Energy pinch?

And has done so many times in the past.

We import 50% of our gas. In so doing we expose ourselves to significant price volatility from demand-supply imbalance and speculation.

We have limited gas storage capability. Thereby magnifying volatility due to inability to store sufficient gas to buffer demand without industry being penalised.

We do import some gas via LNG tanker with high density (liquid) storage via vast terminal tanks. A solution to storage limitations would be to increase the number of such tanks - the problem is if one tank goes (bang) the rest could do likewise (single point of failure) unless geographically dispersed (which introduces risk of stuck safety interlocks, human error etc like Buncastle).

Hence I suspect they prefer the geographically distributed steel HP pipeline network, they can increase the pressure in that and essentially "bulkhead" areas off should there be a leakage. A leakage there might be less catastrophic in that it is a gaseous leak rather than liquefied leak from LNG bulk tanks (essentially a fuel-air bomb).

I see another plea for more gas today.

Just spoke with my father in France. They're very tight on electricity - everyone being asked not to run anything power consuming between midday and 6pm (IIRC) such as washing machines, which can be run at another time.

Also, they've run out of salt. Apparently, they import it from England!

Andrew Gabriel wibbled on Friday 08 January 2010 00:41

Also I noticed that we seem to be exporting electricity to France at a rate of about 2GW most of the time - so much for all the stories about importing cheap french nuclear power.

We've been net importing gas for the last 6 weeks

Tim W wrote on Jan 8, 2010:

At the moment (9.30 am) it's the reverse - 1.5GW France to GB.

Andy Burns wibbled on Friday 08 January 2010 09:15

bountiful supply of electricity?

Anyway, quite surprised someone is more crap than us(!)

Exactly. In the past few years, I have developed a wonderful technique for getting doom-sayers to STFU ... it's called "If it's *that* important, they'd -" and you can fill in the blanks.

If it was *that* important to recycle waste, we'd all be able to compost our waste and sell it to the coucil to collect for agriculture. What's that ? They don't ? Can't be *that* important can it ?

I've noticed this works particularly well with canvassing politicians. The more they try and insist that something is "the most serious threat to the planet", the more you can point out the total lack of any movement on their part.

Liquifying LNG is a slow process ... ISTR from my days at British gas that to liquify the gas takes 4-5 times as long as it does to *use* it. So a days worth of gas from an LNG tank takes 4-5 days to get put back ... BG used to buy lots of gas in summer (when it's cheaper) and liquify it. But that was when it was a public utility, not a piggy bank.

When I worked at BG they were renewing the national grid to 75Bar working (c 1025 psi) ... the process of increasing the pressure to increase capacity is called "linepack". However the compressors used (mainly RR RB211) could use more gas in a day than a small town in a month ...

They use to teach firefighting techniques for dealing with blowouts at

Jumbo Jet engine for compressor, bloomin `eck!

Anyone know what the scheme is with a gas pipeline and large `compressor` currently proposed fro East Fortune in East Lothian?

AFAIR it means an exclusion zone for new housing around the plant because of ,er, non passive failure risk.

Cheers Adam

When I worked there, there were 12 compressor installations, all of which had multi-engine setups. Either RB211 or Avon-something. They ran of the inline gas, so could run as long as needed, they were remotely controlled (by a Ferrati Argus computer, with 128Kb ferrite core storage !!!!!!) and a *lot* of money & brain power went into a simulation suite which tried to minimise their use ... the trick was to balance the demand with the specific NS oil field which could feed it best (Either Scotland or East Anglia).

When I worked there, there was a process which started with a Met Office Telex, which triggered an autorun of the demand profiling suite, which then fed into the contract-optimisation suite which worked out teh best strategy for that days gas purchase, as each control with each oil rig was unique, with max/mins, shutdown days etc etc ... The whole process was very securely managed, as each contract was negotiatied in secret, to prevent the oil companies colluding ...

Liquifying LNG is also very expensive in energy consumption. The estimated cost for liquifaction and transport of LNG across the sea in tankers is 25-30% of the original gas mined. If you worry about carbon emissions, that's significantly worse than using our own gas, and significantly reduces the gap between using LNG and using coal.

Not sure where you're read this, but you have it upside down. At 9:30am (settlement period 19), we were shipping 1.54GW to France. For last several days, we've mostly shipped 2.05 GW to France (which I think is the limit of the interconnect). Around about 6pm each day, it reduces and even flips back slightly, to 0.258 GW imported from France for about an hour yesterday, for example.

I wouldn't want to fly with one of those engines pushing the plane. You wouldn't get far on a wing full of natural gas.

Oh yes. such as

Andrew Gabriel wrote on Jan 8, 2010:

Yes you are right - sorry. I think I can see why I misread the information

I got it here:

France to Great Britain : -

I can see now there is a minus sign before the figure 1208 MW but on my browser it is placed on the line above (as I have shown). Looking with FireFox it shows correctly -1208MW

It could easily confuse a stupid person (to quote Pete and Dud) :-)