You can blame the ill-fated and dodgy THORPE plant for that :(
Incidentally you might be interested to note that the very high winds have taken their toll on wind generated power which is now down to under half peak capacity and trending downwards. I presume they are having to feather blades to avert damage in severe storm conditions.
Regards, Martin Brown
Today some OCGT has fired up again..
200MW of fuel hungry jet engine slapped on the grid.Do you know, I think they are testing all the standby kit to make sure it all works..
Its gonna be a tough winter....
written off, and started again under proper management.
That is typical yes. You see a sort of high frequency ripple that you don't see with strong but steadier winds. Optimally e wind will deliver a nit over 3GW from about 3.8GW capacity, but as the winds get stronger the total output falls..the sea planted stuff also has to watch out for high waves - clipping a wavetop doesn't do the blades much good.
there should be 50 meters clearance..but tides are a 10 meter variation in places..and waves..can easily take another ten..and then several waves together on coastal shelves..
If it gets much windier they will have to power the blades to unload the force on the towers. 8-)
amusing, but no, the towers can take the wind force.
Its out of balance blades (ice, overspeed , wind shear, lightning damage, build up of insects etc etc) that send them down like ninepins..
Latest forecast value 3.7GW
Actual 1.5GW
If they were any better they'd still be f*cking useless.
There is no need for any OCGT's to meet demand, not at 47GW load with
12GW surplus generation. Black start tests wouldn't be done at this time of year either,and in any case are not yearly events anyway.It's more likely to be generation at a few key sites at the edge of the network that are sensitive to loss of connection - think sites in the North of Wales, and the extreme South West.
could be, but OCTG kit is very fast start and if they were short somewhere due to unexpected lack of wind power, I reckon they might ask them to cover a shortfall while the GGCGT stuff is brought online.
Worth looking at BMreports for a spike in price indicating an unexpected shortfall.
Or closer to home the one that went pear shaped at Nissan closing the nearby A19(T) a couple of years back. That one caught fire. ISTR a gearbox lube failure leading to a spectacular fire on a pole scenario.
Regards, Martin Brown
I like the way it came up with 'free energy for life: click below' at the end
Jolly nice non carbon emitting non polluting fire though. How do they manage it?
I think you might like this more recent one too. Todays storm takes its toll (image 13/13):
Wow!
That is massive overspeed and feathering. Or else they have simply told em 'we haven't the grid capacity again and paid them to shut down, and shut up.
Well no argument there.
But its curious that we are now burning more coal oil and OCGT than clean efficient CCGT.
One conjectures that its cheaper...
Centrica is closing CCGT cos it isn't profitable. Yet its the cleanest fossil fuel plant there is and the only thing that can cope with fast action balancing of wind efficiently (relatively).
Actually maybe that's WHY the OCGT came in today - they expected skads more wind and ended up a gig and a half short..
>
Maybe they knew the wind turbines were going to explode.. see bbc news Scotland for some pictures of a turbine in melt down.
It's now worse, much worse.
Settlement period 37
Latest Forecast Value 3815MW
Outturn value 1332MW (at 19:16 the wind on the bars is 1308MW)
That is a 2483MW shortfall (from an installed capacity of 3731MW)
Peak wind predicted today was at 19:00 with 3838MW 'output'
A truly staggering performance from these huge white elephants
Not to mention the two Scottish turbines destroyed by the wind today.
I was a bit surprised by that; I thought that they had some kind of autofeather for the turbines, to prevent that kind of thing.
As it is, the excess energy was very, very obvious, and it went off like a firework.
well its not always as auto as that, and at lest someone has suggested the turbine wasn't on at the time: at that point its just got a brake on and no power to turn the head...
Now imagine the news if a nuclear power station had a fire like that.....even if it was nothing to do with and didnt threaten the reactor...
I see a surprising number of them feathered. The good wind farms usually have about 1 in 10 down for maintainance, but the worst offender that I pass regularly usually has two out of three non functional.
ISTR The last one in the UK to go up like that was at Nissan near Sunderland and had suffered a gearbox fault with loss of lubrication. The wind was strong enough to keep grinding things around until it ignited. In a strong breeze they tend to burn rather well.
The wind was certainly strong enough to do that yesterday!
Regards, Martin Brown
Ignition was a well-known failing of the old windmills used to grind corn - the flour dust was also explosive in some circumstances.
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