The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[Talksteer]

Condi said:

TGCOTF-dewey said:

You sure? I'm pretty sure the only modern western Smr to pass full design approval is Nuscale.

I don't think last have started building any.

Sort of, the only SMR under construction is the GE 300Mw boiling water design in Canada as far as I know. Last Energy have signed a lot of contracts though across Europe, with the first ones to be built in Poland although you're right, I don't think they've started yet.

BWRX-300 has just completed pre-licencing in Canada. That I think essentially agrees in principle that you can have a nuclear reactor on the site.

I don't think they expect to have a reactor on site before about 2030+/-2.

Last Energy releases incredible timescales. I suspect that some of that is attempting to conjure a nuclear version of "Elon Time". The general consensus in the industry is that licencing process takes X years and there is nothing you can do about it because, regulator.

I'm less sure about that, a lot of what makes start-ups fast is because they often just work as quick as possible with fairly loose project management. While some thing's are late this is more than compensated by the fact that you don't waste a lot of effort in the project management and you don't have tasks where the level of work expands to fit the deadline.

To a degree the same will be true at the regulator, while as the applicant you don't control their schedule if you feed them with material and field questions in very prompt manner you will likely get them to work in a similar manner by proxy.

[PRTVR]

National Grid paid £550 mwh to balance grid , dumping electricity into Europe
https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/05/31/uk-power...

Is this sustainable?
We pay for the electricity to be produced, then pay for it to be used.

[Condi]

PRTVR said:

National Grid paid £550 mwh to balance grid , dumping electricity into Europe
https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/05/31/uk-power...

Is this sustainable?
We pay for the electricity to be produced, then pay for it to be used.

It was a very interesting weekend, very high solar and low demand. Prices were negative across Europe and it did create some real headaches for TSOs. The UK DA flows were interesting, and I don't quite understand why they out-turned as they did, with full imports on all ICs except the Irish ones. Suspect the decoupling of auctions post Brexit may have something to do with it, or simply inefficient trading ahead of time?

That said, low prices incentivise demand response and energy storage, and NG are bringing forward different products to reduce the need for thermal/ spinning generation, such as the inertia contracts and synthetic inertia from batteries.

One thing which makes the industry so interesting is that every day is different, and you see new things all the time.

[Condi]

Talksteer said:

BWRX-300 has just completed pre-licencing in Canada. That I think essentially agrees in principle that you can have a nuclear reactor on the site.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Early-site-work-to-begin-for-Canadian-SMR

I'm sure I saw some pictures of ground works and such like commencing the other week? Article says they expect to start running services and infrastructure to the site "later this year" and the article is from March, so maybe it has already started, maybe not.

Anyway, 300MW isn't "small" in general terms, some of the AGR reactors will be doing close to that on a bad day. (I jest, but the AGRs are only 500-600MW, so not that much bigger when compared with the 1.5GW+ reactors these days.)

Edited by Condi on Thursday 1st June 09:19

[TGCOTF-dewey]

300mwe comes from the IAEA definition.

ETA. I'm not sure Talksteer read that IAEA guide

[tamore]

PRTVR said:

National Grid paid £550 mwh to balance grid , dumping electricity into Europe
https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/05/31/uk-power...

Is this sustainable?
We pay for the electricity to be produced, then pay for it to be used.

nope. we need to be able to store it.

[PRTVR]

tamore said:

PRTVR said:

National Grid paid £550 mwh to balance grid , dumping electricity into Europe
https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/05/31/uk-power...

Is this sustainable?
We pay for the electricity to be produced, then pay for it to be used.

nope. we need to be able to store it.

But surely the problem will not just go away ?
We are building more and more wind turbines that will suffer from the same problem, did nobody forsee what would happen and plan accordingly?
I have always maintained that electricity producers that created the problem should pay for the solution.

[PushedDover]

PRTVR said:

But surely the problem will not just go away ?
We are building more and more wind turbines that will suffer from the same problem, did nobody forsee what would happen and plan accordingly?
I have always maintained that electricity producers that created the problem should pay for the solution.

Problem?

The problem is cheap power?? Not that the surrounding infrastructure can’t cope?
Bless

[PRTVR]

PushedDover said:

PRTVR said:

But surely the problem will not just go away ?
We are building more and more wind turbines that will suffer from the same problem, did nobody forsee what would happen and plan accordingly?
I have always maintained that electricity producers that created the problem should pay for the solution.

Problem?

The problem is cheap power?? Not that the surrounding infrastructure can’t cope?
Bless

It's not an infrastructure problem, the problem is generation matching demand.

[djc206]

PRTVR said:

tamore said:

PRTVR said:

National Grid paid £550 mwh to balance grid , dumping electricity into Europe
https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/05/31/uk-power...

Is this sustainable?
We pay for the electricity to be produced, then pay for it to be used.

nope. we need to be able to store it.

But surely the problem will not just go away ?
We are building more and more wind turbines that will suffer from the same problem, did nobody forsee what would happen and plan accordingly?
I have always maintained that electricity producers that created the problem should pay for the solution.

The article specifically mentions solar as the issue, we’re nudging 10GW of solar at peak times. I guess the solution to that is charging domestic consumers if they don’t have storage and are dumping power into a grid that doesn’t need it?

[TGCOTF-dewey]

djc206 said:

The article specifically mentions solar as the issue, we’re nudging 10GW of solar at peak times. I guess the solution to that is charging domestic consumers if they don’t have storage and are dumping power into a grid that doesn’t need it?

Or make consumers aware that there is a surpless and offer temporary very low localised tariffs so that consumers put their washers on / charge their car / etc.

[thebraketester]

PRTVR said:

But surely the problem will not just go away ?
We are building more and more wind turbines that will suffer from the same problem, did nobody forsee what would happen and plan accordingly?
I have always maintained that electricity producers that created the problem should pay for the solution.

I read recently that we had built very few onshore wind turbines over the last year or so. Few as in 2? Or is that a misleading figure?

[djc206]

TGCOTF-dewey said:

djc206 said:

The article specifically mentions solar as the issue, we’re nudging 10GW of solar at peak times. I guess the solution to that is charging domestic consumers if they don’t have storage and are dumping power into a grid that doesn’t need it?

Or make consumers aware that there is a surpless and offer temporary very low localised tariffs so that consumers put their washers on / charge their car / etc.

If they had a day+1 projection and offered cheap car charging during the day I’d happily soak up someone else’s solar. Dynamic pricing has to be the way forward.

[Ivan stewart]

tamore said:

nope. we need to be able to store it.

The logical solution is make hydrogen with surplus power .

[djc206]

Ivan stewart said:

tamore said:

nope. we need to be able to store it.

The logical solution is make hydrogen with surplus power .

Battery storage is more efficient no?

[OutInTheShed]

djc206 said:

PRTVR said:

tamore said:

PRTVR said:

National Grid paid £550 mwh to balance grid , dumping electricity into Europe
https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/05/31/uk-power...

Is this sustainable?
We pay for the electricity to be produced, then pay for it to be used.

nope. we need to be able to store it.

But surely the problem will not just go away ?
We are building more and more wind turbines that will suffer from the same problem, did nobody forsee what would happen and plan accordingly?
I have always maintained that electricity producers that created the problem should pay for the solution.

The article specifically mentions solar as the issue, we’re nudging 10GW of solar at peak times. I guess the solution to that is charging domestic consumers if they don’t have storage and are dumping power into a grid that doesn’t need it?

Further down the article, it says the cost was £9.4 million.
That's about 14p per person the grid serves.
It's easy to lose a sense of perspective, the scale of the problem is huge and picking on one facet of a multi-country approach is probably not helpful.

Long term, optimal solutions are not going to appear overnight.

It's possible to control solar generation at source, but that requires a serious amount of comms and control.
A layer that's not built in to small grid-tie installations.
How many of those do we have now?

[Evanivitch]

TGCOTF-dewey said:

djc206 said:

The article specifically mentions solar as the issue, we’re nudging 10GW of solar at peak times. I guess the solution to that is charging domestic consumers if they don’t have storage and are dumping power into a grid that doesn’t need it?

Or make consumers aware that there is a surpless and offer temporary very low localised tariffs so that consumers put their washers on / charge their car / etc.

Octopus did free power hours before, and I'm sure they'll do them again. The savings sessions were open to anyone with a smart meter so they could easily support this. Maybe later in the summer, maybe next year. I'd certainly take advantage.

[eliot]

TGCOTF-dewey said:

djc206 said:

The article specifically mentions solar as the issue, we’re nudging 10GW of solar at peak times. I guess the solution to that is charging domestic consumers if they don’t have storage and are dumping power into a grid that doesn’t need it?

Or make consumers aware that there is a surpless and offer temporary very low localised tariffs so that consumers put their washers on / charge their car / etc.

And that tariff is called Octopus Agile

[TGCOTF-dewey]

How did octopus alert consumers to free / cheap power? I'm curious.

[Evanivitch]

TGCOTF-dewey said:

How did octopus alert consumers to free / cheap power? I'm curious.

Last year there was one Power Hour a month from at least March to November, and it was an email the day ahead saying the window.