Bishop Hill Powerless
Oct 19, 2014 Energy: gas Energy: grid News is breaking of a major fire at the Didcot B gas fired power station in Oxfordshire. From the photos, this a big one which will put it offline for a long time. The station's cacacity is 1300MW or thereabouts, so it represents a pretty serious erosion of the UK's already paper-thin safety margin. Time to start praying for a mild winter.
Updated 11.54am 20 October 2014 and 13.58pm. TM
Peter Atherton, energy analyst at Liberum Capital, said that the risk of blackouts this winter was now far higher due to the UK's "meagre capacity" to absorb unexpected events.
Dorian Lucas, energy analyst at Inenco, said the long term impact of the fire on the UK's power supply could be "significant" if the damage takes some time to repair.
Calling Ed Davey, calling Ed Davey....
Updated...we would like to hear what you have to say now.
Reader Comments (77)
If you are getting excited about the project of power shortages this winter, monitor this useful site which will also tell you how much power is being supplied from various sources vs demand. Oh, and buy a Tilley lamp if you are really worried, you may not need it, but they are a great bit of technology. http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
If you want to try to monitor the capacity margin then this page is useful:
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
You can mouseover to read data values, and exclude renewables to reflect their potential non-availability.
Pray quickly. Here in the Colonies praying is simply not allowed.
'Calling Ed Davey, calling Ed Davey..'
Oh, Bish - NOOOOOOOO - surely there's someone else we could call..? Owen Paterson, perhaps - or Nigel Farage, if he's not on his knees thanking God..?
Mild winter? What does the Met Office have to say about what's coming?
On the subject of storage, this might be worth a sniff;
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/07/lithium-or-vanadium-in-energy-storage-its-no-contest
cedarhill on Oct 20, 2014
"Pray quickly. Here in the Colonies praying is simply not allowed."
Pray soon. They are like a Murray. Prayers cannot be hurried.
'Calling Ed Davey, calling Ed Davey..'
Anything but Energy Secretary?
It all seems to be coming together quite nicely:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/520672/Winter-weather-2014-UK-forecast-cold-snow-November
Football News : Ed Davey the manager of Green Loonies United has said the team will not be hampered by a few injuries and everything is OK
David Cameron chairman of the board has issued a special statement saying : that the club have every confidence in their Manager
graphicconception
One of these years they are going to be right. They have claimed the same ... thing for a few now. Could be something to do with them being snow-chain suppliers.
We really need to start some serious research into storage of power from renewables
Tonyb
Oct 19, 2014 at 11:39 PM | Unregistered CommenterTonyb
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Presumably you left the /sarc tag off that one, tony.
More evidence why with conventional plant the traditional thing is to build 100% backup. Evidence? The 50% average capacity factor of conventional plant. It's not buy one get one free, it's don't buy one, buy two. So any numbers claiming superior economics of conventionals have to be halved.
"100% backup"
The only things you need 100% backup for are renewables, Raff, unless you know of another 50-odd GW lying around somewhere.
jamesp
Don't argue with him. His ability to understand how the real world actually works is a little limited.
At f***ing up other people's discussions, on the other hand, he's in line for a Nobel Prize.
Your arithmetic is perhaps ideologically skewed. If you have a fleet of conventional plant that operates with an average capacity factor of 50% (that's one half to you), it means that on average half of all the plant is working and half not. That means for every one plant working there is one not working. That is 100% redundancy. Not buy one get one free, but need one, buy two.
you are making a fundamental mistake.
a capacity factor for conv plant relates to the percentage of hrs available when not down for maintenance not lack of fuel. it assumes no fuel shortage
a bad capacity factor for wind relates to maintenance downtime and lack of fuel, ie wind.
they are not comparable forms of energy generation
Owen, I made no mistake as I made no reference to renewables. I just pointed out that conventionals have around 100% redundancy.
"We really need to start some serious research into storage of power from renewables
Tonyb"
There has been serious research inte storing power going on for - oh a bit over 100 years. Unfortunately with very little result. Trouble is that electricity is basically moving electrons and it is dam' hard to convince an electron to stay put and wait until you need it.
tty
Clockwork windmills...
Raff
"conventionals have around 100% redundancy"
In which case, there's nothing to worry about, is there?
Mike J
I know.. :-)
Nothing at all for me as I don't live in the UK. But it should make people wonder that even with 100% overcapacity people like you and your Bishop panic at the thought of a station going offline.
NG had Didcot B down for 1.510 GW not long ago. Not that important but this is the data from which Ofgem, Davey etc calculate UK capacity.
We're now down to 66 GW total thermal capacity and that includes some pieces of equipment which, I imagine, only generate on a good day and with ample warning and during (museum) opening hours.
A cold winter is going to be difficult.. The age of the kit, the amount that's been mothballed eg SSE's Peterhead, a cold snap in the UK will be the same in Eire and France so both inter connectors might be off - last year the French had trouble with their nukes and 2 GW flowed to them - it's impossible to tell but our luck might be running out. I can't remember such a bad run up to winter for generating capacity as this.
Davey sounds and looks desperate. He'll be hoping the electorate put him out of his misery but that might bring Miliband who knows how to make an even bigger mess of our energy having served as Energ Secretary before Huhne.
Raff:
Conventional generation is made up of steady state types e.g. nuclear and coal fired, slightly more flexible plants like CCGT, highly variable ones like hydro and OCGT (and diesel).
The first 2 can vary slightly but are usually run at the best rate e.g. 91-93%. The CCGT's run at much the same rate but can drop to ~70% capacity if there is a drop in demand. OCGT's only run at a few %, 10-15%, as they are there for sudden jumps in demand as they can be started (and shut down) quickly. They are inefficient hence the power is more expensive and the emissions are high. Diesel much the same although more expensive, so used less.
Hydro is the ideal backup as it can use up excess supply or help with sudden jumps in demand. Note that the best situation is 5 or more hours in one mode.
You are averaging all these units and assuming that they will all run when needed. This is only the case for a few hours at best. The UK cannot rely on OCGT and diesel to supply increase demand in winter, as they are really there for emergencies e.g. fires, cracks in conventional equipment. It is the Gas, Nuclear and Coal that have to deal with demand in winter and there is less and less surplus available.
Adding wind to the mix further strains the grid. Extra fast acting generators OCGT & diesel have to be added to the system to accommodate the swings in output. Curiously the emissions from these are not put onto any evaluation of wind. And if you think that lots of wind turbines reduce emissions look at Germany where their emissions are going up as more wind farms start up.
Mis-information strikes again. The big concrete cooling towers are natural draft (Didcot A, now gone). Didcot B has two banks of fifteen cells each wooden structure forced draft cooling towers - the interior packing may be wood or, more modern, plastic. The fire has taken out completely two cells of one bank (big repair) and damaged the two adjacent cells. The other bank should be unaffected and since each cell has a water inlet isolating valve for maintenance it should be relatively easy to get at least half of the damaged bank into use quite quickly.
Cameron is going to be wetting himself. He is being attacked on all sides because of the stupidity of Glummer and LibDem Davey. He can't say that the green energy disastre is not of his governments making, he can't say it's down to the libdems in HIS coalition. I said at the result of the election that Dave is not and never will be a states man. His was a man desperate for prestige and power but fundamentally a coward. He should have gone it alone and dared the other idiots to vote him down in parliament. TOO LATE now.
Can you imagine the panic that will ensue if blackouts start this winter just before the general election. Millibrain - climate control bill. Osborne & Cameron "greenest government ever", Davies windmills are great will sustain us.
I feel sorry for the brits for now ! I may feel much more sorry for me and my beloved france in 5 yrs.
Graeme No. 3, my 100% redundancy figure is a wind-up. I'm aware how things work - note that I said "on average" throughout. But what is evident, and no a wind-up, is that the various cost estimates we see that claim a cost of X millions to build Y megawatts of capacity are misleading. Capacity will be built twice and only 50% of each will be used. Hence the real cost is 2X millions to build Y megawatts of usable capacity.
I'm not making any claims about renewables being superior there. Just injecting a little realism into the numbers :-)