National Grid Warm Up Coal Plant
June 12, 2023
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
Quite astonishing!
https://twitter.com/Share_Talk/status/1668162326275530752
A glance at yesterday’s generation shows that at the early evening peak nuclear and CCGT were supplying about 60% of our electricity, with I/Cs another 20%:
Wind was running at 8% at the time, but has dropped since then:
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
In these times of Energy shortage, Ferrybridge C power station is still offline:
https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4036131/symbolic-moment-alok-sharma-triggers-demolition-west-yorkshire-coal-plant
A very good reason for refusing him a peerage. If the Russians blow up a power station it’s war. Why is it different for Sharma?
Hee is the official SSE video :
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1429456184902393858/pu/vid/720×720/JwPnpycxEiyBmqVJ.mp4?tag=12
BTW, I didn’t know that for the green alarmists CO2 emitted by burning coal was even more dangerous than CO2 emissions from other sources.
Unfortunately, the CO2 exhaled by green alarmists may be even more dangerous than CO2 from all other sources combined.
There is no stortage of fossil fuel energy, just high costs due to net-zero
Don’t forget the extortionate TAX at point of sale even before the “net zero” lunacy started
>>There is no shortage of fossil fuel energy, just high costs due to net-zero
Ratcliffe must surely be on its last legs by now.
A friend of mine, a senior engineer who retired after a lifetime working for the CEGB and its various successors, is now boosting his pension keeping West Burton power station ticking over. (He’s from the generation that cut its teeeth on these stations back in the 1970s and 80s, so he understands the plant better than most.) As you implied, everything from coal stocks to the various statutory inspections had been allowed to run down in anticipation of its closure, so there was plenty of work to be done. He was brought out of retirement in 2021 and I understand that his contract runs until 2024, though he expects to be offered a further extension.
Sorry. Just realised that his “nice little earner” seems to have come to an end with the final closure of the Coal Plant at West Burton at the end of March this year.
“…nice little earner…”
During one of our earlier contrived panics – the ‘Millennium Bug’ – I had a friend who was enticed out of retirement, because he was one of the few people alive who really knew COBOL. He laughed like a drain whenever anyone mentioned computers ‘stopping.’
The day before ‘Der Tag,’ he got drunk to celebrate his imminent second retirement. “Nobody will want me after tomorrow, because nothing is going to happen!”
No Dave, the so-called ‘Millennium Bug’ was not a ‘contrived panic’. It was a problem that could have had most serious consequences had it not been largely (not entirely) avoided because legitimate warnings were heeded and acted upon – a far from easy task.
Click to access 2017-04-04-MartynThomas_Y2K-T.pdf
“…a problem…”
This went back to the original memory-management decisions for mini-computers in the 1970s. Because of a shortage of memory, there was insufficient allocation of it, in programs like DOS, for complete dating information to be recorded. Everybody interested in the nuts-and-bolts of computers knew all about it but – shall we say it honestly? – the discount rate for future expenditures was rather high.
Later, after twenty years of Moore’s Law working and increasing memory, everybody knew the fix would be quite easy. However, CEOs of companies and Civil Servants had no idea of quite how to do it. Cue the appearance of people like my friend who happened to remember how to program in COBOL (“Common Business-Oriented Language.”)
One of Torness units gone off line fortunately the French are back in the game!! Wind is forecast at 3.7GW at 1800 currently not great but an improvement on 2.4GW now so just shows how we are often close to the limit. Thing is average joe knows none of this and until we have a blackout no one is going to wake up and smell the coffee over the damage being done to our electricity system.
Yes, unfortunately, we’re going to need some blackouts, and maybe someone dying because of them, before the lunacy of net zero will actually be realised by the average Joe.
If UK turned on all our remaining coal stations, what is our max output these days.
Ratcliffe on Soar is 2000MW but listed to close in 2024. It was commissioned in 1968 so nice and modern eh?
West Burton A shut down in March and is currently being razed to the ground.
And the rest? Oops all gone. it is theoretically possible to fire up some of the units not converted to burning imported wood at Drax but it ain’t gonna happen. Alternatively the wood burners could be converted back to coal but that ain’t gonna happen either.
So to answer you question, currently almost sweet FA and soon … completely FA then we really are f…..
The Northern Ireland power station is coal
BTW the last week in north eastern England has been windy
and not too warm
The situation at Kilroot.
https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2022/10/07/news/warnings_north_could_face_blackouts_by_2024-2852121/
Thanks Ray.
So coal capacity is …
…currently almost sweet FA
Good job no-one wants those 728,000 heat pumps installed each year.
MY GOD !!! I had no idea that we had closed down nearly all of our power stations ? I thought we still had a number as back-up which were always there if needed. What on earth does the government think we are going to do in the future ??!! We all know wind and solar are so UNRELIABLE that it would be madness to think we could rely on them ??!!!
To repeat points that I have made many times before, almost all the 21st century major UK grid blackouts have occurred in the spring or summer not the winter months. We have progressively closed down firstly Oil (Littlebrook, Kingsnorth. Grain, Fawley, Pembroke etc) Nuclear ( all Magnox reactors and then 6 AGRs ) and far too many Coal plants to list with virtually no fuelled replacements. Even many of the CCGT are on their last legs and cannot be relied upon for much longer. Instead we now have principally intermittent and variable renewables that are asynchronous, have little inertia, and act parasitically on services provided by the dwindling fuelled plants.
Simultaneously demand has markedly changed from largely resistive to inductive ( motors, compressors, solenoids etc) and capacitive (u.g. cabling, capacitors etc) causing huge differences in reactive power, power
factor, frequency etc.
In recent times we have had such fiascos as paying Sizewell B to run at half power just in case it inadvertently tripped offline – the remaining system was too weak to handle the loss of its supply and would likely have collapsed. Meantime we were simultaneously buying coal fired power from The Netherlands – you could not make it up.
The system is being played by smart operators who either seem to be more able than National Grid or are even possibly in league with them. A regular poster on here, (the learned “It Doesn’t Add Up” identified a time when 1000MW was being simultaneously imported and exported between two different interconnectors from the two same start and finish points over IFA1 and the ElecLink.
It is now just a matter of when, NOT IF, the system collapse happens.It is even possible that such a collapse could be engineered simply by a coordinated simultaneous mass switch on of high consumption appliance by the general public – how pathetic the way have we allowed these Green loonies to take control and not through any ballot box.
Sadly nothing less than a catastrophic blackout is going to get people to wake up and see the reality of the situation.
Yes, unfortunately, we’re going to need some blackouts, and maybe someone dying because of them, before the lunacy of net zero will actually be realised by the average Joe.
Good comments Ray. If I could add the following which could add some context.
A lot can be done to keep the older CCGTs going. I don’t think this technology has a definite limit on its operating life. Like those 50 year old coal fired units, it’s more a question of spending money on replacing the parts. A major refurb/re-life (costing a few £10M’s) should do the trick.
The last GB capacity market cleared at £63/kW/yr for “delivery” of capacity in 2027. For a 700MW CCGT, this will be £40M/yr. This should be rewarding enough to have operators spending some big bucks to keep their capacity in service. At £63/kW/yr, the GB capacity arrangements are giving a strong incentive to make capacity available. At least in some senses, the GB arrangements are doing their job. Whether it is the most cost-effective is perhaps another matter. You know where I stand on coal-fired capacity, but this seems to be off-limits for the meantime.
Another point, and sorry to be the broken record on this one, keeping these CCGTs operational still leaves the issue of over-dependency on gas. GB still faces issues around fuel diversity.
We have discussed this before: paying Sizewell B to run at half power just in case it inadvertently tripped offline isn’t necessarily a net overall cost to the network. If another power station would have been operated to provide the level of reserve required to keep Sizewell at 1000MW, it would be more economic to drop the loading of Sizewell. The alternative power station (the one which we can assume was kept off) could have had a higher marginal cost than the Dutch power station you mention …. again, these are all part of the rich tapestry of operating the power network to satisfy a number of different operating criteria at lowest cost.
If the “system is being played by smart operators”, it might not be such a bad thing. Better than dumb operators, no? And in the private sector, these people are in business to make money and we have to allow for at least some money-making if we are to get what we want out of it.
It is possible for 1000MW to be simultaneously imported and exported between two different interconnectors. Is this any different to National Grid “wheeling” power through Cumbria from Scotland to (say) the Midlands?
The 1000MW round trip is definitely different from using the UK as a way to route extra power into France from the Netherlands and Belgium – a frequent occurrence last year. ElecLink and IFA1 both connect to the UK grid at Sellindge, Kent and to the French grid close to the Eurotunnel terminal at Coquelles. The power was simply going round in circles, instead of there being zero transmission.
Ray,
can you explain why the national Grid is supporting this madness as surely they will be blamed when a significant outage occurs. They should be telling the government that this cannot work?
National Grid is actually a multi national private company that exists to make money for its shareholders. They are partly paid by “interventions” they make to keep the system running. The worse the system gets, the more interventions, the more money they make. Once beyond break even point, profit from each and every intervention payment goes straight to the bottom line – a very nice big earner.
Will they take the blame? Why should they? They will hide behind the fact that they don’t actually generate electricity, they just move it around. Any problems simply blame the government whoever it is.
Ray,
I see that point, however, public or private their job is to run the grid. Failure of the system means that they must be held accountable, who else is there? They cannot hide behind the fact they do not generate, the system is in their control and the politicians certainly will not accept any critisism.
It could get nasty?
I think National Grid is an excellent company – looking forward to my dividend payment in August.
The board of NG may be on message with Nut Job Zero and may well have little understanding of the business. Look at the water companies and see how many of the CEOs there have any experience of water or sewage. Even if NG are aware of what is happening, do you think they can pierce the ignorance and stupidity of our ministers and MPs?
National Grid’s profits are regulated at a set return on assets. The way they grow the business is to have lots more assets. More transmission lines, more substations, more grid stabilisation kit, more renewables tie-ins…
They are always going to go for the least efficient largest grid they can get away with, and net zero provides perfect cover.
“…coal power station…”
Politicians competed to be seen pressing demolition buttons. Somehow, they overlooked this one.
x
But . . . but . . . wind provided 100% of your power for a minute in March, which the press crowed about. Like it meant something.
Our ministers and their advisers have swallowed the net-zero junk science hook-line and sinker. Fortunately for the Germans, they paid lip-service and can now produce low cost power if they wish. The UK is probably unique in having virtually no real security of supply: however, we have got away with it so far. The Green-lobby is being kicked-out all over Europe as people became aware of the damage that is being done for no benefit , but not in the UK ……. yet!
“The UK is probably unique in having virtually no real security of supply”
It’s what the government calls “energy security.”
Get scared whenever they talk about food security and water security. They use the word “security” because focus groups told them it’s important. It means government takeover.
And the idiotic Grant Shapps has claimed that we can get energy security by building more wind farms.
The Germans are saddled with paying for all the wind and solar they have installed whether they use it or not plus the costs of early nuclear closure.
Yesterday the Norwegian interconnector was at 50% due to a fault looks like it’s not fixed yet.
Interconnectors are noted for one particular characteristic – unreliability.
The 2,000MW Interconnector France Angleterre (IFA1) was taken down to half power a few years back by a ship dragging its sea anchor in a storm. The same I/C was taken down by a “suspicious” fire at the Sellindge converter station a few years later.
The Western HVDC link from Hunterston to Birkenhead seems to work when it fancies it.
Regarding the link to Norway it is worth noting that Norwegian domestic electricity prices skyrocketed recently (a 12 fold increase) in a country that gets 100% of its power from “renewables” ( i.e. Hydro ) so as a net gas exporter they could not blame it on gas prices. The Norwegian government even “banned” the proposed NorthConnect link to Scotland on the basis that it would have adverse effects on the Norwegian economy.
Basically a lot of Norway expressly do NOT want to be interconnected to anyone other than the relatively small Baltic Grid system. Hardly surprising it is not functioning properly.
There’s an interesting picture of European interconnections here
https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&flow=scheduled_commercial_exchanges_all
OFGEM have just approved a reduction in the minimum inertia for the grid down to 120GVAs from 140GVAs currently. When things do go TU they will happen faster and the consequence will be more widespread. Divide the level of demand into the inertia figure and you have a measure in seconds of the speed of response needed.
Click to access FRCR%202023%20Authority%20Decision1686224869212.pdf
Note that OFGEM acknowledge there is rising unease in the industry with the increased risk being taken. The OFGEM approach seems to be to bend it until it breaks.
I have read that document several times (thanks for posting it – I’m retired now and no longer see a lot of these items) and frankly I can’t believe it has come to this level of plain daftness.
Back in the 2019 event the initial generation loss was actually much lower than the Infrequent Infeed Loss Limit but lack of inertia (due to high wind output unusually combined with high solar output during lowish demand) meant it still took the frequency down dangerously low in milliseconds. Actions to shed load also shed embedded generation (who’d have thought it!) and made the situation worse.
This devil may care or gung-ho attitude to system security just baffles me and that Ofgem are sanctioning it is laughable. The sterling values they are talking about seem trivial compared to the potentially massive costs of a major blackout.
” This devil may care or gung-ho attitude to system security just baffles me and that Ofgem are sanctioning it is laughable ”
There is a belief amongst those who favour unreliables that no major outage to date means that the structure of the grid and the “mix” of power generation is robust i.e. “it ain’t gone wrong yet mate, so it must be OK”.
If National Grid don’t actually call on RATS to generate it will count as a coal free day. Even if they do call on it it will provide very inefficient generation with the warm up for just a few hours of operation.
one unit was called upon and still online.
lets roll forward 12mths and when RATS is gone all that will be left is the gas peaker polluters
Hurray !!! Coal and Nuclear power are reliable means of electricity etc. We do not need to try and rely on wind and sunshine for our vital needs !!
Come come everybody! Wind is producing a marvellous 13% of our electricity as I write! Can’t complain about that!!!
Coal is at 1.76%
Data last recorded on Monday the 12th. of June, 2023 at 18:55 BST
Here is an indication of the scale of the insidious problem.
“Offline
-32
MW
Shutdown category
Non planned
Expected return to service
14 June 2023
Status
Automatically tripped following a grid event”
“Grid event” – WTF is that supposed to mean”????????????
“Automatically tripped on generator protection”
What was the generator protecting itself against???????
These AGR’s may be old, knackered and a poor design from the start but what is taking them down now? Answers on a post card to…..
https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/power-station/daily-statuses
Ray
With all the lightning going on at the moment, there is a fair chance the “grid event” will either be a lightning strike on the neighbouring network or perhaps a significant threat of a strike (enough to take the unit offline as a precaution). It could be another part of the rich tapestry of power supply operation.
Once it is taken off, a nuclear reactor will stay off for around 3 days due to xenon poisoning. The following video is well worth watching:
“Rich tapestry”
Now that’s funny.
Lightning strikes disabling a nuclear plant are incredibly rare events. For both Tornes (SE Scotland) and Heysham (NW England) to have been similarly disabled is by lightning is vanishingly unlikely.
for a poor design they’ve kept going an awfully long time
Hi Nicholas they really have not kept going anything like as long as other designs have. The Westinghouse design at Beznau was commissioned in 1969 and is still going strong. No Magnox nor AGR has made it anything like as long.
” for a poor design they’ve kept going an awfully long time ”
There is an uncosted benefit for AGR design: stability in situations where liquid-cooled reactors fail catastrophically. IMO, the catastrophic failures at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima would have been less likely if the designs had been UK AGR.
“>Automatically tripped following a grid event”
Torness 2 and Heysham 2
I actually burst out laughing when I read the first sentence of this article in the DT.
“Britain has started burning coal to generate electricity for the first time in a month and a half, after the heatwave made solar panels too hot to work efficiently”
You couldn’t make this farce up. So if the wind blows too hard the wind turbines can’t work and now if it’s too hot solar panels reduce efficiency. I hope the clowns in Westminster are paying attention.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/12/britain-fires-up-coal-plant-weather-too-hot-solar-panels/
This has been known about right back to the start of the solar panel industry.
They are performance rated at 25°C and above that the performance falls away markedly as temperature increases. But remember this is the panel temperature not normal air temperature, and panel surfaces can go well over 50°C.
And some idiots want to build a 4000km interconnector to Morocco. Welcome to the asylum.
Leftiepedia: “Torness nuclear power station … is expected to be shut down in 2028, prior to defueling and then decommissioning.”
The next winter season could create issues for Europe, when they try to fill their gas reserves. With the ongoing sanctions on Russia, and the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines, there could be less gas available for electricity production and heating, with the follow-on effect being that less power being available for the interconnectors to the UK.
The only way the average Brit will realise the problem is when the power goes out and they realise that the Internet is run on electricity. All those Cisco, Huawei, Lucent cabinets need power to switch all those packets and send the laser pulses down the optical fibres.
Storage replenishment us actually doing very well. So much so that UK exports ex LNG landings have been cut back as they are not needed. Across the EU it’s over 72% full.
https://agsi.gie.eu/#/historical/eu
In fact we now have an LNG surplus. Of course, a harsh winter could eat into storage faster than last year. Not sure whether the EU will stop importing Russian LNG . It’s been particularly important for some countries such as Spain.
The gas storage levels are at the moment ok, but this could change in summer with possible higher demand for cooling, an increase in Asian demand and further supply restrictions from Russia. Storage supplies 25 to 30% of gas consumed in winter and therefore LNG supply and no disruptions on the Russian pipelines will determine the outcome. LNG demand will increase in Asia during winter placing constraints on supply and raising costs.
“Everyone knows in the back of their heads that as soon as this gas starts being consumed and if the cargoes keep going to Asia, we are back to the situation two years ago” when there was global competition for LNG, one gas trader said.”
” Across the EU it’s over 72% full. ”
Thanks for the link IDAU, extracts:
German storage: 194 TWh , 77% full
UK storage: 4 TWh , 40% full
Above = “snapshot” on 12/06/2023
What is needed is 24 hours of National Grid shutdown, meaning that folks can’t charge their mobiles. That will focus minds.
Brian if the whole grid went down nationally you can forget it being out of action for just 24 hours. A full “Black Start” of the grid has been estimated to likely take several days up to two weeks in certain areas.
Despite this article below claiming the UK is always prepared for such an event, the number of operational units capable of Black Starting is progressively reducing. Contingency plans have a habit of falling out of date.
https://www.drax.com/power-generation/black-start-important-back-plan-youve-never-heard/
You will see from the above link that following the “Great Storm” back in 1987 the Kent/Sussex area was black started by Grain Power Station. Well that was an Oil fired unit and it is long gone.
Are the Drax coal units not available at all ?
It’s sly that people talk about GB grid not UK grid, so they can avoid mentioning that Kilroot COAL power station runs every day until closure for gas conversion on Sept 30th 2023
Stew, there is no such thing as the “UK Grid”, Northern Ireland runs on EirGrid which is a completely separate entity.
https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/#all
I get your point but Northern Ireland has been linked to the GB grid for a long time
So basically there is coal power on UK soil every day,
even before we count Dutch imports that include coal power.
The interconnectors to Ireland tend to export wind surpluses and import coverage from GB when the wind drops. Moyle actually is next door to Ballylumford (essentially Larne), which used to be oil fired, but got converted to CCGT when the gas interconnector from Moffat was built. For practical purposes Northern Ireland has its own grid until the North South Interconnector gets built due on line in 2026. Although Ireland has a synchronous grid the links are limited for historic reasons. Coolkeeragh, near Londonderry is the other major station in NI, which was also previously oil fired but is now CCGT. Plans to build a further CCGT station on part of the former Belfast refinery site have never been implemented.
The all island picture looks challenging in the light of rapidly growing data centre demand, though perhaps energy cost will dent that. The South has been depending on gas both from its own resources and from imports ex Moffat (the line also has a spur to the Isle of Man). The recent ORESS offshore wind auction isn’t going to provide the dispatchable power they need.
https://www.eirgridgroup.com/newsroom/eirgrids-generation-capac/
According to a Guardian article posted at CliScep by Mark Hodgson, negotiations are ongoing to halt the decommissioning of the last two coal units at Drax and to have them available for next winter. Squeaky bum time at National Grid?