The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain
Discussion
Condi said:
Jinx said:
The converging of prices has more to do with companies (and countries) maximising profits
Unless you're advocating some state control of prices and extraction then any company will sell to the best buyer, be that here or abroad. In a free market economy then the only difference between gas in one place and gas in another is the cost of transporting it from A to B. Condi said:
Unless you're advocating some state control of prices and extraction then any company will sell to the best buyer, be that here or abroad. In a free market economy then the only difference between gas in one place and gas in another is the cost of transporting it from A to B.
Global oil and gas are not a free markets. States do control prices (e.g. OPEC) by controlling supply - and by taxation. A country that does not have it's own resources to fall upon will always be at a disadvantage to the point where you are funding your enemies. alangla said:
I thought at the moment the issue (at least with spot & day-ahead prices) was the logistics of moving it from A to B rather than the cost, i.e. there's plenty of gas being added to the UK system via the LNG terminals etc, but there isn't the physical capacity to ship it across the channel meaning UK prices are lower than most of the continent and it's more practical to convert some of it into electricity in UK power stations before sending it to the continent.
Yes, but that is only a short to medium term issue. If it was a structural thing (eg, we started producing a lot more here), then someone would invest in a pipeline to carry it to Europe. Things in the energy world have been turned on their head over the last 12 months and the markets are still very much adjusting to that. Jinx said:
Global oil and gas are not a free markets. States do control prices (e.g. OPEC) by controlling supply - and by taxation. A country that does not have it's own resources to fall upon will always be at a disadvantage to the point where you are funding your enemies.
The UK is a free market economy, so irrespective of what other countries do, BP/Shell or whoever owns the gas is going to sell to the highest bidder. alangla said:
I thought at the moment the issue (at least with spot & day-ahead prices) was the logistics of moving it from A to B rather than the cost.
Certainly seems to be one of the big issues in the US O&G market, especially in certain states. Inadequate pipeline capacity to move natural gas and the wrong sorts of oil in the wrong locations without easy ways to move it which especially is screwing with refining. Of course this is all the fault of the evil fossil fuel companies and nothing to do with the consequences of political decisions...
Flooble said:
Has there been any movement on Germany turning its nuclear stations back on? Seems like there is still time to get the not-quite-decommissioned units running again before the winter, so the gas they do have can be used as gas rather than to make electricity.
As has been said regarding the UK plants that recently started their roll-down, getting the safety case once maintenance has moved to decommissioning and the fuel is very difficult. They've known that a squeeze was coming for years and did nothing; if EDF had been asked ~2 years ago to cost a life extension for HNB and HPB it would have been no worse than underwriting the cost of the fuel contract against the risk of a graphite failure causing an unplanned permanent shut-down. They chose to do nothing and are as culpable as the german govt for this.
hidetheelephants said:
They've known that a squeeze was coming for years and did nothing; if EDF had been asked ~2 years ago to cost a life extension for HNB and HPB it would have been no worse than underwriting the cost of the fuel contract against the risk of a graphite failure causing an unplanned permanent shut-down. They chose to do nothing and are as culpable as the german govt for this.
They are shutting because (and I don't know the exact details, Gary may know more);Either the ONR won't sign off the safety case for keeping them open.
Or the ONR won't sign off the safety case in a way which would make them economic to operate. (ie requiring frequent inspections).
What you also remember is that these things are approaching 50 years old and have already worked long after their original retirement dates. The graphite cracks were always going to be an unknown, and words like "underwriting a graphite failure causing an unplanned permanent shutdown" are the type of things which give regulators heart attacks
The potential costs of an "unplanned permanent shutdown" go far beyond just the fuel contract. I dare say there would be other costs, penalties for inadvertently reneging on a supply agreement but the main would be the fuel due to fabricators wanting a contract of X length. The point being HNB is shut and HPB will shut because EDF couldn't make enough money off them, not because they would have presented a danger to the public.
hidetheelephants said:
I dare say there would be other costs, penalties for inadvertently reneging on a supply agreement but the main would be the fuel due to fabricators wanting a contract of X length. The point being HNB is shut and HPB will shut because EDF couldn't make enough money off them, not because they would have presented a danger to the public.
They may regret the decision , if the problems with the French EDF reactors takes time to rectify, a surplus of capacity in the UK may just help to plug the gap.Condi said:
hidetheelephants said:
They've known that a squeeze was coming for years and did nothing; if EDF had been asked ~2 years ago to cost a life extension for HNB and HPB it would have been no worse than underwriting the cost of the fuel contract against the risk of a graphite failure causing an unplanned permanent shut-down. They chose to do nothing and are as culpable as the german govt for this.
They are shutting because (and I don't know the exact details, Gary may know more);Either the ONR won't sign off the safety case for keeping them open.
Or the ONR won't sign off the safety case in a way which would make them economic to operate. (ie requiring frequent inspections).
What you also remember is that these things are approaching 50 years old and have already worked long after their original retirement dates. The graphite cracks were always going to be an unknown, and words like "underwriting a graphite failure causing an unplanned permanent shutdown" are the type of things which give regulators heart attacks
The potential costs of an "unplanned permanent shutdown" go far beyond just the fuel contract. We need to make a case that matches the risk of operation against the risk to the 'share holder', so the cost of making the case needs to be ballanced against the risk of not making it.
We are doing graphite integrity modelling and installing diverse shutdown systems to enable safety cases to be met.
So, there must be an ultimate actual safe operational limit that we need to operate the right side of, based on inspections and modelling, then we need to cost is and order fuel to allow the station to run profitably.
The ONR will sign off any fully completed and acceptable safety case, its EDF that take the risk of the cost of being able to make one. If the gov would underwrite the risk of not being able to make one, and pay for the cost of any unused fuel and other operational costs if we weren't able to restart after an inspeciton, Im sure that would allow us to push the reactors to their actual safe operational envelope
So we have commercially set an end of generation date that encompasses all the risks.
I don't know if people have seen it, but https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hard-up-familie... is an article about National Grid offering discounts/rewards (the structure isn't specified) to households who opt in to a scheme encouraging them to minimise electrical consumption between 16:30 and 18:30 to reduce peak demand.
It'll be interesting to see how dynamic pricing goes down with the public, and as the timeframe for feedback from suppliers is given as a week suggests that the numbers for the coming winter are causing some concern in government.
It'll be interesting to see how dynamic pricing goes down with the public, and as the timeframe for feedback from suppliers is given as a week suggests that the numbers for the coming winter are causing some concern in government.
xeny said:
I don't know if people have seen it, but https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hard-up-familie... is an article about National Grid offering discounts/rewards (the structure isn't specified) to households who opt in to a scheme encouraging them to minimise electrical consumption between 16:30 and 18:30 to reduce peak demand.
It'll be interesting to see how dynamic pricing goes down with the public, and as the timeframe for feedback from suppliers is given as a week suggests that the numbers for the coming winter are causing some concern in government.
It's always going to be a combination of carrot and stuck.It'll be interesting to see how dynamic pricing goes down with the public, and as the timeframe for feedback from suppliers is given as a week suggests that the numbers for the coming winter are causing some concern in government.
Octopus have periods of 1 hour free electricity once a month, and have also paid people for any reduction in demand compared to their average use for 1 hour periods.
Then there's Agile tariffs which historically nearly always seen peak (35p/kWh) pricing in the evening, followed by significantly lower prices at night and during the day, including negative.
Also encouraging people to avoid immediately charging when they return home. Those on flat tariffs won't see any reason to delay charging. But octopus GO has heavily incentivised EV drivers to move charging to the night.
Evanivitch said:
Also encouraging people to avoid immediately charging when they return home. Those on flat tariffs won't see any reason to delay charging. But octopus GO has heavily incentivised EV drivers to move charging to the night.
Haven't the smart charger regulations just been updated to start to force this? Randomised start & stop delays/times, running off peak by default, using a demand response service... all overridable for now but that could change easily enough. Evanivitch said:
Flooble said:
Has there been any movement on Germany turning its nuclear stations back on? Seems like there is still time to get the not-quite-decommissioned units running again before the winter, so the gas they do have can be used as gas rather than to make electricity.
As has been said regarding the UK plants that recently started their roll-down, getting the safety case once maintenance has moved to decommissioning and the fuel is very difficult. The only early decommissioning activity that would write the plant off would be chemically scrubbing the primary circuit.
If Germany wanted to extend they lives of its recently shut down plants it could. It's not a technical matter if the government made it a national priority any administrative issue could be waived or overcome. The German plants weren't super unique, I'll eat my hat if it wasn't possible to find or modify existing fuel in the global supply chain. If you made it a vaccine type effort.
Why hasn't this happened?
1: The people in charge of making this happen are the anti nuclear ideologues who closed they plants in the first place.
2: It would mean admitting that they were wrong in the first place closing them.
3: Item 1 includes the people in the German nuclear industry and the bosses of the power companies.
4: It would involve some sort of expedited safety case which would be 99% as safe at a fraction of the time. The public might rightly ask why couldn't you do that before. See the various changes we are now getting to medical regulation post COVID.
Excuse the Daily Wail link, but National Grid are looking to pay consumers up to £6/kwh (£6000/MWh) for reducing load during peak times across winter. £6000/Mwh is an interesting figure, because it's what we call the "Value of Lost Load" or VoLL, and it's the theoretical maximum National Grid will pay power stations to produce energy, before turning consumers off. I say theoretical, because in practice they would probably pay more - the reputational and political risk of the lights going off far exceeds the cost of paying £7000/Mwh to power plants if required. So far we've never seen £6000/Mwh being paid, the most they've paid is £4k but that happened on multiple occasions last year, and with 2 few nuclear units and the interconnectors to France expected to be exporting most of the winter, I think National Grid are really worried about the amount they are going to have to pay to balance the network this year. It is all very well having a market in the Balancing Mechanism to drive down prices, but if you know that NG need 100% of the power stations in the country running, then you may as well hold out for the most you can get because they have few other options.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10959149/...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10959149/...
Condi said:
I think National Grid are really worried about the amount they are going to have to pay to balance the network this year.
National Grid is worried? So after years ofEverything is fine.
Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
the long expected 'Oh s
t' moment arrives like a massive surprise?pquinn said:
National Grid is worried? So after years of
Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
the long expected 'Oh st' moment arrives like a massive surprise?
Replacement of existing power stations by ones depending on the wind blowing and the sun shining was always going to be problematic. Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
the long expected 'Oh s
t' moment arrives like a massive surprise?Pity there is no way to turn off consumers on green tariffs first.
pquinn said:
the long expected 'Oh st' moment arrives like a massive surprise?
Well, if you go back 2 years then you would expect Dungerness, Severn Power, and Hunterstone (?) to be available, so there is about 4GW less than might have been planned for. Had France not had issues with their nukes then you might expect us to be receiving 4GW of imports too, so arguably when longer term plans were made they were looking at 8GW of additional supply. t' moment arrives like a massive surprise?irc said:
pquinn said:
National Grid is worried? So after years of
Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
the long expected 'Oh st' moment arrives like a massive surprise?
Replacement of existing power stations by ones depending on the wind blowing and the sun shining was always going to be problematic. Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
the long expected 'Oh s
t' moment arrives like a massive surprise?Pity there is no way to turn off consumers on green tariffs first.
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