Crikey. We have a little gas capacity left

[The Natural Philosopher]

It's cold. FUCKING cold. The Dutch interconnector is borked. French and Belgian interconnectors running flat out. Wood burners flat out. Hydro and pumped nearly flat out. Nuclear as flat out as the number of reactors not in maintenance allows. No solar. Fuck all wind. Coal running as high as I have seen it in 5 years and OCGT is above anything i've ever recorded.

There seems to be some margin left in gas but its mighty close.

If only global warming worked and CO2 made us warm we would be toasty.

[Andy Burns]

Yes didn't notice what the frost got down to overnight, but with the fog all morning the sun didn't get round to melting it in the afternoon.

Hinckley B, Dungeness B and one unit of Heysham nukes offline too.

[Adrian]

In message [e-mail]>, Andy Burns [e-mail] writes

Around here (south wet mudlands), it got down to -2.6, and very briefly early afternoon got up to the dizzy heights of -0.2, now back down to

-2. The sun was sort of visible for about half an hour, but only as a slightly brighter spot through the fog.

Adrian

[The Natural Philosopher]

System price, normally about £40/MWh peaked at over £1500/MWh. No wonder hydro and coal and OCGT are flat out. Filling their boots.

Yes folks, that's £1.50 per unit.

Gotta lurve the money we didn't spend on nukes but onb windmills and solar panels

[The Natural Philosopher]

Clearish skys here but its -1 and drizzling.

Fuck this. I'm going to have a gin and tonic and light the wood stove. Might be all the heat if the power goes down

[Jeff Layman]

Just had a look at the Gridwatch France site. I see their demand is over

87GW, compared to ours at just under 47GW. Considering the population levels are about the same, do you know what accounts for this 85% higher demand in France? Your rollover notes that it does not include what France is exporting. Surely it's not heavy industry, especially with the effect Covid is having.

[Andy Burns]

Less gas, more electric heating?

[Jimmy Stewart]

no probs

[Jimmy Stewart]

Plenty of Hydro up here in the near of Scotland.....Independence NOW !!!!

[Jeff Layman]

I think you're right. See Figure 6 at

(figures from 2015). No wonder Poland wants to keep coal!

[Jimmy Stewart]

totly

[Jimmy Stewart]

what are all the gas engineers going to do ?...

[ARW]

Are you working away:-)?

-3 when I set off this morning. -4 and foggy when I got to work and I never saw the sun. Waterpipe to the site cabin is frozen and the frost on the back lawn and portaloo never melted.

[The Natural Philosopher]

France went nuclear in 1970 something - OPEC raised oil priuces, De Gaulle said 'f*ck the Arabs' and built, nukes. Electricity wasn't too cheap to meter, but it was f****ng cheap and france had no gas and sod all coal so leccy is what they heat their homes with.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

I remember some years back that this also happened, 1963 was it, where some people were cut off for a while but the grid was a bit ad hoc and the insulation of houses back then was pants. It must be very difficult to judge capacity needed, but one wonders if a lot of companies are shut at the moment due to the virus, what might happen if they all came back on and wanted power as well? Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Service or just bust? Brian

[Chris Green]

They use electricity for heating much more than we do.

[Andy Burns]

two reactors for graphite crack inspection, five for statutory outage

[newshound]

The AGRs are all getting old. EDF have recently reduced some of their expectations (although I see they are going for life extension for Sizewell B)

[newshound]

France also used to ship LNG across the Med from North Africa.