.
En el artículo , The Natural Philosopher escribió:
(21:15) we seem to be pulling quite a bit from the froggies and cloggies as well, 1GW each.
It's been a beautiful sunny day up here in the north-west, if somewhat cold, but believe it's a bit perky dahn sarf.
Yes. And as no-one has seen to enlighten you:
Combined Cycle Gas Turbine is basically a jet aircraft engine connected to a generator. Then because the exhaust is hot you can run a steam engine off it.
Open Cycle Gas Turbine doesn't have the steam engine, so it's less efficient.
You can run a CCGT in open mode, and that part of it will fire up in minutes. The steam part takes ages, which means it doesn't respond well to a sudden increase in requirements when the wind drops.
Andy
I thought we only had about 60GW maximum capacity but that doesn't tally with what TNP said about having "20GW of gas in reserve" CCGT looks to have reached about 18GW this evening. Oil or OCGT didn't put in an appearance that I noticed.
Just downloaded the complete data set but my spreadsheet gets a very bad headache trying to handle it all. I think the peak demand last winter was in the first two weeks of Feb 2012. In that period the peak was at 1740 on the 8th:
demand coal nuclear ccgt ocgt french irish dutch pumped hydro wind
59165 24159 8051 22094 132 -2042 -212 -828 1799 854 1566Note:
We were exporting 3.082 GW to the continent, is that included in the demand figure or is it in addtion? Giving a total capacity at this time of 62.247GW?
Oil is missing. In the data set the Oil column (P) doesn't even have a in it. It could be an artifact of my spreadsheets head ache but I don't think so.
If you add up all the positive values you get 58.655GW 0.510GW less than demand.
The lights go out, somewhere. As others have said big industrial consumers are dropped off first but ultimately they "load shed", that is whole sections of the country are cut off for a period.
If we struggle this winter in will be very interesting to see what happens next or the one after as several large coal fired stations will have been forced to close by the Large Combustion Directive by then.
I suspect that even if they do have to drop large commercial consumers off the grid it won't be mentioned very much in the media. Goes against the governments "green" credentials and is a bit embrassing when they have to explain why the lights are going out. They'll waffle of course and blame "the other lot" for previous decisions, the fact they have all sat on their hands for decades and failed to make the required long term strategic decisions isn't relevant to short term politicians.
Provided a large power station doesn't unexpectedly drop off line the grid can probably survive by dropping off the large commercial consumers rather than the scheduled rolling blackouts like the early 70's. They only need to trim the top off the peak in demand not reduce overall demand.
The UK 'total' is theoretically approaching 80GW (see below) but quite a bit of generation is offline at the moment.
Only one interconector (the Dutch one) is fully available.
The French one is down to 1GW at the moment, 1.5GW from next week, and back to
2GW from the new year. Irish interconector (North to Scotland) is down 0.25GW (half capacity) for another couple of months The new East - West Irish Interconnector (Republic to NW England) is coming online in late January @ 0.5GWTake week 98 of 2013 (the highest currently declared week for next year) and the MW declared availability is as follows:
25845 Coal 27165 CCGT 8693 Nuclear 2338 Oil 1227 OCGT 1045 Hydro 792 Other (Biomass)2828 Pumped Storage
5702 Wind2000 French
1000 Dutch 500 Irish 500 East-WestSo that is
67.1GW of Generation 2.8 GW of Pumped storage (circa 7 hours) 5.7GW of Intermittent, disruptive, polluting, scenery destroying, investment sapping, bill inflating, worthless, pointless, useless wind+/- 4GW of interconnect (some realistically only being one way)
By the end of next year, CCGT rises about 3GW to 30230, Coal drops about 4GW to
21987, Oil drops by 1GW to 1370, Wind rises marginally to 6GW, Nuclear will almost certainly drop 0.5GW.One thing is pretty certain, this time next year there will be around 2GW less generation available and it could be even worse due to more Euro eco bollocks about protecting marine environments
20 mins or so with modern kit.
which means it doesn't respond well
no. It means it doesnt repsond well to cold starts. Its actually a fully dispatchable power plant and whilst wear at say half power is obviously not much less than full power, gas consumption tracks very well with output.
So there is a tendency to use rather more than you need running below full chat.
Giving you emergency headroom. And at the moment we have 2GW or so pumped storage to take care of short term peak requirements.
Think that exports form part of demand. As does pumping UP the storage
Just as invisible wind generators and domestic solar firms a negative part of demand although its largely so small its not worth pissing around with.
artefact. Its in the database for sure.
its a lot easier to stuff it in a mysql database.
IIRC there's about 2-3GW of emergency oil/OCGT out there.
Oddly the way gas prices are going they may actually de-mothball the oil. On balance its not a lot more emissions intensive than gas, and bunker oil is cheap as chips what with ships being laid up and all.
There is a LOT of mothballed plant that COULD be put back online if the government stuck two fingers up at the EU and the greens.
Yes. The real shit hits the fan when the old coalers go. Still the good news is the nukes are going to run till they fall to pieces (well until they are beyond economic repair anyway) 2023 IIRC.
My bet is that we will either have left the EU or will simply cry 'force majeure' and run a lot of old coal and oil and nuclear anyway. The emissions to BUILD new plant probably exceed the emissions in keeping the old plant going.
database as well) BUT lets look at February. And imagine UK demand peaks at 60GW, the wind ain't blowing, harry's panels aren't working cos the sun went down, Germany is up shit creek and they need 4GW from us to keep Bavarian beer cool..so total generation demand peaks out at 64GW..
..and we have 67.1 plus 2.8 peak pumped.
Now imagine if Drax trips out..
The problem is that cold weather across Europe *will* coincide with shit solar and wind output.
All we need is the coincidence of a significant power station outage and we are sailing very close to the wind indeed.
Having said that, I think 2015 is when the shit may well hit the fan.
Week 98? They "CEGB" must use different "weeks" to the rest of us. B-)
When is week 98 of 2013?
the right proceedures and got all the right approvals etc.
Typical bloody Eurocrats, "you need to do X Y & Z to comply with Regulations M N & O", so you do X Y & Z and get compliance with regulations M N & O signed off. 6 months later the Eurocrats say why have you done X Y & Z you should have done A B & C and doing Y with Z contravens regulation M anyway...
If they can't run the plant I expect RWE will be taking some body to court over lost revenues etc, and guess who will be picking that bill up...
Be nice, particulary if it's real time as well. Well as "real time" as the declared capacities are.
Yep the declared capacities for Dec, Jan, Feb would be better than the aboslute maximum available. Febuary particulary as that is generally when the coldest part of winter is.
That's when it's scheduled to hit the fan, but it could be earlier as the coal stations that have to closed at that point in time will probably run out of hours well before then and the new gas plants might not be finished...
And at the same time UK Coal is putting in plans to go out of business:
Depends on how balanced your view is.
read the fine print in the draft energy bill.
The minister has the power in an emergency to override a lot of the directives.
well its mostly long chain hydrocarbons of the sort CnH2n +H2
so its between coal and methane exactly for emissions of CO2.
Sulphur is another matter but than CAN be scrubbed out.
I'll hopefully have my insulation and heating finished by then. Then it will be two fingers up to the lot of them.
On the coldest day of the winter so far, wind power is contributing a staggering 90MW
Harry's been quiet hasn't he? With dense fog here, I don't suppose his subsidy harvesters are paying for themselves..
Time to go and split logs for the woodburner I think.
I *meant* week 8!
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.