OT: Grid on point of collapse as system buy price breaks £1.50 per unit barrier

'Oil' may include diesel generators, but ICBW.

Reply to
Chris Hogg
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Indeed they are not. In fact operational margins at the time of the 'price spike' today between 1pm and 2pm were larger than the margins around 8am today where prices were 10% of what they were between 1pm and 2pm.

There were larger margins today than they were during the equivalent periods yesterday. At 5pm tonight, around the time of system peak demand, prices were just £55/MWh.

The operational margin at the time of the later 'spike' to £1025 / MWh at 8pm tonight was also 50% larger than the margin at 5pm tonight with demand some 3GW lower.

The headline "Grid on point of collapse as system buy price breaks £1.50 per unit barrier" shows TNP really hasn't got a clue about operational margins nor system pricing nor anything much about demand forecasting and dispatch of generation.

Reply to
The Other Mike

That info is out of date as it's been in service for a couple of months now at its original full design capability of 500MW import/export 300MW import /

450MW export (viewed from the UK) is closer to its actual usage

Bit of background here on the additional return cables they have added.

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Reply to
The Other Mike

That's gone recently then. Wasn't one of the SBR plants oil? Littlebrook? Ah not that recently, Littlebrook D ceased operation on

31 Mar 2015.

Not in my book, "oil" in this context is bunker or fuel oil, stuff so viscous that you have to warm it up before trying to pump it. Diesel is "gas oil".

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Oil on the generation totals is oil and nothing but heavy fuel oil.

Diesels will not show because they are all connected beyond the bulk supply point on the grid system, all you will see is suppressed demand

Quite a few of the lower output (up to 35MW) OCGT's mainly based at large coal & nuclear sites exclusively use oil distallate and not gas but will always show on the OCGT totals.

Reply to
The Other Mike

tight.

I don't read EMN (Electricity Margin Notice, previousy NISM - Notification of Insuffcient System Margin)) as "stuff falling over" but a heads up to the market that there is a shortfall, for any reason, in the next 24 hours ish and if anyone has a bit of spare capacity they might be able to sell it at a premium price.

OK The last NISM back in May asking for an additional 1,500 MW of generation was partly due to plant failure but wind was also 700 MW below forecast...

HRDR (High Risk of Demand Reduction) would be the notice issued if say Sizewell and Longannet fell of the grid with a couple of hours of each other.

And DCI (Demand Control Iminent) when demand has to be reduced to stop it outstripping generation. Anything from voltage reduction to load shedding done by the DNOs.

All the above are AFAIK are manual and an EMN could be issued quite a while before the predicted shortfall. The new (1st Oct) automatic Capacity Margin notices are the ones that will kick in should plant disappear from the grid and the margin drops to less than 500 MW above predicted demand up to 4 hours into the future, I think...

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

En el artículo , The Other Mike escribió:

Thank you for the info and the link.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

I think the import is limited by the size of inverter at this end.

To convert to DC is simply BIG rectofiers and a bit of smoothing.

To turn back to AC is a much more complex thing.

Not just cables. Termination kit is relevant too.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

You followed the same links I did ... ;-)

However there are a lot of grades of 'bunker fuel' or whatever it is. From something resembling central heating oil or kerosene, down to 'nearly but not quite tar'.

Some of these are 'marine diesel fuel'

So lines it seems are blurred.

In terms of generation, the oil burning steam plant is all gone now. What the new STOR diesels burn I do not know. I would assume that it's not heavy oil, but stock red diesel.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

The price spike shows things are tight, but similarly I took the lack of warnings/notices as a sign it wasn't really a point of collapse.

That sort of thing, but actually Longannet was shut off 6+ months ago.

Reply to
Andy Burns

The correct term is "Residual fuel oil". It's all the shit left over after refining to get the lighter fractions out of the crude oil.

Full of all sorts of nasty pollutants ranging from sulphur to heavy metals. All of which gets into the atmosphere when it's burned.

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Reply to
harry

Which you barely need with full rectified 3 phase...

Yes indeed. And I am surprised that they managed it in the 70s. Much previously you'd be looking at a motor-alternator converter.

Reply to
Tim Watts

Gets better than 3 phase with clever use of stra delta ytransformers.

Ha. I went round the first undersea cable thingy in the 60s

Big f*ck off mercury arc valves.

And two acres of smoothing chokes and a lot of (oil filled?) kerpuffitors.

If you download the spreadsheet from the Moyle operating company, it shows that 450MW is the limit in one direction and 300MW is the limit in the other.

That is borne out by the recorded flows that flatline at those levels.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

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