National Grid fires up coal power station for first time in 55 days
By Paul Homewood
h/t Colin Harris
Is this some sort of joke???
National Grid has fired up a coal-fired power station for the first time in 55 days after Britain’s record-breaking heatwave brought wind turbines to a near-standstill and caused gas-fired power stations to struggle.
The electricity system operator brought Britain’s latest coal-free streak to an end by calling for the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire to begin generating electricity before a peak in electricity demand.
Electricity supplies have become tighter than expected during the heatwave because gas-fired power stations have struggled to generate electricity at their maximum capacity owing to the unusually high temperatures. At the same time wind turbines have slowed because of low wind speeds.
A string of power stations were unable to produce electricity on Wednesday because of planned maintenance work which often takes place during the summer, but even available gas plants produced less electricity than usual owing to the heat.
Gas plants can struggle to produce electricity at normal levels during high temperatures, according to experts at the energy data company EnAppSys, and it is normal for their power output to fall during heatwaves. They rely on a steady flow of air through its compressor, according to the energy technology firm Wartsila. It takes more energy to compress hot, humid air to the same mass as air which is cooler and drier, so many power plants become less efficient as the outside temperature rises.
Thomas Edwards, an analyst at consultancy Cornwall Insight, said: “I feel solidarity with the power stations finding it too hard to do anything today.”
Electricity output from Britain’s wind farms, which generated 30% of the UK’s electricity in the first quarter of this year, fell to lows of 4% on Wednesday afternoon.
The UK recorded its hottest August day in 17 years as temperatures climbed to over 36C earlier this week, and hot temperatures set a new record for central London for the longest stretch of high temperatures in almost six decades.
Ratcliffe is one of Britain’s few remaining coal-fired power stations, which are all due to shut down by 2025 under the government’s ban on coal-fired power.
“It brings to an end the coal free run, but Britain has operated for almost 3,300 hours without coal so far in 2020 – over 60% of the year,” National Grid said via Twitter on Wednesday afternoon.
Still Silly Jilly can’t seem to work out why her lovely wind power is so utterly useless!!!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
So with all these future increased heatwaves (ho, ho) what will we do when there are no coal-fired power stations to fire up? Rolling blackouts like they are currently doing in California seem to be the future for all western countries that are hell bent on renewables. Who could possibly have seen this coming?
It’s a good job the government and the civil service and all those advisory QANGOs like the CCC are full of experienced power engineers, otherwise the country could get into a mess.
Home generators are the order of the day.
Good grief Philip – great minds think alike!
And simultaneously to boot.
I have just taken delivery of a 1kw wind turbine to go along with the self-installed solar panels. Am working on a treadmill powered gennie for the wife when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine.
a treadmill powered gennie for the wife
Polygamy !
So what are we supposed to do in future heatwaves when we’ve shut down the last of our coal- burning power stations?
Is it OK to have major power outages as in California right now?
Beggars belief.
what are we supposed to do in future heatwaves
Nothing, or find a way to generate your own power. Your EV won’t charge up so you won’t be going anywhere.
And your air con if any won’t work either, so maybe take a cold shower 😆
And how will your cold shower work without electricity to pump the water pay tell?
A less biased explanation – the significant reasons were the combined effect of wind being unreliable and failing to deliver and the constraints on (nuclear) generation introduced earlier because of grid instability caused by wind fluctuations in the covid era of low demand. Also the lack of dependability of wind together with the closure of other dependable coal capacity makes it riskier to do planned maintenance to gas plants! The loss of efficiency of CCGT in hot weather, although true, is largely irrelevant.
https://www.pagerpower.com/news/uk-hot-weather-needs-coal/
I presume that due to the problems of heat on gas power generation, that they don’t have gas powered generators in countries south of UK.
In South Australia we rely on (gas fired) diesels.
Wind generation yesterday morning was 2.6% of their supposed capacity, and that wasn’t caused by high temperatures (about 3℃ at the time).
Sorry, it was making 2.8% of capacity.
Very hot countries they can use precooling methods , but likely ME countries just have more GT to take up the extra load
The process happening is more power is used by the turbine itself to compress the same volume of air, leaving less power for the generating side
The story also mentions the wind had dropped as well, so it wasnt only the power loss from high temperatures.
“Gas turbine manufacturers specify performance at standard conditions called ISO ratings. The three standard conditions specified in the ratings are Ambient Temperature 15oC, Relative Humidity 60 per cent, and Ambient Pressure at Sea Level. Gas turbine efficiency deteriorates by 1 per cent for every 10-degree rise in temperature above ISO conditions. Depending on the gas turbine, this translates into a power output reduction of 5 to 10 per cent.
https://www.powerengineeringint.com/renewables/taking-the-heat/
I think ‘powerengineering’ has copied their figures wrong. Its pretty hot at an ambient temp of 150C!! It should read 15 degC and its the ISA – International Standard Atmosphere not ISO that is 15C and 60%humidity and 1013 millibars is standard ambient atmospheric pressure.
As per the honest assessment in my link above, the loss of efficiency is irrelevant to the fundamental problems. The Guardian article is a typical attempt to push the multiple problems caused by renewables (especially wind) onto fossil fuel generation.
The fact that we now consider firing up a coal power-station a ‘problem’ when it is there to be used shows how well they have succeeded! I’m sure they didn’t HAVE to use coal anyway, it was probably just the cheapest/most convenient source.
Gee, we could NEVER have seen this coming.
Channeling Heath Robinson:
Set up a few diesel generators to power lights to shine on photo-voltaic panels, and use the electricity to chill air to use in a gas-fired power station. No need for wind. Save the coal.
I’ve been watching gridwatch.templar and have noticed that windmills have been producing practically no electricity for three months. Well, occasional spikes at 10GW perhaps. One occasion under one percent of demand.
Whereas I know that the windmill operators get paid for electricity they could have produced when shut down due to high winds, but do they they get paid for electricity they could have produced during periods of low wind such as we have had for the past three months.
If they don’t, they must have taken quite a hit over this period.
Solar hasn’t been too brilliant for the past few days either.
My opinion is that the government is reckless and premature in forcing viable coal stations to shut earlier than they need to. While a hot spell like this has affected output from CCGT generators the real test will be a severe winter when demand is so much higher. Severe cold spells strains gas supply as demand is so high but due to policy we are putting our fuel eggs in the one basket. All for the extremely small amount of CO2 that they emit relative to our total emissions.
The green blob really hate coal but have little understanding of how useful it is. Unfortunately our current government seemingly is ovewhelmed by the greens with some tories, as I read, trying to bring forward the date to ban the slaes of new IC engined cars. Just where is the logic and sense of proportion in our rulers?
>>Thomas Edwards, an analyst at consultancy Cornwall Insight, said: “I feel solidarity with the power stations finding it too hard to do anything today.”<>Gas plants can struggle to produce electricity at normal levels during high temperatures, according to experts at the energy data company EnAppSys, and it is normal for their power output to fall during heatwaves. They rely on a steady flow of air through its compressor, according to the energy technology firm Wartsila. It takes more energy to compress hot, humid air to the same mass as air which is cooler and drier, so many power plants become less efficient as the outside temperature rises.<>Electricity output from Britain’s wind farms, which generated 30% of the UK’s electricity in the first quarter of this year, fell to lows of 4% on Wednesday afternoon.<<
THIS is the most telling part of this piece. I am amazed that that statement got past the political sensor in the Grauniad because for those with more than three active braincells it says wind is a waste of time in a developed western nation such as our own!
Strange that some of my comments were edited out. I was drawing attention to the incorrect and inappropriate use of left wing jargon, “solidarity”.
I doubt your comments were edited
It’s alarmists who have all the money
so Paul is on his own. He’s not likely to be editing people’s comments himself.
Seems to me you tried to use html tags
and they didn’t work .. that’s how text may have been lost
I expect you used CAPITALS instead of small letters or maybe more specialist HTML tags
In our part of the world in the South West it has been unusually gloomy the last few days with no wind at all. Quite how power would have been generated without grown up power stations I don’t know.
I note from my weather diary that we had much longer lasting periods than this of windless and sunless days back in January and February
Still, any day now we will get batteries of sufficient power to store weeks of excess power generated by renewables when the weather gods smile. Any day now. Any day…
I cycle past or near the Batsworthy Cross wind farm in North Devon most days. For weeks I have rarely seen the turbines moving (occasionally if I stop and look closely I can see them turning at less than 1rpm).
Phillip , they have to keep the turbines turning or it will destroy the shaft bearings .
So what you are seeing is the wind farms using power from the grid ,
which means a minus generation capacity .
Using electricity from the grid!
Who would have guessed you could get hot, windless days in summer?
Why did they not use the ‘interconnectors’ to get power from those lovely people, just across the Channel?’ ‘Un petit peu, s’il vous plait?’
Ils sont – 2GW
I’m pretty sure they didn’t “fire up” the coal station either. That would take days. Presumably it has been burning coal for the last 55 days just not generating or dispatching electricity.
0,57 GW uit Nederland
Or short dark cold days in winter?
I use gridwatch to monitor UK weather, then check with weather apps. It’s quite revealing.
For a week or so now both wind and solar have been on the low side. Seems like today is another cloudy low wind day. The last time solar was above 4GW was 13th August. For wind it’s the 10th of August. Between them Gas and Nuclear have rarely fallen below 50% for about a week,add biomass (wood at Drax) and the interconnectors coal from Holland, Nuclear, gas and hydro from France and you get to over 80% of demand.
Low output from solar also affects domestic rooftop installations which will inrease demand, comparing today with this summer’s maximum solar appears to be about 30% of maximum.
‘For a week or so now both wind and solar have been on the low side.‘
For example, this morning at 7:30 (i.e. during the rush hour) wind and solar were generating 5% of demand, CCGT 60% and nuclear 20% (including the French interconnector).
As ever the “deniers” refuse to listen to their betters
PJW takes him apart
“If God meant us not to eat animals why did He make them out of meat?”
I like Martin Daubney’s comment!
Guardian using photo which is largely water vapour coming out of cooling towers to illustrate a story about global warming
.. Propaganda not news.
Anyone seen Jillian Ambrose and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the same room?
Today the woke green MSM is crowing about the closure of the last coal mine in England, they don’t like to mention the fact there is still a healthy demand for coal in the UK:
https://news.sky.com/story/englands-last-coal-mine-closes-despite-demand-for-almost-8m-tonnes-of-coal-a-year-12050793
Why do they cherrypick “England” ?
I guess the huge open cast hole is still operating in Wales
The 11 Aug Blog is opposite to todays Weather Network prognosis by their “Climate Scientist”
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/greenlands-melting-ice-sheet-passes-point-of-no-return-study-says-climate-change
I wonder what is the extent of California blackouts ?
https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2020/08/16/california-suffers-2-days-of-blackouts-as-wind-solar-power-falter/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-blackout-warning-11597606724
“California’s antipathy even to natural gas and nuclear power has resulted in higher energy prices and now power surpluses and shortages because renewables are intermittent energy sources.
The Sacramento Democrats want to take this policy nationwide via Joe Biden”
“The UK recorded its hottest August day in 17 years as temperatures climbed to over 36C earlier this week, and hot temperatures set a new record for central London for the longest stretch of high temperatures in almost six decades.”
1921: BRITISH ISLES: London, July 10. England is sweltering and suffering the worst drought in a century. Today was the seventy-eighth virtually rainless day. For the third successive day temperatures have exceeded 100. The rainfall for the year is less than one-third normal to date.
Their ‘since records began’ (in this case – they like to move it around) is 1961 I think.
It isn’t only about coal,
“This report https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/product/the-great-reset/ goes into great detail about a well funded & well-organized coalition to not just impose vaccines and depopulate the world, which may even be a ploy knowing they will not vaccinate China or Russia, but to actually destroy the world economy to end fossil fuels and impose by bribery and collusion their vision of how the world should function to stop Climate Change and impose by decree ZERO CO2.”
“We are facing massive unemployment as they wipe out industry and continue to try to keep people locked down to reduce CO2. For two months, Britain needed less electricity and they shut down coal plants. There is a fleet of cars that remain unsold and even Hertz was forced into bankruptcy. They have shut down tourism and Southern Europe will not survive without massive bailouts blowing the entire debt situation to insanity.”
“There are even two types of vaccines they have been developing. The first is the standard where they inject you with a portion of the virus. But Gates has also funded vaccines that operate totally differently. They are targeting your genetic DNA to alter it under the pretense it will prevent COVOD-19.”
Hot air is less denser that cool air so therefore it requires more mass (volume) to do the same work as cool air (at sea level). Wind direction also effects air pressure. Regards, George Reagan, retired engineer, Fort Worth TX USA
Last update from Gridwatch Uk. 2020-08-17 19:00:00 GMT Demand 31.29 GW 50.029 Hz. Coal. 0.362 GW 1%
Someone will need to help me here. Gas turbine efficiency is increased by recirculating exhaust gases. Whilst I appreciate there is a limit to this method that has been around forever (Abrahams Tank, large CAT excavators and the reported efficiency gains in power generation turbines i.e. OCGT vs CCGT). So given that exhaust gases are used to improve performance what is the ambient issue? I’m just asking as someone who used to build heat exchanger parts for gas recuperators.
Best Bill
I think that you are referring to regenerative gas turbines. These used the exhaust heat (gases at about 500C) to preheat the compressed air (usually below 200 C) and thus save fuel and increase efficiency in open-cycle mode of operation.
The large size of the heat exchangers has limited regenerative gas turbines to below 10 MW, (usually much smaller). This is not available to aero-derived gas turbines of course.