Gas network already at maximum capacity as cold snap hits
By Paul Homewood
h/t Phil Bratby/Ian Magness
Britain’s gas network has already hit full capacity as renewable energy fails to generate the power needed to heat the UK’s homes.
Freezing temperatures mean energy demands have soared in recent days, but low winds mean output at wind farms has plunged, according to data from National Gas and National Grid, making the UK reliant on gas for up to two-thirds of its electricity this weekend.
However, Jon Butterworth, chief executive of National Gas, said demand from gas-fired power stations would be “maxed out” from today through much of the weekend.
He said the weather event should be a reminder of the importance of fossil fuels as to global policymakers attend the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.
Mr Butterworth said: “It’s really important they recognise that although we’ve got to decarbonize, energy security is also vital. And when you’re in a world of interruptible renewable energy, our security is massively important.
The more we build up our reliance on wind and solar power, which can be disrupted by the weather, the worse the risk becomes.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/30/gas-network-maximum-capacity-cold-snap-hits/
And it’s barely December yet!
Of course, contrary to what Mr Butterworth says, we don’t have to decarbonise at all!
The frightening reality is that without substantial imports of electricity from Europe, our grid would already have collapsed today:
As I often say, double nothing is still nothing!
When wind and solar power are producing negligible power, it does not matter how many wind and solar farms you build.
And I would not bank on imports from Europe to prevent catastrophic blackouts.
In Germany today, for instance, wind and solar have been supplying no more then 5% of the country’s electricity for most of today. In the early evening tonight, coal and gas have were supplying three quarters of their power:
https://www.energymonitor.ai/power/live-eu-electricity-generation-map/
Yet still our dozey politicians don’t seem to have worked this out yet!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Get your generator before the next cold spell.
Imagine if you had to rely upon a ‘heat-pump’ for your heating with temp currently at -5 degree
No thanks, I prefer to think about my wood-burner.
Och, no problem, mannie! Don’t do as my Herons, but do as the UK Gov wants you to have: MORE Windmills when there’s no more wind …. TONIGHT @ Gridwatch 10pm-ish Teatime with Nigel, and there’s a bigger demand than supply ( <50Hz ) Not even as much wind generation as we get from COAL. and how are we going to get the BATTERIES re-charged?
Just found out from neighbour about his Hybrid – NO electric drive when you have the HEATER switched on, or HRW, even. Really ? So Stay Mobile & stay COLD – in a frozen vehicle…. A D&G driver reportedly lost his Licence for a full year BECAUSE his windows were frozen over. … Well well. That's what I was told .
“The more we build up our reliance on wind and solar power”
Reliance? On wind? I think I see the problem. Most any adolescent would see the problem.
Our ancestors certainly understood the limitations of windmills as they moved to steam power followed by electricity and diesel. A great example came on a programme looking at the three beautiful steam powered pumping stations that drained the land around Amsterdam. Each one replaced over 250 windmills. They went to one of the preserved windmills and the curator made the point that it wasn’t windy every day. And yet Kneeler Starmer, Sushi, the lying oaf Johnson et al somehow think we can use windmills to run a society dependant now on electricity.
Don’t forget Millibot!
We’re importing 9% energy from europe, as at 21:00hrs
See uk energy dashboard https://grid.iamkate.com/
This morning from around 5:30 to 6:30 we were supplying about 2GW to France. That would be 7am for them the morning peak for coffee.
According to Gridwatch pumped storage was supplying from 7am to 9pm averaging about 1GW, peaking at nearly 2GW. It’ll be interesting to see if that gets recharged.
Pumped storage runs most days for the morning peak even in summer, and will recharge overnight, it has to.
In recent days pumped storage has been running for 14 hours continuously, often at nearly 2GW out 3GW available. That doesn’t sound like coping with peak an and pm demand to me that’s part of the general mix.
At the same time gas has been supplying between 20 & 25 GW for the last 4 days even at night. Along with that the interconnectors have been below maximum.
Burning the candle at both ends comes to mind. Hopefully there’ll be enough wax left when the wind picks up again.
Glen,
yes so it seems for the last few days. It is unusual but I believe that they limit the upper dam level at a very conservative level in case of a serious requirement like a black start?
It is indicative of the state of the grid and things to come?
Hi Glen, I personally feel the medium term position is worse than is being realised. The open cycle gas turbines (many of which use diesel) are not being fired up that much (there is over 4GW of capacity connected to the transmission grid and DNOs) so they are probably holding that back to preserve supplies of fuel for when things get much worse.
Ray,
You’re probably right, it’s probably a sign of how bad things are that on a Saturday they’re paying people not to use electricity, the interconnectors are on import, ~7.5GW, and there’s no generation technology actually switched off.
Ray – many of those units operate under a derogation limiting their operation to less than 500 hours per year. This saves the cost of NOx abatement equipment, but accepts very limited load factor. It’s a pragmatic measure aimed at operators who wish to target the standby end of the market.
During the year, decisions will have been made, and opportunities taken to get decent value from the limited hours. They may be almost all for this year. As nobody has perfect foresight, some units could be sitting out the present cold spell. That’s the chance they have to take in a market and the equipment they have chosen to invest in.
Jordan do you know the year start/end for these restrictions? Is is Jan/Dec or some other period?
Surely it would be mightily dumb of any government to restrict units emergency operating in favour of power cuts…but who knows these days!
Jordan
I think given the choice between freezing in the dark for several days or weeks and suffering from the effects of NOx at some point in the future I think I’d risk the NOx
Any government that allows citizens freeze rather than risk the NOx emissions is showing the green revolution in its true colours.
Excellent point, Jordan. Standby operators are not there to save you from blackouts in the cold, they are there to make money.
Wow. I didnt know about a NOx restriction. How insane. NOX is so minute in atmosphere its barely measurable and dissolves within hours into N and O components. It has no impact on health in the small doses in the open air, and has a minute theoretical impact on climate that is too small to actually ever be measured. But the lunatics in charge of our ecosystem retrict warmth and wellbeing because of it! I say again – insanity reigns in UK public policy.
Gamecock has it: it is supposed to be a market. People make decisions to invest in the equipment they think will make money, and live with the consequences.
The market is regulated, and one of the regulations is to control NOx emissions. So there are some flexibilities to help people make that decision, but it is inconsistent with the concept of a market to let people break the rules after they have made a decision. Breaking rules is the thin end of a wedge which the concept of risk and reward, and therefore of a market.
You all have to make a decision here: do you want a market or not? If you can’t live with the concept of private decisions and profit/loss (ultimately market entry and exit), your only choice is nationalisation and public ownership of energy as a “public service”.
Ray – these regulations typically operate on a calendar year basis. There are sometimes flexibilities to allow some transfer between years.
glenartney – the market theory says that people will pay more to get the reliability/security they desire. If there are shortages of power that people don’t like, people should be incentivised to pay more. If you think those ideas don’t work, public service will be your end point. It’s difficult to cook up anything in between.
bobn – better to think about NOx as a local limit. If you have a power station next door, you deserve clean air as much as the person who lives miles away.
“Breaking rules is the thin end of a wedge which is inconsistent with the concept of risk and reward, and therefore of a market.”
To Jordan, thank God people like you and your ideology never get anywhere near in control. You make the worst of the climate cult look benign.
What ideology is that Ray?
Explain it to me – tell me what you think I have said.
Jordan. Ive lived the last 20yrs within 5miles of a gas fired power station and also a coal fired station (until the idiots blew it up in 2018). The air has been clean, and i and all the neighbours have been happy to live near these warmth generators. No problems with the air and no pollution seen or recorded. Air pollution in England is now about as common as flying unicorns.
Bobn
I live and have lived in several locations in Mega Watt Valley on and off for the last 40 odd years. During that time the coal generation has been closed, until there are only a couple left (I think). I can see Ratcliffe on Soar if I go anywhere. I live in Derby between it and the now closed Willington
I haven’t noticed any in air quality or weather – fog, sunny days and so on as a result of the closure I’m not talking about global climate just local.
Ah! “Regulation.” The Ideology which seems to to displace all other ideologies, when toleration has vanished, and the cry rises everywhere that “SOMEONE [unspecified] must do SOMETHING [a choice of crackpot* ideas] about IT [someone’s bee in the bonnet].”
De Toqueville said it was despair at the very detailed regulation of the Ancien Regime that was the prime cause of the French Revolution.
The present official** Compendium of English Law called “Halsbury’s Laws” has almost doubled in size from sixty years ago, and the extra, approximately twenty million words, is, essentially, all REGULATORY LAW.
* In the face of 745,000 immigrants in a year, send a hundred or so of them off to a holiday camp in Rwanda.
** Traditionally, the editor-in-chief is always a former Lord Chancellor.
bobn and genartney. Good examples of the CEGB approach building very tall stacks, and using a hot plume for buoyancy to dilute the NOx (and SO2) emissions off into the distance.
But our near neighbouring countries were not happy with this approach, and we had a choice: to respond positively to their concerns or to tell them we didn’t give a toss. Our international trade interests won the day, persuading the UK to respond positively to the concerns.
bobn – that CCGT power station you mention complies with the latest emissions limits, including proscribed NOx emissions limit values (ELVs) according to internationally agreed regulations. International agreed regulations are sometimes necessary to create a level playing field for trade an cooperation. How often do I hear complaints about child labour in remote lithium and cobalt mines? Same thing as our acceptance of industrial emissions standards, no?
Ray can take this as my pragmatic acceptance of what it takes to get along with people we want to get along with for mutual benefit. It’s not that elusive ideology swirling in the empty space inside Ray’s cranium.
Moving along to some of the consequences.
Cleaning up flue gas is quite expensive, and regulations seek to strike a balance to help a market to operate on an even playing field. We cannot accept blatant non-compliance by a subset of the market because it destroys confidence in the overall market. So any compliance derogations need to be justified and on commonly available terms.
Environmental regulations refer to “BAT” (best available techniques), where “T” means techniques not mean technology for very good reasons, as you will see below.
Large combustion plants can fully comply to the ELVs and have maximum flexibility to operate whenever they like. However full compliance would be unduly expensive for standby units, so the regulations provide a couple of limited hours’ operation routes with different ELVs for investors who never expect to operate for a large portion of the year. This could be because the equipment has a relatively inefficient process (such as absence of heat recovery processes).
These smaller units are unlikely to have the tall stacks either (again, a question of pragmatic cost). With relaxed ELVs, emissions can definitely be a more local issue, despite the happy experiences of some commenters here.
For example, I was driving through my local town a few years ago and one of the bigger businesses had decided to test-run its dedicated power generating standby unit. It had probably sat for more than a year without a run. So it was cold and probably needing some tuning. The streets were filled with a cloud of blue smoky diesel exhaust fumes. Not something the local neighbours should be asked to suffer too often, eh!
Turning to the “standby genny crowd” who often comment on these boards. This is perhaps the finest admission you could hope for of electricity market failure. Why doesn’t the market provide the security of supply they desire at the best market price available. Before anybody piles-on with “it’s all the guvmint’s fault” – this line of reasoning is just another form of acceptance that the market doesn’t work. So just park that complaint for a moment and, think about these points:
The cost of a standby gennny (purchase and maintenance) is going to be sky-high on a £/kW basis compared to what they should expect from a well functioning market. The extra they pay is a measure of the price they should be willing to pay in the market.
The single standby genny option gives them a supply security standard of ‘n+0’. Failed generator means off supply. That’s far inferior to what they should expect from a well functioning power market.
The standby genny is far inferior on grounds of safety compared to the industry (electrocution, fuel spillage and fire risk). Think about the incidence of these events if we had 40 million of the buggers in the UK
The standby genny does not comply with ANY of the permitting standards expected from the power supply industry. They will be holding un-permitted stocks of fuel, not in bunded storage areas. And the blatant disregard for neighbours if you ever try to use the thing, especially in dense urban situations or in high rise flatted developments. An operating genny will creating nuisance in the form of noise and local emissions, and neighbourly disputes are bound to follow …. which neatly comes back to how to get along with people.
Why does mr Butterworth even use the phrase ‘we have to decarbonize’? He must know the reality of it all.
His job depends on going along with the political consensus, even if he knows climate change is a massive scam.
+1
Thats about the size of it.
” Why does mr Butterworth even use the phrase ‘we have to decarbonize’? ”
Unfortunately, there are very few people in main stream medjia who assertively question the above mindset e.g. “Where is the proof that humans are responsible for dangerous climate change?”
Beat me to it Lordelate and PB. It’s approaching the level of a State Religion where any comment that could be seen as negative about NZC has to be redeemed with some kind of sacramental display like the sign of the cross. It’s getting to the point as when, in the 1930s Germany, raising a stiff right arm in salute was de-rigueur – or else…
Yes I jibbed at that. We really need some MSM discussions on values of ECS. See notrickszone for a list of papers with low numbers for a doubling of CO 2
It’s a declaration of orthodoxy.
Tonight CCGTs were supplying 26GW in the peak sustained for nearly an hour this is the highest that Elexon have recorded in the last 7 years and i suspect it wont be higher given the loss of coal. So where do they believe that power is going to come from in their new world not solar and not wind. Storage is an option if we build out more pumped storage but even with that proposed it would have covered no more than 20mins of tonights gas peak and even worse its not practical to shift that amount of power from Scotland anyhow. Them we have the delusional lot who tell us we just need more batteries where on earth are we going to locate the 500GWh of energy that gas will have delivered before wind picks up again. Its blindingly obvious we will need to retain gas indefinitely at the moment and we must plan for that outcome anything less risks a serious problem for this country
Ratcliffe-on-Soar is slated to close September 2024 – 2GW down the tubes.
Both Hartlepool and Heysham 1 were due to close April 2024 but have provisionally been extended to 2026 when another 2GW will close – if they make it that far.
I cannot think of any new non weather dependent plants being built other than Hinkley Point C and that will inevitably be delayed. The situation is dire now and still getting worse. God knows how bad it will have to get before serious action is taken.
” more pumped storage” “its not practical to shift that amount of power from Scotland anyhow ”
Plenty of hills and lots of water in the Lake District for several pumped storage installations, although there might be complaints at the planning stage !
Nicholas Lewis “….where on earth are we going to locate the 500GWh of energy that gas will have delivered before wind picks up again.”
The Royal Society’s recent “Large Scale Electricity Storage” report estimated we need to store 100 TWhrs (thermal) of hydrogen so around 50 TWhrs electrical based upon a 570 TWhrs of consumption. So we need today around 25 TWhrs of storage (electrical) for today’s electrical consumption.
We need more. Remember they used 2018 as the base for demand, which was a very average year. Even then the demand assumption included gargantuan amounts of “flexibility”, ironing out cold weather spikes into seasonal averages.
It doesn’t add up…
Would it be possible please for you to post another of your excellent “production weighted average CfD strike prices” graphs. I want to send it to my MP.
I’m thinking of replacing reasoned written arguments with more visually instant charts and graphs.
There is no cost that cannot be justified to reach Net Zero and we can lump it. Unless of course there is a political cost, which usually focuses minds. But with the current Westminster incumbents all nodding their heads at COP28 what hope do we have?
The sooner the collapse, the sooner you’ll be on the road to recovery.
True, the only way the net zero crap is going to be exposed is major power cuts and loss of life, the sooner the better, I am sorry to say. We will run out of gas in February at the present rate of usage.
I fear that will not work, there will simply be cries of “not enough wind and solar”, the useless MSM will double-down and blame it all on Tories.
At 6.27 this morning the grid percentages are;
Gas 70
Biomass 5
Wind 3
Solar 0
What worries me is not being on the gas grid. I’ll have to fire up my Ghillie kettle!
They have simply forgotten – as was bound to happen – that any cost now has to be lower than the future costs. Instead we see that costs now keep increasing and various papers have recently shown that costs in the future should be decreased. We now pursue renewables regardless. This is why a carbon tax would have been a far better option and why the fanatics resist it. Increasing the rate of tax would increase the cost of all the Green tech too do it is much harder to just push what Greens want as we are now doing.
The problem with carbon taxation is that the official basis is whatever it takes to achieve a target level of decarbonisation. That can be a large multiple of the “social cost of carbon “, even when you assume extensive anthropic consequential damage.
What is needed is common sense evaluation that shows that adaptation is a far cheaper option, and one that involves limited risk of making worthless investments compared with following net zero targets, which will leave us unable to afford adaptation.
It is simply not credible that politicians and their advisors do not know the reality. Of course they do, nobody could genuinely be that stupid not even Ed Milliband. So obviously they are lying and do not care. They are wealthy enough to be immune from the problems…for now.
Oh Miliband is certainly that stupid. These are people – at least a decent minority – who continue to think things like rent controls are a good idea despite doing the opposite of what they want to achieve every single time for exactly the reasons Economists say they will fail. They are convinced that their opinions and solutions are right and simply don’t care about evidence or what happened before. They persist with failed policies and usually add new stupid policies to failed ones that then make them even worse. Politicians are by and large simply the most opinionated fools in any country. Mark Twain wrote about it 150 years ago, as did Swift, Trollope, Thackeray, and nothing has changed.
The policy is the objective. Having policies is success. Miliband et al think that freedom is wrong; people’s lives must be shaped and controlled. They fabricate goofball reasons why a policy is needed to get people to accept their subjugation. “It’s for the planet.”
Yes, Miliband is a liar. But that is not his core evil. CCA and Net Zero are tools to get you to accept your demise. Your government is destroying your economy, and has opened your borders. They have shown their hand.
DO NOT THINK THEY AREN’T SUCCESSFUL. Their goals are not your goals. They are not like you. They don’t believe in freedom. Conservatives great failure is projecting their own decency on the Left.
” It is simply not credible that politicians and their advisors do not know the reality ”
There are some aspects of power generation that few engineers fully understand e.g. the importance of the inertia of rotating machines re: grid stabilisation. It’s probably beyond the understanding of the typical PPE graduate.
The solution is to not give them so much power.
I have a friend who is a State Senator. He is a good man, smart and conscientious. He is knowledgeable of real estate law, but is limited in most other fields. Bills come before the Senate that he must evaluate and decide on. I’m afraid there are some subjects he knows so little about that he can’t even effectively evaluate what advisors tell him, nor testimony in front of the Senate.
On several occasions I told him, “Y’all should even be involving yourselves with this.”
Example that comes to mind was a marijuana law reform. The new, “improved,” proposed regulation he sent out ran to three pages. I told him it was bad government. “If it takes you 3 pages to regulate it, you shouldn’t be regulating it.”
The impression I get of MPs on these pages is really low. Are they just bad people, or good people put into impossible situations?
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” — Ronald Reagan
Can I suggest readers take a screenshot of the gridwatch day graph tonight (or tomorrow) and send it to their MP or MSP, asking them how many turbines they estimate would be needed to replace the gas power stations. Their answers (if any are received) will give you an interesting insight into their technical competence.
“ how many turbines”
Infinity is a concept, not a number.
Like it!
Alan Keith :
Good idea. I will do that.
WARNING a little bit of technical advice if anyone on here needs it. A gas boiler (combi or otherwise) requires very little electricity to operate. My own Worcester 42kW combi only draws a maximum of 136We. Of course in a power cut a gas boiler will not work and an extended outage could be life threatening in a severe cold spell absent any back up source of heating.
The obvious solution would be a small portable generator or a battery/inverter (deep cycle preferably) to power up the boiler, however, neither will work. The boiler will try to fire up but then shut down and “lock out” when connected like this.
The reason being the flame safe circuitry on gas boilers passes a small current through the flame (after ignition) which is partly rectified by the carbon in the flame to DC current. This current runs through the mains neutral with the circuit completed via the mains supply earthing at the last transformer/sub station. This continuously tells the boiler the flame is alight and allows the gas to keep flowing. This is NOT the same earthing as the boiler and pipework uses. A portable genny (or battery/inverter) has a “floating earth” (not some Gaia theory!) and will not work.
There is a simple solution….though I would strongly recommend anyone uncertain to get an electrician to do it. Essentially you have to run a secondary connection from the generator to your systems neutral. I used to put a socket doubler on the genny 240V output with the boiler plugged in one and a second lead with a plug on both ends plugged into both the doubler and the mains. Yes I know it’s not kosher but it works – though don’t blame me if yours doesn’t or you get a nasty shock!
I deny any responsibility.
Thankfully here in darkest kent my oil range cooker/ boiler seems quite happy with what the big old 1960’s 6kv gen set supplies when the going gets tough, as does the circulating pump that keeps the wood stove busy.
best wishes everyone for the impending cold snap.
“Loose lips sink ships.”
When the ban comes, flaunting freedom could bring a knock on your door.
Oh, no sorry I was only dreaming, I am completely unprepared and really live in Snowdonia! look my profile picture was taken in my back garden.
You can’t call it Snowdonia anymore!
Ray – I have encountered exactly this problem this year with my Worcester Bosch combination boiler. I wanted to support it with a battery/inverter for use in electricity outages. Seems many gas engineers and electricians are completely unfamiliar with this issue. Does this ‘flame safe’ design apply to all UK boiler suppliers do you know?
It does on my 25(ish) year old Ideal boiler. Like Ray Sanders, I ended up doing some serious head scratching when setting up a battery/inverter supply! To make the changeover simple, and avoid any safety issues, I fitted a 3 position (centre off) double pole switch immediately before the fused spur outlet which supplies the boiler & pump. Only the inverter input has the neutral & earth linked – on mains it’s just a “pass through” circuit.
As far as I am aware all 21st century gas boilers and most oil boilers operate in this way. The most dangerous appliance in the average UK home is its gas boiler. If the flame extinguishes the boiler must know and shut down supply immediately otherwise the situation rapidly becomes potentially catastrophic. The Flame safe circuit is crucial hence the reason it requires its own systems independent of all others. The solutions I (and Dave Ward) have suggested are safe provided you are suitably careful – if in doubt, a good quality electrician can sort it for you. If your electrician doesn’t understand the issue, get another one!
To Dave Ward, yes you explained it better (and safer!) than I did…thank you.
I feel reasonably OK with rolling blackouts thanks to simple and cheap bits of technology: hot water bottles, and a travel kettle. Plus some quite expensive modern technology: Portable Power Stations (big LiFePo batteries and inverters).
A typical 1kW max PPS can’t run a normal kettle, but can run an 800W travel one. Hot drinks and hot water bottles will be available chez nous, for a few days.
Surely you should reserve the power pack for electrical only uses – a little camping gas stove can do the hot water much quicker.
” rolling blackouts ”
A “micro combined heat and power (micro-CHP)” looks tempting. Perhaps a bigger version to sell heating and power to the neighbours?
I have often thought we should go back 100 years and generate locally. forget the convienience of the grid.
” forget the convienience of the grid. ”
You could have a home with micro-CHP and a grid connection. I wonder if you have to tell the local “DNO” re installing a micro-CHP
A tip – in a power cut it is a good idea to switch off power at the mains, the reason being the surge when power comes back. Many appliances have chips which are very sensitive to surges and are not surge protected. We have had to get a ch control replaced and a fridge fixed. It was the fridge engineer who told us this – he was Swiss, a thorough people.
If you turn off at the mains, how do you know when the power supply is restored?
Street lights? Although I personally would just turn off all the circuit breaker except for the lights (leaving on 1 incandescent bulb in say a hallway) and I use surge protection plugs/ extension leads with all my fridges and freezer anyway.
“There’s an app for that.”
Apologies – senior moment!
Platform Zed answered that
The Swiss guy said that about the light bulb. You could just look out the window from time to time
75.5% fossil fuels last night, 6% wind
The other thing to note here is we have literally burnt through nearly 20% of our storage so far over this cold snap fortunately the part restoration of Rough has given us more storage this year again so we still have a reasonable buffer.
” so we still have a reasonable buffer. ”
Is not our gas storage buffer dismal compared with several other Western European countries ?
Probably, but we still have some North Sea gas via pipelines.
Rough has 12 days storage of gas compared to Germany’s 80 days, France’s 103 days and Netherlands 123 days. Rough has already been called on to release gas this week.
Thanks Dave Andrews. If 12 days storage is the total UK storage then it’s dismal !
To be fair, we have ample storage in the North Sea.
It’s not so much how much storage you have got, it’s how much you can actually release per day
With some difficulty, Gamecock came up with the following numbers for the U.S. (though the land area is large enough there could be regional problems):
3,836 bcf in storage
88.3 bcf used per day
~43 days supply.
However, we have such large flow from wells that storage probably doesn’t mean much.
Do you know if Rough was used for market or technical reasons?
As I’m trying to find a figure as to what level of natural gas demand the UK can sustainably cope without gas imports from mainland Europe & storage so only North sea gas (UK & Norway) & LNG imports (although it would be interesting to get the figure for without LNG imports too).
As the 2023/24 NG ESO Winter Outlook refers the Scenarios in last winters Outlook an the Reduced electricity imports from Europe combined with insufficient gas supply in Great Britain had a shortfall of 10 GWe – which I suspect is based a season peak demand of 45.3GW which I think seem unbelievably low when 13 years ago peak was 60 GW (does anyone know how 15 GW of demand can reliability vanishes at the same time thing like heat pumps increase.) I also suspect there are no plans for a 1963 or 1947 style winter.
Think of the profits old chap!
UK coal power is ahead of wind at the moment…
Fiddler’s Ferry power station towers demolition starts tomorrow.
https://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/news/23961176.fabulous-photos-fiddlers-ferry-ahead-sundays-demolition/
I found this about how close the US came to running out of gas last winter and the consequences that would have ensued should they had to close down the gas supply system. I don’t know if the US system is much different to ours but the consequences would have been devastating, costly and take a long time to rectify for the US if the worse was realised.
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/bone-chilling?utm_source=cross-post&publication_id=630873&post_id=139143266&utm_campaign=1072769&isFreemail=true&r=1on4vw&utm_medium=email
“Last Christmas, the U.S. narrowly averted an energy disaster that would have decimated New York City and killed thousands”
“Yet still our dozey politicians don’t seem to have worked this out yet!”
Many may not have “worked this out yet” but far more have and are waiting to take advantage of the eventual consequences.
By the evening of Jan 1st 2024 (or the 1st full working day after that – Wed 3rd Jan), Claire Coutinho, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero and Conservative MP for East Surrey is going to bitterly regret making this ludicrously unlikely boast to the 97,000 attendees at COP28.
She’ll be relentlessly reminded and ridiculed about it. Deservedly so.
Hi Joe,
My “reply” from the BBC to Georgina Rannard’s incompetence.
Dear Mr Sanders,
Thank you for contacting us about the BBC News article ‘Biden is boosting hydrogen but some are unhappy’.
It’s clear you feel the reporter is not offering an informed analysis of the detailed aspects of hydrogen energy here. However, that is not the point of the piece or the context of the item. Rather, it considers the political approaches being considered by the US President and public reaction to them.
Following President Biden’s investment in this type of energy, we reflect that it is still met with criticism and isn’t without its detractors. The piece accurately reflects that, relatively speaking, hydrogen has more potential as a ‘green’ source of energy compared to conventional fossil fuels.
The accompanying video explainer offers more detail and acknowledges that water production is by-product but that one advantage is the lack of CO2 production. Carbon emissions are a political commitment, and blue or green hydrogen may be one way of lowering those – aside from any other reservations critics may have about vapours being produced, or local pollution like nitrogen oxides – also acknowledged in the video. A quote from the Union of Concerned Scientists also admitted that the policy may not help the environment, and the US should ensure the hydrogen industry develops in a way “that is unequivocally aligned with our climate objectives”.
So the piece acknowledges, briefly, that like any energy source this one has its pros and cons. It is not intended to be an in-depth assessment of the real green credentials – but an update on the notable development of significant investment in this field from the US, as seen among other nations. We feel the report is therefore duly accurate and impartial, in line with audience expectations and the context involved.
Kind regards,
L Murray
BBC News Website Team
Obviously I will be escalating this evasive word salad to the next stage. You should be able to compare this response to yours.
Ray
Thanks Ray.
I’m still waiting for the BBC to respond to my rejection of its first response by their Phil Young.
Joe Public : Claire Coutinho MP only said that we were phasing out coal for power generation. There was no promise made to keep the lights on.
Ah, thanks for the correction. 👍
Update @ 1253
Demand: 40GW; CCGT 58%, Nuclear 12%, Solar 6%, Wind 3%, Coal 2%, Hydro 1%, Asstd imports ~8%. Which still leaves 10% unaccounted for. Where is that coming from? Unicorn farts? Political hot air?
There is the odd rounding error and the Biomass you omitted is quite significant.
As of 14:40 GMT:
Demand 39.95 GW
Supplied by:
CCGT 58%
Nuclear 12%
Solar 4.5%
Wind 3.5%
Hydro 1%
Pumped Hydro 1%
Coal 2%
Biomass 4%
Net Imports 12%
Other 1%
Even without the mysterious ‘other 1%’ this still this adds up to 98% sourced. Perhaps the missing 1% or 2% is due to the way solar is ‘estimated’ rather than ‘measured’?
I don’t think OCGT is included in other so that could explain it.
Also I believe the solar estimated is added to the realtime metered generation figure.
That’s right – solar is not included in the real time figures: nor is some of the onshore wind ( as a rule of thumb, about half)
Mike, I am somewhat wary of the grid.imkate.com website. I am sure the site’s author Kate Morley https://iamkate.com is well intentioned and an excellent software developer, however, I can see quite a lot of discrepancies in the data.
She includes “estimated” figures for solar and embedded wind turbines that are not metered in real time. She simply brings together data from lots of separate sources possibly not fully understanding the interaction between them.
I drive down from North Manchester to see relatives in Derby about 5 times a year. I passed by a few scruffy old rusting road tankers for many years. Now, over the last year 3 or 4 oil tankers have been replaced by about 20 spanking new shiny vehicles. They are locked in to a gated compound and they never seem to move.
The Nation’s secret supply of diesel fuel??
I feel at times that us lot are the only sane thinking people left on a ship of fools, whilst we may have disagreements on things that of course is healthy and leads to some form of concensus.
Carry on captain Paul!
“It’s really important they recognise that … we’ve got to decarbonize.”
No we don’t. We haven’t got to do any such thing, or indeed anything. Some people invested with a psychopathic agenda, and some with sociopathic greed, and others whose livelihood now depends upon it, put forward a fake theory, manipulated data and plucked an arbitrary target and an arbitrary date out of thin air (so to speak.)
It’s a mirage; the Emperor has no clothes; smoke and mirrors; bare-faced lies.
Yep.
“No we don’t. We haven’t got to do any such thing, or indeed anything.”
It’s worse than you think. They are trying to make people in the future do it. Imagine living under some stricture from the past . . . like CCA 2008. At a minimum, CCA should be sunsetted and new regulation prepared, though most here would say just throw it out, with the horse it rode in on.