The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[Gary C]

rolando said:

Gary C said:

Yep.

Certainly didnt 'bring down the whole grid' as some doomsayers predict.

Only cut off about a million homes and buggered up the rail network. Never mind. Such a small consequence of relying on unreliables.

I do wonder how people possibly survived without power for 40 minutes !, my god, what a nightmare.


Yes, i know, it took longer for local supplies to be restored, but the grid was back up in 40 minutes.

[Evanivitch]

rolando said:

Gary C said:

Yep.

Certainly didnt 'bring down the whole grid' as some doomsayers predict.

Only cut off about a million homes and buggered up the rail network. Never mind. Such a small consequence of relying on ""gas turbines that have thousands of moving parts and are dependent on imported fuel from unstable regions"".

Fixed that for you.

[turbobloke]

Gary C said:

rolando said:

Gary C said:

Yep.

Certainly didnt 'bring down the whole grid' as some doomsayers predict.

Only cut off about a million homes and buggered up the rail network. Never mind. Such a small consequence of relying on unreliables.

I do wonder how people possibly survived without power for 40 minutes !, my god, what a nightmare.


Yes, i know, it took longer for local supplies to be restored, but the grid was back up in 40 minutes.

It's more than a mere inconvenience to people with tropical fish tanks and frozen food warming a degree in the freezer!!

One source at a local energy network said: “I’ve never heard of anything like this in 20 years.” Not difficult to work out why grid instability is worse than 20 years ago and it won't be better any time soon. Apparently the average UK small business loses £800 per minute in a blackout and for larger businesses it's tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds per minute. With 6 million SMEs and a 40 minute blackout that's a very large sum of money for small businesses alone. Then there are increased risks due to transport safety management issues..

https://www.ft.com/content/d0feb744-bac5-11e9-8a88...
https://www.ceotodaymagazine.com/2017/11/how-much-...

There's no need to take down the whole grid to cost a fortune and make people's lives a misery so dismissing anything less is specious.

Via policy we're looking to become experts at this sort of thing.

[rscott]

turbobloke said:

Gary C said:

rolando said:

Gary C said:

Yep.

Certainly didnt 'bring down the whole grid' as some doomsayers predict.

Only cut off about a million homes and buggered up the rail network. Never mind. Such a small consequence of relying on unreliables.

I do wonder how people possibly survived without power for 40 minutes !, my god, what a nightmare.


Yes, i know, it took longer for local supplies to be restored, but the grid was back up in 40 minutes.

It's more than a mere inconvenience to people with tropical fish tanks and frozen food warming a degree in the freezer!!

One source at a local energy network said: “I’ve never heard of anything like this in 20 years.” Not difficult to work out why grid instability is worse than 20 years ago and it won't be better any time soon. Apparently the average UK small business loses £800 per minute in a blackout and for larger businesses it's tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds per minute. With 6 million SMEs and a 40 minute blackout that's a very large sum of money for small businesses alone. Then there are increased risks due to transport safety management issues..

https://www.ft.com/content/d0feb744-bac5-11e9-8a88...
https://www.ceotodaymagazine.com/2017/11/how-much-...

There's no need to take down the whole grid to cost a fortune and make people's lives a misery so dismissing anything less is specious.

Via policy we're looking to become experts at this sort of thing.

Interesting. That would suggest we shouldn't be relying on gas power stations so much then.

[Evanivitch]

turbobloke said:

Apparently the average UK small business loses £800 per minute in a blackout and for larger businesses it's tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds per minute. With 6 million SMEs and a 40 minute blackout that's a very large sum of money for small businesses alone. Then there are increased risks due to transport safety management issues..

All the more reason for people to buy modular battery storage and implement a UPS system. Like a Tesla Powerwall with Gateway 2.

[ArmaghMan]

Evanivitch said:

rolando said:

Gary C said:

Yep.

Certainly didnt 'bring down the whole grid' as some doomsayers predict.

Only cut off about a million homes and buggered up the rail network. Never mind. Such a small consequence of relying on ""gas turbines that have thousands of moving parts and are dependent on imported fuel from unstable regions"".

Fixed that for you.

I know the Scots want F all to do with the little Englander Brexit bullst and want independence but still i think calling them unstable is a bit harsh.

[Evanivitch]

ArmaghMan said:

I know the Scots want F all to do with the little Englander Brexit bullst and want independence but still i think calling them unstable is a bit harsh.

I hadn't even thought of them! I was thinking of Haverfordwest!

[wombleh]

Anyone losing £800/minute from a power outage would buy a generator.

[Toltec]

turbobloke said:

It's more than a mere inconvenience to people with tropical fish tanks and frozen food warming a degree in the freezer!!

One source at a local energy network said: “I’ve never heard of anything like this in 20 years.” Not difficult to work out why grid instability is worse than 20 years ago and it won't be better any time soon. Apparently the average UK small business loses £800 per minute in a blackout and for larger businesses it's tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds per minute. With 6 million SMEs and a 40 minute blackout that's a very large sum of money for small businesses alone. Then there are increased risks due to transport safety management issues..

https://www.ft.com/content/d0feb744-bac5-11e9-8a88...
https://www.ceotodaymagazine.com/2017/11/how-much-...

There's no need to take down the whole grid to cost a fortune and make people's lives a misery so dismissing anything less is specious.

Via policy we're looking to become experts at this sort of thing.

£800 a minute, i.e. £48,000 an hour, sounds like an impressive small business if it can earn that much when running.

[anonymous-user]

wombleh said:

Anyone losing £800/minute from a power outage would buy a generator.

The average uk sme <> £800 / minute on any measure

[NRS]

Toltec said:

£800 a minute, i.e. £48,000 an hour, sounds like an impressive small business if it can earn that much when running.

Is that even a small business?!?!

[skwdenyer]

Toltec said:

£800 a minute, i.e. £48,000 an hour, sounds like an impressive small business if it can earn that much when running.

£48k ph is around £20m pa.

Average turnover of UK SMEs approx £3m pa.

Even assuming all sales stop and lost sales are not made up later, it is hard to arrive at a number on average more than about £25 per minute (based upon 8 hr days).

[eliot]

I think when i used to do the sums to justify DR kit for IT systems I would just take the annual wage bill and divide it down to one hour and state that’s the cost of having people sat around with nothing to do. It usually worked and could get enough allocated for something basic in place without needing to even calculate lost sales etc
(£20m t/o 120 staff, IT company)

[turbobloke]

This is hardly reassuring stuff from David Hunter, Energy Analyst at Schneider Electric.

-Gas and coal-fired power stations have more flexibility than renewables

-When one (gas/coal) drops off it's easier for another to pick up the slack

-Wind power has problems associated with shifts in supply and demand

Hunter again:

-National Grid is designing systems intended to cope with increasing amounts of renewable energy and associated problems but it's too early to say if it was a factor in Friday's power cuts

Ready. Fire. Miss. Aim.



Those systems should have been designed, tested and proven before our wise and selfless politicians were allowed to play ideological Noddy and Big Engine Ears with the nation's power supply, so we can thank them for the introduction of unresolved "associated problems".

[turbobloke]

Apparently when Google experienced a power cut in 2013 losses were £100,000 per minute.

ETA sources give the £800 figure as per hour.

https://www.dcresponse.co.uk/power-outage-cost-and...

Also whether per minute or per hour it's not valid to calculate costs to business as a proportion of routine turnover, there may well be costly damage to plant and other recovery costs which are not normally incurred.

Edited by turbobloke on Saturday 10th August 19:54

[StanleyT]

I'm not sure this was a serious question on a railway forum I frequent to help restore the power in the future EV / Windy grid.

"If Network Grid [sic] sent us all texts saying that the grid was about to go down, could we stop diving [sic] our EVs and hook them back to the grid at the nearest filling point / run outside and plug our home charger cars in".

I'd have four answers to that, please correct me if I am wrong:
a) Ha-ha!
b) Transmission losses from a car EV battery up to whatever kV to provide grid stabilisation, have you considered that. Ha-ha!
c) And this text came through a "digital system", one that needed "electricity". Ha-ha!
d) Assuming a-c come through OK (see what I did there). As the UK goes into brown / blackout apocalypse, and National Grid asked you nicely to park your Chelsea tractor in South Yobbington (twinned with the adjacent North Stabbington), making you wait for an hour to pick up Yurtain from his organic nursery, which has now closed due to a brown out, would you. No-ta!

(I'm sure I heard in the past and Gary C will probably know this as true or not, isn't network Rail the biggest single electricity consumer in the UK, and isn't part of the "baseload" given to them a priori?

Added stolen from other forum, only power blackouts in the UK to affect more people, were the early 1970s one due tot he miners strikes and cold. 2003 blackout only affected 500,000 cf yesterdays million+. So this in terms of grid failure was the second highest number of people affected anyway, then you had all these trains that did a funny shutdown and wouldn't restart when the juice was back.

A Ohm, musn't grumble.

Edited by StanleyT on Saturday 10th August 20:16

[Gandahar]

StanleyT said:

I'm not sure this was a serious question on a railway forum I frequent to help restore the power in the future EV / Windy grid.

Bring back steam !

[dickymint]

Gandahar said:

StanleyT said:

I'm not sure this was a serious question on a railway forum I frequent to help restore the power in the future EV / Windy grid.

Bring back steam !

Has it gone somewhere

[LongQ]

I wonder how this will pan out.

Windfarm operators taken to court over South Australian blackout


https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/au...

and a number of other sources for this news.

Untimely that parts of the UK should experience a somewhat similar (in effect if not cause) event just at the time this news breaks.

Maybe Elon will offer a giant battery to solve the problem.

[dickymint]

LongQ said:

I wonder how this will pan out.

Windfarm operators taken to court over South Australian blackout


https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/au...

and a number of other sources for this news.

Untimely that parts of the UK should experience a somewhat similar (in effect if not cause) event just at the time this news breaks.

Maybe Elon will offer a giant battery to solve the problem.

Nice to see you back