By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
This is insane!
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
A backstop system designed to prevent blackouts was mobilised for the first time in two years as Britain’s power grid battles low winds and nuclear outages.
The surprise notice for the capacity market, which issues a warning to Britain’s electricity generators, was issued by the National Energy System Operator (Neso) just after midday on Monday.
It told generators to be ready for when demand spikes at 4:30pm, amid fears the amount of spare power capacity had grown unacceptably small compared to demand.
However, the notice was withdrawn just after 2pm.
A spokesman for the Neso insisted it was “confident that electricity margins are sufficient for this evening” and stressed the triggering of the original notice was automatic.
The warning was the first of its kind since November 2022, when a similar notice was issued but later withdrawn as low wind speeds and nuclear power outages piled stress on the electricity system.
Kathryn Porter, an independent energy analyst at Watt Logic, said the likely causes this time around were lower-than-expected wind output, as well as greater-than-expected demand for electricity.
At the same time, publicly available data showed the grid was expecting power to be flowing out to Europe via interconnectors on Monday evening, suggesting the Neso might have had to intervene to ensure power flows into the UK instead, she added.
The warning also comes after the Sizewell B nuclear power station, in Suffolk, was temporarily shut down for refuelling on Friday.
The 1.2 gigawatt site is not expected to return to full capacity until December, according to owner EDF.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/14/blackout-prevention-plan-activated-britain/
OK, there was never any chance of a blackout. The purpose of the warning is to get sufficient back up capacity in place in time.
But this is still only October, and there is still a lot more wind power than we would get in a real wind drought in midwinter. Note that wind dropped to 800 MW on Sunday evening
Today wind power has fallen to 2 GW, about 7% of capacity, while demand has peaked at 35 GW – in winter that could easily rise to 45 GW or more.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-by-fuel-type
Interconnectors have been bringing in 4 GW, but the backbone has been 20 GW of CCGT and 4 GW of nuclear. But we already know that all the nuclear bar Sizewell B will be gone by 2028.
Even supposing Miliband gets to triple wind power by 2030, that would still only give us 6 GW, at a time when demand will probably have gone up by that much as well.
Add to that 5 GW of biomass and other bits and pieces, and we will still be potentially 40 GW short in midwinter.
Meanwhile crazy Ed Miliband plays a ukulele next to a wind mill!