By Paul Homewood
Kathryn Porter has the latest on the near blackouts last week:
The National Energy System Operator (“NESO”) has been stung by my analysis of the blackouts near miss on 8 January, at one point apparently telling journalists, somewhat pompously that “WE are the National Energy System Operator, and SHE is “just” an independent consultant!” In this blog I will carry out further analysis of what happened on 8 January and what NESO has said about it at different times, and highlight the system operator’s disappointing lack of transparency.
https://watt-logic.com/2025/01/17/nesos-approach-to-transparency/
As Kathryn explains. NESO, after trying to stonewall, produced a short note claiming that they really had 3.7 GW of “headroom”, without actually giving any detail or proof, a claim Kathryn goes on to demolish.
After doing a detailed bottom up analysis of every single generator, Kathryn proved that her initial top down analysis was essentially correct, that we really were down to 0.6 GW of spare capacity.
As Kathryn concludes:
Both my bottom up and top down analyses have yielded essentially the same result – about 500 MW of margin at the peak on 8 January. On top of this there was about 700 MW of reserve. This means that the single largest infeed loss of 1,400 MW could not have been covered. The 3.7 GW “headroom” appears to be a complete fiction, which could only be met by units that are not BMUs as these are the ones I considered (other than some STOR units). However, NESO could clear this up very easily by simply publishing the list of units providing margin and reserve at the 8 January peak, including volumes.
David Rose at UnHerd has also written an article about Kathryn’s findings. He makes this interesting observation:
The UK power market, she concludes, came “close to disaster” on Wednesday. Neso told me the following day it disputed her findings, claiming it had merely “used our standard operational tools to manage the electricity network and ensure that we maintained enough electricity,” and that its margin had at all times been greater than 580MW. However, in the course of a dialogue that lasted for the following 24 hours, I asked its spokesperson to tell me why he thought her analysis was wrong, and what would have been the source of the additional electricity. He simply refused to answer.
https://unherd.com/newsroom/uks-blackout-near-miss-shows-danger-of-net-zero/
Such a refusal from a public body is unacceptable. If NESO’s figures are correct, they should be able to prove it very easily, by providing a list making up their 3.7 GW.
NESO are of course the government owned body tasked with ensuring that Britain has the essential energy it needs by ensuring supply meets demand every second of every day. However, as their own website makes clear, their real purpose is to deliver decarbonisation. As such, they are a hopelessly conflicted organisation, as the twin objectives may often be incompatible.
Clearly NESO cannot be trusted to provide reliable information, as we have already seen in their craven report on decarbonising the electricity system by 2030, sent to Miliband in November.
Under their watch, we are heading ever closer to catastrophic blackouts. They must now publish the data which supports their claim of 3.7 GW reserves if they are to retain any credibility.