The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[Condi]

However much you bleat about it, we are not building more coal, and we probably never will build more coal.

So, rather than repeat the same pointless arguments, why not try to advance the discussion with some positive ideas and solutions? Compared to Germany we have very cheap power, and they use plenty of coal...

I dont agree with your figures, but will source the ones from respective government agencies later.

[dickymint]

Condi said:

V8 Fettler said:

As previously posted, the primary reason why the UK can't enjoy energy prices at a similar level to the US (i.e. 50% lower) is that we are afflicted by the drive towards renewable energy with the associated costs.

Thats simply not true. You've ignored everything else which makes up the cost of power, such as the environment, natural resources, weather patterns, consumer demands, cost of transportation etc. Also, parts of the US have a higher penetration of renewables than we do in the UK.

US prices are not 50% lower, average cost of US power is about $0.128/kwh (10.1p) vs UK cost of power 14.4p/kwh.



If we were sat on vast natural energy resources, and an ocean away from our nearest export customer, then our wholesale gas and oil costs would be lower, which would in turn lead to a lower cost of power, irrespective of any renewable subsidies.

Aren't we?

[LongQ]

Condi said:

However much you bleat about it, we are not building more coal, and we probably never will build more coal.

So, rather than repeat the same pointless arguments, why not try to advance the discussion with some positive ideas and solutions? Compared to Germany we have very cheap power, and they use plenty of coal...

I dont agree with your figures, but will source the ones from respective government agencies later.

Not hard coal anymore. - at least not from their mine.

Lignite though. And a lot of renewables.

So why are their electricity costs so much higher than ours?

Indeed does a comparison of rates in high cost Europe really matter if other places can regularly place energy costs and labour costs lower and attract more work?

If the proportion of disposable income available to the consumers in any market is constrained and energy prices are high (relative to other places) then both direct costs for energy at home and the indirect costs of the goods and services they would use are increased.

Cheaper goods and services can be offered from other, lower cost locations thus taking more potential income out of the economy and exporting it making higher costs "at home" even more problematic.

So you can fund the shortfall by increasing debt along the lines of Q E. For a while.

You can sell off assets and hope that some new entrepreneurial activities will create new "assets" to sell off in a steady flow to recover some of the spending power exported.

Or you can devalue your currency (or maybe your country) in order to attempt to compete in the low cost market.

Making energy cheaper may be more problematic. How would you do that when already importing most of the technology and fuel that energy production requires?

(I could conceive of becoming some sort of over capacity offload location for the rest of Europe and accepting that steady availability of adequate energy supplies may not be an option. Actually that might work quite well. Persuade everyone around you to over-install "free" renewables and then get them to pay you to take excess output knowing that they will have a lot of it most of the time but there may be periods when nothing is coming in. )


What other options are there?

[V8 Fettler]

LongQ said:

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What other options are there?

Competent management, including competent long-term planning, would be a good starting point. See issues arising during the short, cooler spell earlier this year ("Beast from the East")

[V8 Fettler]

Condi said:

However much you bleat about it, we are not building more coal, and we probably never will build more coal.

So, rather than repeat the same pointless arguments, why not try to advance the discussion with some positive ideas and solutions? Compared to Germany we have very cheap power, and they use plenty of coal...

I dont agree with your figures, but will source the ones from respective government agencies later.

Is criticism of the current UK model not permitted then? Particularly where it is demonstrably flawed? See the short, cooler spell earlier this year ("Beast from the East") for an indication of how flawed the current model is.

[Condi]

V8 Fettler said:

Is criticism of the current UK model not permitted then? Particularly where it is demonstrably flawed? See the short, cooler spell earlier this year ("Beast from the East") for an indication of how flawed the current model is.

Criticism of the current model is fine, but 200 pages of the same argument is pointless.

The policies around the future of coal power in the UK are based in the Paris Agreement which covers 190-something countries. Brexit or no Brexit, comments on PH or no comments on PH, the government is not going to change its policy, and the operators of UK coal stations all have plans to close them, depending on the outcome of the TEC and subsequent CapMec rounds. Whatever happens they will all be gone by 2025, and I suspect considerably sooner.

Surely at some point you have to see that rationed, reasoned and progressive discussion is good, repeating the same thing over and over and over is not, especially what you're arguing for has absolutely no hope of happening. As a result any actual discussion around things like the new nuclear sets, the rise of offshore wind, the emergence of batteries and increase in DSR are lost underneath a few posters ignoring 50 years of technology and progress and wanting a power system from the 1960s.

Edited by Condi on Monday 31st December 09:36

[alangla]

BBC article that may be of interest - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-467... - reads a bit like a regurgitated press release, but the key figure is that cutting energy consumption has done more to reduce UK fossil generation than all the renewables added since 2005. Whether this apparent improved energy efficiency takes account of heavy industry losses etc is unclear, but possibly some of the governments environmental subsidies should be directed at, e.g. replacing every street light with an LED and trying to get demand down that way?

[Otispunkmeyer]

Just had an email through at work today saying TRIAD action should be taken today.

Apparently TRIAD is a period that National Grid use to set energy prices based on consumption. We've been asked to turn a lot of stuff off at a certain time period today so that we minimize the impact of energy costs on the business. Why?

Well...

NG's demand forecasts have come back and said demand is above the highest of the season so far due to the cold weather and that lower than expected wind output is affecting this.

Chickens coming home to roost? Built all that wind capacity, shut down all those coal plants, not built those nukes and now NG don't have the abundance of supply needed when the chips are down. The choice is pay a lot more or interrupt your business by shutting kit off...quite hard when its a 24/7 operation with a lot of kit that you can't just shut down on a whim.

We need to get a grip. I understand the need to ween off coal. But replacing it with solar panels and wind turbines isn't the answer. Not for the time being. They're supplemental generation and great when they're working, but they will never be base load supply because they don't offer that security of supply.

And to those who say the wind is always blowing somewhere... just how many do you have to build before that actually becomes useful? I suspect its when there are more turbines than trees... is that effective use of money? resources? is it good value?

[PRTVR]

Is it cold?

[Condi]

Otispunkmeyer said:

Just had an email through at work today saying TRIAD action should be taken today.

Apparently TRIAD is a period that National Grid use to set energy prices based on consumption. We've been asked to turn a lot of stuff off at a certain time period today so that we minimize the impact of energy costs on the business. Why?

Partly true, but your linking TRIAD periods with wind generation is not really correct.

TRIAD periods are the 3 highest demand days of the year, separated by 10 clear days.

This is irrespective of how generation is supplied - you could conceivably have 12GW of wind on and 48GW of demand and it could still be a TRIAD period, however smaller wind sites are often embedded which does reduce transmission system demand somewhat.

Nobody knows which days are going to be TRIAD periods until afterwards, and with the huge increase in embedded thermal generation over recent years all the potentially tight days this year have ended up with the system actually out-turning long with NG having to turn down generation to balance the system.

Transmission demand over TRIAD periods is used to calculate the transmission usage costs which NG charge, and so it is in the interests of the utility companies to cut down demand and increase embedded generation (essentially the same thing). I dont know if these costs are passed onto the large business users, but I would expect so, and thats why your company has been asked to turn down demand this evening.

TRIAD periods have been around longer than the increase in wind, and are a reflection of demand, not supply. There is a big difference between a TRIAD period, and NG issuing a reserve scarcity warning, which is when NG are actually worried about the amount of generation available.

Edited by Condi on Thursday 3rd January 11:08

[gazapc]

Condi said:

Partly true, but your linking TRIAD periods with wind generation is not really correct.

TRIAD periods are the 3 highest demand days of the year, separated by 10 clear days.

This is irrespective of how generation is supplied - you could conceivably have 12GW of wind on and 48GW of demand and it could still be a TRIAD period, however smaller wind sites are often embedded which does reduce transmission system demand somewhat.

Nobody knows which days are going to be TRIAD periods until afterwards, and with the huge increase in embedded thermal generation over recent years all the potentially tight days this year have ended up with the system actually out-turning long with NG having to turn down generation to balance the system.

Transmission demand over TRIAD periods is used to calculate the transmission usage costs which NG charge, and so it is in the interests of the utility companies to cut down demand and increase embedded generation (essentially the same thing). I dont know if these costs are passed onto the large business users, but I would expect so, and thats why your company has been asked to turn down demand this evening.

Interestingly on two of the three Triad periods for 2017/18, wind was contributing > 6 GW. Hardly nothing as the critics would say.
It is also remarkable that the highest period of Triad demand for 2017/18 was more than 18% lower than the highest period from 10 years ago!

[Otispunkmeyer]

Condi said:

Otispunkmeyer said:

Just had an email through at work today saying TRIAD action should be taken today.

Apparently TRIAD is a period that National Grid use to set energy prices based on consumption. We've been asked to turn a lot of stuff off at a certain time period today so that we minimize the impact of energy costs on the business. Why?

Partly true, but your linking TRIAD periods with wind generation is not really correct.

TRIAD periods are the 3 highest demand days of the year, separated by 10 clear days.

This is irrespective of how generation is supplied - you could conceivably have 12GW of wind on and 48GW of demand and it could still be a TRIAD period, however smaller wind sites are often embedded which does reduce transmission system demand somewhat.

Nobody knows which days are going to be TRIAD periods until afterwards, and with the huge increase in embedded thermal generation over recent years all the potentially tight days this year have ended up with the system actually out-turning long with NG having to turn down generation to balance the system.

Transmission demand over TRIAD periods is used to calculate the transmission usage costs which NG charge, and so it is in the interests of the utility companies to cut down demand and increase embedded generation (essentially the same thing). I dont know if these costs are passed onto the large business users, but I would expect so, and thats why your company has been asked to turn down demand this evening.

TRIAD periods have been around longer than the increase in wind, and are a reflection of demand, not supply. There is a big difference between a TRIAD period, and NG issuing a reserve scarcity warning, which is when NG are actually worried about the amount of generation available.

Edited by Condi on Thursday 3rd January 11:08

I didn't link them. NG did. That was their explanation. I read it as higher than usual demand, lower than usual supply due to low wind output. I inferred from that that this means when they're working out what to charge, it'll be higher than normal for a given energy use than the previous time because the supply has dropped, the demand has risen. Hence we've been leaned on to turn stuff off a bit harder.

I realize these periods have happened for a lot of years and I realize we'd be getting lent on to turn stuff off regardless because it means lower energy cost for us. But it was the fact that they singled out Wind Output as a reason why it was more important to switch of this time, because presumably, costs would be increased more noticeably due to the less favorable supply/demand.

Have I got that wrong?

[Otispunkmeyer]

gazapc said:

Condi said:

Partly true, but your linking TRIAD periods with wind generation is not really correct.

TRIAD periods are the 3 highest demand days of the year, separated by 10 clear days.

This is irrespective of how generation is supplied - you could conceivably have 12GW of wind on and 48GW of demand and it could still be a TRIAD period, however smaller wind sites are often embedded which does reduce transmission system demand somewhat.

Nobody knows which days are going to be TRIAD periods until afterwards, and with the huge increase in embedded thermal generation over recent years all the potentially tight days this year have ended up with the system actually out-turning long with NG having to turn down generation to balance the system.

Transmission demand over TRIAD periods is used to calculate the transmission usage costs which NG charge, and so it is in the interests of the utility companies to cut down demand and increase embedded generation (essentially the same thing). I dont know if these costs are passed onto the large business users, but I would expect so, and thats why your company has been asked to turn down demand this evening.

Interestingly on two of the three Triad periods for 2017/18, wind was contributing > 6 GW. Hardly nothing as the critics would say.
It is also remarkable that the highest period of Triad demand for 2017/18 was more than 18% lower than the highest period from 10 years ago!

That fits with the poster (alangla) a few above you who mentioned that energy consumption is markedly down over the last decade either to efficiency gains or to heavy industry closure. Its apparently done more alone to reduce fossil usage than renewables have, but IMO those sorts of efficiency gains are just part of normal progress...they're going to happen anyway, might as well be doing other things on top.

[Condi]

Otispunkmeyer said:

I didn't link them. NG did. That was their explanation. I read it as higher than usual demand, lower than usual supply due to low wind output. I inferred from that that this means when they're working out what to charge, it'll be higher than normal for a given energy use than the previous time because the supply has dropped, the demand has risen. Hence we've been leaned on to turn stuff off a bit harder.

I realize these periods have happened for a lot of years and I realize we'd be getting lent on to turn stuff off regardless because it means lower energy cost for us. But it was the fact that they singled out Wind Output as a reason why it was more important to switch of this time, because presumably, costs would be increased more noticeably due to the less favorable supply/demand.

Have I got that wrong?

Ummm.... kinda, yes.

There are a few different things I think you're getting mixed up.

Wholesale prices are set by the market, and NG have no involvement in that. If there is low wind output prices will go up because energy suppliers will have to pay more to buy their expected demand, buying on more expensive generation like coal. Companies which have the ability to reduce their demand will often set prices at which they will turn down machinery, and so will be more reactive to wholesale prices.

TRIAD periods are NG saying that today might be one of the 3 highest demand days of the year, separated by 10 clear days. The demand on these days are used by NG to calculate the costs they charge to utility companies for using the system, which are likely passed back to large energy consumers. This has nothing to do with the actual costs of the electricity. If you had 10GW of wind on a TRIAD period the cost of the electricity would be quite low despite there being high demands.


Without seeing what NG have written I'm not sure how they've concluded that lower wind output is contributing to a TRIAD period, but with so many wind sites being embedded the output from those sites does reduce the transmission system demand.


Like most things involving National Grid, it seems unnecessarily complicated.

[Evanivitch]

alangla said:

BBC article that may be of interest - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-467... - reads a bit like a regurgitated press release, but the key figure is that cutting energy consumption has done more to reduce UK fossil generation than all the renewables added since 2005. Whether this apparent improved energy efficiency takes account of heavy industry losses etc is unclear, but possibly some of the governments environmental subsidies should be directed at, e.g. replacing every street light with an LED and trying to get demand down that way?

It's good news, but obviously there's two huge power demands on the horizon. Increased EV usage and increased electrical domestic heating (heat pumps). Both are necessary to reduce the UK dependency on foreign fuel sources.

[wc98]

Condi said:

Ummm.... kinda, yes.



TRIAD periods are NG saying that today might be one of the 3 highest demand days of the year, separated by 10 clear days. The demand on these days are used by NG to calculate the costs they charge to utility companies for using the system, which are likely passed back to large energy consumers. This has nothing to do with the actual costs of the electricity. If you had 10GW of wind on a TRIAD period the cost of the electricity would be quite low despite there being high demands.


Without seeing what NG have written I'm not sure how they've concluded that lower wind output is contributing to a TRIAD period, but with so many wind sites being embedded the output from those sites does reduce the transmission system demand.


Like most things involving National Grid, it seems unnecessarily complicated.

umm, kinda no. he is telling you what ng have told him, there is no need for you to see what they have written unless you don't believe him. re the bit in bold, that would appear to be the problem. they don't have 10gw of wind when it is needed during a not unexpected cold still period in winter.

[Condi]

wc98 said:

umm, kinda no. he is telling you what ng have told him, there is no need for you to see what they have written unless you don't believe him. re the bit in bold, that would appear to be the problem. they don't have 10gw of wind when it is needed during a not unexpected cold still period in winter.

Right.

But you do understand that TRIAD periods have fk all to do with the supply and everything to do with level of demand? And demand is not much affected by wind output?

[PRTVR]

Condi said:

wc98 said:

umm, kinda no. he is telling you what ng have told him, there is no need for you to see what they have written unless you don't believe him. re the bit in bold, that would appear to be the problem. they don't have 10gw of wind when it is needed during a not unexpected cold still period in winter.

Right.

But you do understand that TRIAD periods have fk all to do with the supply and everything to do with level of demand? And demand is not much affected by wind output?

But surely the supply side is relevant, if we lost two nuclear power stations, the total available would be less, does that not impact a TRIAD period ?

[Condi]

PRTVR said:

But surely the supply side is relevant, if we lost two nuclear power stations, the total available would be less, does that not impact a TRIAD period ?

Nope, TRIAD is simply the 3 highest demand days of the year, separated by 10 clear days.

The system margin is totally different, and can be very tight on a non-TRIAD period, or very ample during a TRIAD depending on wind output, station outages, station trips etc.

[Evanivitch]

Condi said:

Nope, TRIAD is simply the 3 highest demand days of the year, separated by 10 clear days.

The system margin is totally different, and can be very tight on a non-TRIAD period, or very ample during a TRIAD depending on wind output, station outages, station trips etc.

You have the patiences of a saint.