The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[Gary C]

phumy said:

And as for the Grid Operator having the ability to trip one or two nuke plants off in case of over supply from wind or solar, where the fk did you get that little gem from, more bks. There is absolutley no way they would "trip off" one, let alone two nukes just for the sake of there being too much sun or too much wind, firstly these big nukes are giving genuine inertia to the grid, where as wind and solar do not, and Grid would never ever want to lose that inertia. Not only that but do you know how long it takes to go critical on a nuke after it has been tripped off, do a bit of homework, and come back and tell us how long and why?

Look up Heysham operational tripping scheme.

Its an automatic grid protection scheme that will trip one of our reactors. Grid request us to arm it when our part of the grid is at risk when it is heavily loaded from north to south loads (and of course the new wind generation that comes ashore and shares our grid connection point)

We offer one out of the four reactors but its Grid who choose when to arm the automatic protection. We have had it for years but its never operated yet.

We also have an agreement for grid demanded load reduction, where we have to reduce output within a certain timeframe and its a standard that generators have a Grid Code load reduction on high frequency without reference to the grid.

Just shows how well NGC manage the grid in that we have never had to enact any of them.

Edited by Gary C on Sunday 4th June 06:25

[PushedDover]

Perhaps relevant, this podcast has just popped up on my feed.

Operating grid in transition.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/redefining-e...

Might take some of the sweeping statements and guessing out

[Talksteer]

Evanivitch said:

tamore said:

Evanivitch said:

I'm still all for mixed grid and the lack of a TWh storage solution, but Edwards Sanborn is now planned to be over 3GWh storage in 2024.

this neatly sums it up. some are looking for power station capable storage locations. the grid has to evolve and become much more distributed. and storage along with it. i've got 50kWh parked on the drive doing sod all this weekend, and most of the working day when parked there,

And again, I'm all in favour of V2x, and it's incredibly frustrating that CCS cars are not yet capable, but a 50kWh battery is going to be pretty limited use running a heat-pump in typical British home during a winter cold snap with little wind.

The low hanging fruit for V2H is to avoid STOR usage. And several STOR sites are already switching to battery Systems.

It's a system rather than a single car running a single house. When we have 20 million EVs then their ability to fill holes in demand/supply will be significant. They only have to discharge at a few hundred watts each to cover a significant fraction of national demand and could run a typical house for several hours on a small fraction of it's available battery.

In practice the "extremists" on both ends of the debate are likely wrong. The 100% renewables advocates who suggest that it could be done cheaply are likely wrong, but the same people who think that it would need storage equal to weeks of grid demand are also likely wrong.

Dunkelflautes are most likely to be dealt with by having a proportion of the grid use nuclear, very wide interconnections and wind turbines out in the Atlantic, electricity storage equivalent to about 1 day of demand, thermal storage of approximately similar amounts, 10-20GW of open cycle GTs running on biofuels which operate about 1 week a year and energy intensive industries having a 1 week moveable annual shutdown.

[Evanivitch]

Talksteer said:

It's a system rather than a single car running a single house. When we have 20 million EVs then their ability to fill holes in demand/supply will be significant. They only have to discharge at a few hundred watts each to cover a significant fraction of national demand and could run a typical house for several hours on a small fraction of it's available battery.

Two massive holes. 20 million cars aren't got to be V2x connected. Even in multi-car driveway parked households you have to ask how many cars would be connected at any one time. Not unless there's a huge decrease in the cost of chargers (because who really needs to charge a 200+ mile car daily?). And also, in a future of electric heating and cooking you're going to need a more than a few hundred Wh per household to flatten the curves.

Talksteer said:

In practice the "extremists" on both ends of the debate are likely wrong. The 100% renewables advocates who suggest that it could be done cheaply are likely wrong, but the same people who think that it would need storage equal to weeks of grid demand are also likely wrong.

Weeks!? Even at today's average 20GW demand we'd need TWh storage to cover a few days of greatly reduced renewables.

Talksteer said:

Dunkelflautes are most likely to be dealt with by having a proportion of the grid use nuclear, very wide interconnections and wind turbines out in the Atlantic, electricity storage equivalent to about 1 day of demand, thermal storage of approximately similar amounts, 10-20GW of open cycle GTs running on biofuels which operate about 1 week a year and energy intensive industries having a 1 week moveable annual shutdown.

You're still talking about storage that's trending from 500GWh up to 1TWh even in your scenario.

[alangla]

The Telegraph is reporting that Ratcliffe is being warmed up today potentially to be online around 1430. Apparently there’s a problem with the Norwegian interconnect and it was noticeable on a drive up the M74 yesterday that the majority of wind turbines were either stopped or turning very slowly

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/12/ft...

Edit: just looked at Gridwatch. It’s reporting that at 0920 there was 230MW of coal, 2.56GW of wind and 13.9GW of CCGT against a demand of 30.8GW.

Edited by alangla on Monday 12th June 09:26

[Condi]

Yes, 1 Ratcliffe unit already on, the second being warmed for later.

Lots of CCGTs on outage at this time of year. Also lots of generation is unavailable due to the high temperatures, some of the air cooled CCGTs are well down in load, maybe only doing 80% of their usual output.

[alangla]

Condi said:

Yes, 1 Ratcliffe unit already on, the second being warmed for later.

Lots of CCGTs on outage at this time of year. Also lots of generation is unavailable due to the high temperatures, some of the air cooled CCGTs are well down in load, maybe only doing 80% of their usual output.

Are there water shortages as well? Hydro output looks kind of low and it’s been very dry in Scotland for a couple of weeks which I imagine would affect the Galloway stations, probably the one on the Clyde and maybe the Tummel ones.

[nebpor]

alangla said:

Are there water shortages as well? Hydro output looks kind of low and it’s been very dry in Scotland for a couple of weeks which I imagine would affect the Galloway stations, probably the one on the Clyde and maybe the Tummel ones.

What is the hydro station on the Clyde?

EDIT: Ignore, just asked Google. Didn't know our river had any hydro schemes!

[Condi]

alangla said:

Are there water shortages as well? Hydro output looks kind of low and it’s been very dry in Scotland for a couple of weeks which I imagine would affect the Galloway stations, probably the one on the Clyde and maybe the Tummel ones.

Yes, hydro looks very low at the moment, they'll be optimising for water, running less often trying to hit the higher price times. It's a big balancing act, they have to keep enough water flowing for the health of the river, but also try and hold some water back for electricity generation. During the peak demand this morning the fleet were only doing 450MW whereas you would normally expect closer to 6/700MW or so.

Hydro output isn't a big thing though really, even at full output the total non pumped storage is only about 1GW and they very rarely achieve that. At the moment, even on a "low wind day" wind is still doing 2.5GW, so dwarfs the output from hydro.

[alangla]

nebpor said:

alangla said:

Are there water shortages as well? Hydro output looks kind of low and it’s been very dry in Scotland for a couple of weeks which I imagine would affect the Galloway stations, probably the one on the Clyde and maybe the Tummel ones.

What is the hydro station on the Clyde?

EDIT: Ignore, just asked Google. Didn't know our river had any hydro schemes!

Small one just off the A72 at Kirkfieldbank, just as you start to climb up towards Lanark. Can’t remember its name off the top of my head.

EDIT: seems there’s 2 of them! I’m learning something this morning https://www.drax.com/uk/about-us/our-sites-and-bus...

Edited by alangla on Monday 12th June 10:35

[djc206]

Condi said:

Yes, 1 Ratcliffe unit already on, the second being warmed for later.

Lots of CCGTs on outage at this time of year. Also lots of generation is unavailable due to the high temperatures, some of the air cooled CCGTs are well down in load, maybe only doing 80% of their usual output.

Nuclear also really low? 3.35GW, last week we were consistently over 5GW no?

[Matthen]

djc206 said:

Condi said:

Yes, 1 Ratcliffe unit already on, the second being warmed for later.

Lots of CCGTs on outage at this time of year. Also lots of generation is unavailable due to the high temperatures, some of the air cooled CCGTs are well down in load, maybe only doing 80% of their usual output.

Nuclear also really low? 3.35GW, last week we were consistently over 5GW no?

EDF say Heysham has one on outage and one at Hartlepool running reduced load..

https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/power-station/dai...

[Condi]

Both Torness units out for outage as well, nothing unusual to be honest. We had the same kind of thing last summer.

[djc206]

Condi said:

Both Torness units out for outage as well, nothing unusual to be honest. We had the same kind of thing last summer.

I figured it must be planned just hadn’t noticed the fairly big in terms of % of nuclear capacity we can have done at any given moment.

[Condi]

One Torness was a trip last night, Heysham 27 tripped on Saturday. Keadby 2 tripped yesterday too, so the market is 2 units shorter than expected, hence the coal being called.

[wombleh]

That EDF daily status page looks a bit behind, last updated on the 9th.

[nebpor]

wombleh said:

That EDF daily status page looks a bit behind, last updated on the 9th.

It's now updated
https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/power-station/dai...

[dickymint]

Condi said:

One Torness was a trip last night, Heysham 27 tripped on Saturday. Keadby 2 tripped yesterday too, so the market is 2 units shorter than expected, hence the coal being called.

Thank goodness for coal

[JagLover]

alangla said:

The Telegraph is reporting that Ratcliffe is being warmed up today potentially to be online around 1430. Apparently there’s a problem with the Norwegian interconnect and it was noticeable on a drive up the M74 yesterday that the majority of wind turbines were either stopped or turning very slowly

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/12/ft...

Edit: just looked at Gridwatch. It’s reporting that at 0920 there was 230MW of coal, 2.56GW of wind and 13.9GW of CCGT against a demand of 30.8GW.

Not only wind but apparently solar panels are less efficient in high temperatures.

[djc206]

Condi said:

One Torness was a trip last night, Heysham 27 tripped on Saturday. Keadby 2 tripped yesterday too, so the market is 2 units shorter than expected, hence the coal being called.

Did we end up needing it?

Have we become a bit too dependent on our interconnectors? And are the Irish too dependent on us? I noticed when you said about everything going a bit Pete tong that we were still exporting to them.