The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain
Discussion
Have I been away?
I've read some posts from the last few pages. Nothing much seems to have changed.
It is, however, interesting to note that the failure experienced on Friday came hours after the Wind Energy lobby hailed their apparent 'success' at providing 50% or more of UK electricity consumption, albeit in the summer in the holiday season so not exactly covering the demands of mid-winter.
Of course August, in my experience, is often a somewhat windy month.
And of course to proactively deflect (they hope) the likely connection between the failures and the disconnection of Hornsea 1 they point the finger at a gas fired generator in Bedfordshire/Cambridgeshire (depending on which reports one might have read) that I suspect most people have never heard of.
Here's a relatively balanced observation about the strategic overview concerned with such events and a high level description of what sort of resource planning might be required.(Picked at random as the first articIe came to).
https://theenergyst.com/national-grid-two-generato...
If I was to be cycnical I might wonder of this was actually a test of the STOR arrangements that ended up highlighting possible problems.
One might expect that, at the very least, major hospitals have on-site back-up generation arrangements to cover any sort of grid supply problems and it would seem that either some do not or that they have but they didn't work. There's nothing unusual some of these rarely used and hardly tested systems, often automatically started diesel generator sets, either not starting on demand or not responding with enough balancing frequency quickly enough. For local use that can often be resolved quite quickly.
On a national basis with automated, pre-programmed "save the grid" controls in place recovery obviously takes a bit longer based on Friday's experience.
It seems like they may have confirmed what has long been suspected.
So now all they need is the money to 'fix' it and an increase in the price of the service to pay for it. Plus interest.
I've read some posts from the last few pages. Nothing much seems to have changed.
It is, however, interesting to note that the failure experienced on Friday came hours after the Wind Energy lobby hailed their apparent 'success' at providing 50% or more of UK electricity consumption, albeit in the summer in the holiday season so not exactly covering the demands of mid-winter.
Of course August, in my experience, is often a somewhat windy month.
And of course to proactively deflect (they hope) the likely connection between the failures and the disconnection of Hornsea 1 they point the finger at a gas fired generator in Bedfordshire/Cambridgeshire (depending on which reports one might have read) that I suspect most people have never heard of.
Here's a relatively balanced observation about the strategic overview concerned with such events and a high level description of what sort of resource planning might be required.(Picked at random as the first articIe came to).
https://theenergyst.com/national-grid-two-generato...
If I was to be cycnical I might wonder of this was actually a test of the STOR arrangements that ended up highlighting possible problems.
One might expect that, at the very least, major hospitals have on-site back-up generation arrangements to cover any sort of grid supply problems and it would seem that either some do not or that they have but they didn't work. There's nothing unusual some of these rarely used and hardly tested systems, often automatically started diesel generator sets, either not starting on demand or not responding with enough balancing frequency quickly enough. For local use that can often be resolved quite quickly.
On a national basis with automated, pre-programmed "save the grid" controls in place recovery obviously takes a bit longer based on Friday's experience.
It seems like they may have confirmed what has long been suspected.
So now all they need is the money to 'fix' it and an increase in the price of the service to pay for it. Plus interest.
From the comments on WUWT in response to somebody quoting that Little Barford went off line first..................
"Not quite. The gas plant went to idle first, then Hornsea went off line, and the gas plant then went off line trying to ramp up.
It is a guess at this point, but from the noise just before the crash, from the wind industry, they were perhaps trying to set a record for wind production; hence the idling of the gas plant."
"Not quite. The gas plant went to idle first, then Hornsea went off line, and the gas plant then went off line trying to ramp up.
It is a guess at this point, but from the noise just before the crash, from the wind industry, they were perhaps trying to set a record for wind production; hence the idling of the gas plant."
dickymint said:
From the comments on WUWT in response to somebody quoting that Little Barford went off line first..................
"Not quite. The gas plant went to idle first, then Hornsea went off line, and the gas plant then went off line trying to ramp up.
It is a guess at this point, but from the noise just before the crash, from the wind industry, they were perhaps trying to set a record for wind production; hence the idling of the gas plant."
Not quite sure where you got that terminology of the gas plant "idling", theres no such thing in CCGT power plant operation, they do not idle waiting to be called on load. If they had a trip, for whatever reason, in the CCGT plant it would shutdown as it need to be investigated for RCA then once they have that they can move to the next phase of either repairing what ever had failed then ensure all is ok and safe to restart then make a decision to restart the plant. From a hot shutdown it would take at least 20 minutes to resynchronise, depending on the configuration of the HV switchgear around their area, due to the black-outs but as said earlier they tripped therefore they need to investigate which all takes time."Not quite. The gas plant went to idle first, then Hornsea went off line, and the gas plant then went off line trying to ramp up.
It is a guess at this point, but from the noise just before the crash, from the wind industry, they were perhaps trying to set a record for wind production; hence the idling of the gas plant."
LongQ said:
Have I been away?
I've read some posts from the last few pages. Nothing much seems to have changed.
It is, however, interesting to note that the failure experienced on Friday came hours after the Wind Energy lobby hailed their apparent 'success' at providing 50% or more of UK electricity consumption, albeit in the summer in the holiday season so not exactly covering the demands of mid-winter.
Of course August, in my experience, is often a somewhat windy month.
And of course to proactively deflect (they hope) the likely connection between the failures and the disconnection of Hornsea 1 they point the finger at a gas fired generator in Bedfordshire/Cambridgeshire (depending on which reports one might have read) that I suspect most people have never heard of.
Here's a relatively balanced observation about the strategic overview concerned with such events and a high level description of what sort of resource planning might be required.(Picked at random as the first articIe came to).
https://theenergyst.com/national-grid-two-generato...
Welcome back.I've read some posts from the last few pages. Nothing much seems to have changed.
It is, however, interesting to note that the failure experienced on Friday came hours after the Wind Energy lobby hailed their apparent 'success' at providing 50% or more of UK electricity consumption, albeit in the summer in the holiday season so not exactly covering the demands of mid-winter.
Of course August, in my experience, is often a somewhat windy month.
And of course to proactively deflect (they hope) the likely connection between the failures and the disconnection of Hornsea 1 they point the finger at a gas fired generator in Bedfordshire/Cambridgeshire (depending on which reports one might have read) that I suspect most people have never heard of.
Here's a relatively balanced observation about the strategic overview concerned with such events and a high level description of what sort of resource planning might be required.(Picked at random as the first articIe came to).
https://theenergyst.com/national-grid-two-generato...
Yes frequency drop, big variety. A frequency as little as 1% above or below the standard 50Hz risks damaging equipment and infrastructure.
Friday saw 48.9Hz according to reports "well below the accepted level", presumably, accepted level of variation, at 2.2%
When supply falls and demand remains high, the frequency drops, unfortunately politicians can't arrange for more wind, or instant sunshine after sunset (detonating a fusion bomb doesn't count), whereas conventional power is far more responsive, so the ability to cope is diminished significantly and risk increases with renewables penetration.
Sudden loss of power causes damage from corruption of data to mechanical faults because equipment stops unexpectedly while in operation. Mere frequency variation damages motors, compressors, pumps, and more besides.
National Grid comment on a BBC webpage 'lessons will be learned'
Edited by turbobloke on Sunday 11th August 09:16
turbobloke said:
National Grid comment on a BBC webpage 'lessons will be learned'
Indeed. And as we all know these 'lessons' are never 'learned' no matter what the subject.They cannot know for certain that whatever total or wide area failure settings they have come up with (and, presumably, deployed across the many points of critical connectivity with their various owners and management regimes) will work - until they have an opportunity to try it out.
From memory the entire power grid complete with the inbuilt stabilising factor of large rotating masses being involved in most of it, worked with a designed 'built in' margin of around 20% most of the time and a nominal target margin of about 10% in a worst case scenario for more or less predictable events. Things that would happen once in a while at very short notice.
Plus the over all design concept seems to have been to contain any major unpredictable problem (unpredictable in terms of when and where it might happen) to a relatively localised part of the grid. You could, within reason, choose where you wanted to site the generation plant.
These days the cost factors and location of suitable installation places dictate where the generation occurs and making that sort of infrastructure 'local' is less feasible for wide area use so one has to rely on new method and new technologies to make it happen.
In other words it is all more complex and due to costs together with the pride involved with making smart and complex technology "work", operational safety margins will be cut in the expectation that they will still be OK because modelling says they should work in all predicted scenarios.
When something outside the predicted scenarios occurs things get tricky quickly.
To be fair the recovery of the grid seems to have been quite rapid but, with the added complexity of the systems powered by the grid, proper recovery from the disruption to energy user's systems - especially anything computer driven that might have crashed, so pretty much everything these days - can only follow after the secure and stable supply has been re-established.
The ramifications of this event, as in the similar outage in South Australia, could get messy. We should probably anticipate fingers being pointed in all directions to deflect any potential blame or punishment. Especially likely from the politicians of course although I would guess that almost anyone involved with setting Energy Generation policies that might have been contributory to this even in some way will, by now, have moved on to some more lucrative job and will be please to be able to duck any serious or personal repercussions whatever the outcome.
LongQ said:
The ramifications of this event, as in the similar outage in South Australia, could get messy. We should probably anticipate fingers being pointed in all directions to deflect any potential blame or punishment. Especially likely from the politicians of course although I would guess that almost anyone involved with setting Energy Generation policies that might have been contributory to this even in some way will, by now, have moved on to some more lucrative job and will be please to be able to duck any serious or personal repercussions whatever the outcome.
Where do you point the finger? You cannot legislate to stop stations having technical problems, and while RWE and Orsted will be asked to explain why their stations tripped unexpectedly, if there are genuine reasons which couldn't have been predicted and which necessitated an automatic shutdown then you can't blame them. National Grid's procedures worked well to shed load in order to protect the transmission network. The end result would have been the same had it been 2 thermal sets which tripped in such quick succession, and so any comments on the amount of renewable generation being used is a bit of a red herring IMO. I suspect that no blame will ever be attributed, but procedures and systems will be changed as a result. Whether that means paying for inertia services, or whether that means how the load shedding changes will be seen over the next few months.
Condi said:
LongQ said:
The ramifications of this event, as in the similar outage in South Australia, could get messy. We should probably anticipate fingers being pointed in all directions to deflect any potential blame or punishment. Especially likely from the politicians of course although I would guess that almost anyone involved with setting Energy Generation policies that might have been contributory to this even in some way will, by now, have moved on to some more lucrative job and will be please to be able to duck any serious or personal repercussions whatever the outcome.
Where do you point the finger? You cannot legislate to stop stations having technical problems, and while RWE and Orsted will be asked to explain why their stations tripped unexpectedly, if there are genuine reasons which couldn't have been predicted and which necessitated an automatic shutdown then you can't blame them. National Grid's procedures worked well to shed load in order to protect the transmission network. The end result would have been the same had it been 2 thermal sets which tripped in such quick succession, and so any comments on the amount of renewable generation being used is a bit of a red herring IMO. I suspect that no blame will ever be attributed, but procedures and systems will be changed as a result. Whether that means paying for inertia services, or whether that means how the load shedding changes will be seen over the next few months.
seveb said:
It was explained in a quote further up why renewables don't provide the inertia that traditional power generators do. This is an important point. It can probably be negated but at considerable cost.
I know they don't, but thats a complete red herring IMO. Little Barford was doing 0.66GW and Hornsea about 1.2GW when they tripped. It could have been 2 gas stations which tripped, or an interconnector, or anything. The grid isn't designed to cope with a 6% unexpected drop in generation within 2 mins, irrespective of how that power is produced and what is spinning at the time. Buying inertia shouldn't cost that much, all it requires is a large rotating weight. It has been discussed before within the industry if NG are going to have to tender for inertia, at the time the answer was no. Maybe now the answer is yes. If we assume that both generators did have unexpected technical issues which caused them to trip for safety reasons, then what blame is there to apportion? Everyone wants a head to roll, but given everything worked as it should, who's head is on the block?? None.
Two 1 in 10,000 events happening at almost the same time.
Like when people win the jackpot on the lottery twice. You shouldn't even win the lottery once in your lifetime, but I think there was a couple in Sheffield (retired couple) who won, gave their money mostly away, then won again a few years later.
Two 1 in 10,000 events happening at almost the same time.
Like when people win the jackpot on the lottery twice. You shouldn't even win the lottery once in your lifetime, but I think there was a couple in Sheffield (retired couple) who won, gave their money mostly away, then won again a few years later.
Condi said:
LongQ said:
The ramifications of this event, as in the similar outage in South Australia, could get messy. We should probably anticipate fingers being pointed in all directions to deflect any potential blame or punishment. Especially likely from the politicians of course although I would guess that almost anyone involved with setting Energy Generation policies that might have been contributory to this even in some way will, by now, have moved on to some more lucrative job and will be please to be able to duck any serious or personal repercussions whatever the outcome.
Where do you point the finger? You cannot legislate to stop stations having technical problems, and while RWE and Orsted will be asked to explain why their stations tripped unexpectedly, if there are genuine reasons which couldn't have been predicted and which necessitated an automatic shutdown then you can't blame them. National Grid's procedures worked well to shed load in order to protect the transmission network. The end result would have been the same had it been 2 thermal sets which tripped in such quick succession, and so any comments on the amount of renewable generation being used is a bit of a red herring IMO. I suspect that no blame will ever be attributed, but procedures and systems will be changed as a result. Whether that means paying for inertia services, or whether that means how the load shedding changes will be seen over the next few months.
However where politicians are involved and have a legal option to impose "fines" so that they can be seen to be "doing something" it would be strange if a lot of fingers were not pointed. And if they have enough regulatory options open to them and discover they can "fine" everyone they probably will. In some way.
I read in a report somewhere that if adjudged to have failed in their legally accepted obligation to maintain supply frequency and therefore supplies National Grid can be "fined" up to 20% of turnover. Quite how that helps them make the investments that may be needed (additional to whatever it is they have planned to make everything good by, we are told, 2025) is unclear to me.
I will declare an interest here having inherited a tiny number of share some years ago and retained them for the small cash income they provided even whilst the value of the shares declined consistently over time.
What would be really interesting would be to see, say, BP or maybe Ineos making a bid for National Grid and take some significant control of the Electricity market. That might invoke some interesting responses.
Of maybe a foreign company line Shell or perhaps Exxon.
(It suddenly occurred to me that I have not checked NG's share ownership information so far. Perhaps the company is already owned by a non-uk majority of shareholders - or are there some special limitations in force? Where's Richard Branson when you need him?)
I'm surprised that Hornsea could trip 1.2 GW in a single event. That's a bigger single loss than Sizewell B, and any single interconnector pole. I don't know the connection for this plant, but most of the other large wind farms are connected in banks of maybe 200-500 MW, rather than one giant connection.
I was under the impression that Nat Grid only budget for 1.8 GW as the "infrequent infeed loss risk" - hence if Hornsea tripped 1.2 GW, and Little Barford was supplying 0.66GW - then the infeed loss exceeded the grid's operational basis.
Would be interesting to know if this risk had been correctly modelled.
I was under the impression that Nat Grid only budget for 1.8 GW as the "infrequent infeed loss risk" - hence if Hornsea tripped 1.2 GW, and Little Barford was supplying 0.66GW - then the infeed loss exceeded the grid's operational basis.
Would be interesting to know if this risk had been correctly modelled.
StanleyT said:
None.
Two 1 in 10,000 events happening at almost the same time.
Like when people win the jackpot on the lottery twice. You shouldn't even win the lottery once in your lifetime, but I think there was a couple in Sheffield (retired couple) who won, gave their money mostly away, then won again a few years later.
I've either worded the question badly or you didn't understand it. The first event (whichever it was) had already happened! Your maths are assuming nothing has happened yet? Two 1 in 10,000 events happening at almost the same time.
Like when people win the jackpot on the lottery twice. You shouldn't even win the lottery once in your lifetime, but I think there was a couple in Sheffield (retired couple) who won, gave their money mostly away, then won again a few years later.
PS. I've had a few to many Strongbows
WatchfulEye said:
I'm surprised that Hornsea could trip 1.2 GW in a single event. That's a bigger single loss than Sizewell B, and any single interconnector pole. I don't know the connection for this plant, but most of the other large wind farms are connected in banks of maybe 200-500 MW, rather than one giant connection.
I was under the impression that Nat Grid only budget for 1.8 GW as the "infrequent infeed loss risk" - hence if Hornsea tripped 1.2 GW, and Little Barford was supplying 0.66GW - then the infeed loss exceeded the grid's operational basis.
Would be interesting to know if this risk had been correctly modelled.
Hornsea still had 50 turbines yet to install last week, so anyone saying it tripped at 1.2GW can’t be that well informed. I was under the impression that Nat Grid only budget for 1.8 GW as the "infrequent infeed loss risk" - hence if Hornsea tripped 1.2 GW, and Little Barford was supplying 0.66GW - then the infeed loss exceeded the grid's operational basis.
Would be interesting to know if this risk had been correctly modelled.
It would be interesting to know a little more about the STOR arrangements.
Looking here it seems that there are no expectations of a need for Short Term Operational Reserve in the current season at the time the two generation sources fell off the grid last Friday.
https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=transmission/sto...
Now I appreciate that STOR is not really a frequency balancing mechanism and is mainly intended as a local support facility but one has to wonder whether the lack of potential activity at this time of year might lead to some decisions by the owners and operators of units contracted to STOR that might perhaps have had some influence over how events panned out.
For example many places that cannot, in their view, afford to lose all power (Hospitals being the most public and obvious examples) have their own emergency generator sets that are intended to auto switch on in the even of power loss. In recent computerised times these units are intended to cut in and prevent any failure of supply although this does not always succeed.
So to read reports that some large hospitals had supply failures is perhaps a little concerning both in itself (Why did the systems fail to work or, perhaps, why were there no systems installed?) and may also bring into question whether the STOR concept still covers all the needs that such a system may need to cover (or should now be expected to cover) for local area grid support.
For most of this month the demand on the Grid system has barely reached 50% of the apparently available capacity. (Hence the almost 50% renewables claim may be true but not as impressive as the media headlines would wish to make out.)
During the period of the outage the recorded Actual Demand dropped significantly as one might expect although for only about half an hour over all.
It looks like that amount of demand fall off was about equal to the generating capacity of either the gas or the wind facility at that time. However the actual demand appears to have been running slightly ahead of forecast demand for the day and that combination, presumably, was just enough to make the operational margins just a tad too marginal in the event of a double operational outage.
Having happened it will, presumably, be possible to estimate the wider knock on costs for such a failure based on the experiences of those businesses affected. If so that, at least, would be useful for planning and justifying budgets if it is felt that investment might be required for further and deeper attempts at preventing a repeat.
In the end it will all come down to how much we are prepared to pay for the full proof perpetual supply or what reduced (?) level of possible inconvenience is viable at a price that can be justified.
Looking here it seems that there are no expectations of a need for Short Term Operational Reserve in the current season at the time the two generation sources fell off the grid last Friday.
https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=transmission/sto...
Now I appreciate that STOR is not really a frequency balancing mechanism and is mainly intended as a local support facility but one has to wonder whether the lack of potential activity at this time of year might lead to some decisions by the owners and operators of units contracted to STOR that might perhaps have had some influence over how events panned out.
For example many places that cannot, in their view, afford to lose all power (Hospitals being the most public and obvious examples) have their own emergency generator sets that are intended to auto switch on in the even of power loss. In recent computerised times these units are intended to cut in and prevent any failure of supply although this does not always succeed.
So to read reports that some large hospitals had supply failures is perhaps a little concerning both in itself (Why did the systems fail to work or, perhaps, why were there no systems installed?) and may also bring into question whether the STOR concept still covers all the needs that such a system may need to cover (or should now be expected to cover) for local area grid support.
For most of this month the demand on the Grid system has barely reached 50% of the apparently available capacity. (Hence the almost 50% renewables claim may be true but not as impressive as the media headlines would wish to make out.)
During the period of the outage the recorded Actual Demand dropped significantly as one might expect although for only about half an hour over all.
It looks like that amount of demand fall off was about equal to the generating capacity of either the gas or the wind facility at that time. However the actual demand appears to have been running slightly ahead of forecast demand for the day and that combination, presumably, was just enough to make the operational margins just a tad too marginal in the event of a double operational outage.
Having happened it will, presumably, be possible to estimate the wider knock on costs for such a failure based on the experiences of those businesses affected. If so that, at least, would be useful for planning and justifying budgets if it is felt that investment might be required for further and deeper attempts at preventing a repeat.
In the end it will all come down to how much we are prepared to pay for the full proof perpetual supply or what reduced (?) level of possible inconvenience is viable at a price that can be justified.
I don’t know, but would be interested to know, what the underlying assumptions are in the design of the grid.
The US military does (or did) judge “readiness” by reference to the “2 war doctrine” - does the grid (and, if not, should the grid) operate on some sort of “2 failure doctrine” and, if so, how much more would it cost to meet that requirement?
The US military does (or did) judge “readiness” by reference to the “2 war doctrine” - does the grid (and, if not, should the grid) operate on some sort of “2 failure doctrine” and, if so, how much more would it cost to meet that requirement?
LongQ said:
So to read reports that some large hospitals had supply failures is perhaps a little concerning both in itself (Why did the systems fail to work or, perhaps, why were there no systems installed?) and may also bring into question whether the STOR concept still covers all the needs that such a system may need to cover (or should now be expected to cover) for local area grid support.
There are still some data centres which don't clean their diesel fuel which is stored for use by generators. I'd think the same is true for most generator owners including hospitals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_polishing - most will be aware of the requirement but some won't or won't want to pay the fee.seveb said:
LongQ said:
So to read reports that some large hospitals had supply failures is perhaps a little concerning both in itself (Why did the systems fail to work or, perhaps, why were there no systems installed?) and may also bring into question whether the STOR concept still covers all the needs that such a system may need to cover (or should now be expected to cover) for local area grid support.
There are still some data centres which don't clean their diesel fuel which is stored for use by generators. I'd think the same is true for most generator owners including hospitals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_polishing - most will be aware of the requirement but some won't or won't want to pay the fee.Given the nature of the different recipes produced for various fuels depending on the season a rarely used system is very likely to be somewhat challenged in terms of achieving anything vaguely close to an instant "on sudden demand" start up - which is what most of them are supposed to offer as soon as power supply anomalies are detected if they are to be fit for purpose.
LongQ said:
It occurred to me as I was considering the previous post that most emergency generators probably have very poor" prepare and test" plans (to save unnecessary CO2 emissions?) and that checking the fuel, other than the gauge that indicates whether there is anything in the tank(s), is probably an overhead too far.
Given the nature of the different recipes produced for various fuels depending on the season a rarely used system is very likely to be somewhat challenged in terms of achieving anything vaguely close to an instant "on sudden demand" start up - which is what most of them are supposed to offer as soon as power supply anomalies are detected if they are to be fit for purpose.
Our eight backup emergency diesel generators are given a three hour test run every 15 weeks at minimum 80% load, with a 12 hour run once a year.Given the nature of the different recipes produced for various fuels depending on the season a rarely used system is very likely to be somewhat challenged in terms of achieving anything vaguely close to an instant "on sudden demand" start up - which is what most of them are supposed to offer as soon as power supply anomalies are detected if they are to be fit for purpose.
We always fill our tanks with winter grade diesel.
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