SSE boss Ian Marchant warns of risk of "lights going out"

[charles]

There are underground "holes" which are used for storage. One near here had the gas taken out of it a few years ago, now they want to fill it again as "storage".

[Andrew Gabriel]

Gas pipeline from Zeebrugge broke down today, and UK wholesale gas prices instantly shot up 50%.

[Bill]

Already been there! I've had emergency lighting around the house for the last 10 years or so. During one power cut I had a neighbour confused, "there can't be a power cut because your lights are still on"

As he is next door we now have an agreement that if it becomes a prolonged power outage he can run an extension lead over the fence to me and I can have some of his rather large supply of red diesel. So we will both be happy :-)

[Tim Lamb]

They jack up the pressure in the distribution pipes but don't ask me for details.

I tried to get a *storage payment* in addition to the transmission one when they put a 48" pipe across our farmland. Got a very frosty response!

[Martin Brown]

How convenient that a crucial pipeline went offline just at the right time to add 50% to the spot market rate. Follow the money....

Be very difficult to prove though these guys have very fancy lawyers.

[The Other Mike]

The Spanish seem to do that without a problem...

[harry]

There is a massive gas store at Milford Haven.

[The Natural Philosopher]

yep. and if that ever went up it would make fukushima look like a wet fart compared to a nuclear bomb.

it was LNG that took out most of a town years ago.

[Dave Liquorice]

I thought the HP gas distribution was as gas not liquid. B-)

[harry]

It is shipped from Qatar (mostly) as liquid and stored as liquid, evaporated as necessary.

[Jethro_uk]

There was a trend to use salt caverns for LNG/LPG storage ...

[damduck-egg]

Wasn't an unexploded bomb found in the water pond of a gas holder a few years back by a demolition team? The hole it had made had been repaired around the time it fell but actual recovery at the time had been overlooked. Ah, here we are, further back then I thought and it was a maintainance operation that found it.

G.Harman

[Tim Lamb]

Hmm.. If they increase the pressure that means there is more of it which means it is being stored. I think!

Anyway, I have sold the land so the Woodland Trust can worry about it:-)

[Andrew Gabriel]

Radio 4 news now says it's down to 1.5 days stock of gas left.

One of the energy company bosses said a natural gas tanker is expected on Monday, but if anything else breaks (referring to the Zeebrugge pipeline), we will be in trouble.

[Andy Burns]

Or if they find Polonium at Berzovsky's house, a diplomatic row develops about Russia bumping off another refugee, and they turn off the taps from Siberia ...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not a problem, as the bulk of our gas comes from Norway and Qatar.

The crunch will come Monday evening electricity wise.

Especially if the wind drops.

[Dave Liquorice]

Is that Norwegian gas from the northe sea or just transiting through Norway from the ex soviet states?

Doesn't look as if it will very much, steady E'ly flow right through to Thursday weaking a bit by then. Another atlantic low might then try to push up against the high pressure again, just like the last few days...

What I find curious is that wind has been steady at a tad over 5 GW since Friday but the connected metered capacity is over 7 GW according to BM reports. With essentially ideal wind conditions where is that other 2 GW or the output from 1,000 * 2 MW windmills(*). Hum, they do actually exist don't they?

(*) 2 MW is a big windmill, jumbo jet on a stick big.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh its norwegian gas.

They export shit loads - don't need it -they have hydroelectricity...thak Slartibartfast..

wind farms will be coining it. Grrr!.

The actual connected and operational metered wind farms are a lot less than that.

The London Array for example, is not operational, but forms part of what's in their 'metered capacity'

mysql> select sum(farm_capacity_mw) from windfarms where status='Operational' and metered = 'yes';

+-----------------------+ | sum(farm_capacity_mw) | +-----------------------+ | 5630.72 | +-----------------------+ 1 row in set (0.23 sec)

So that tells you roughly where the operational metered farms are at.

AS I said, for the first time ever the wind is blowing everywhere.

5.11GW from 5.6GW capacity is pretty good, and probably reflects more the number of broken windmills than the quality of the wind.