Energy news in general

The_Groat_Counter

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82082160#Comment_82082160

I'm aware things were a bit tight on the evening of 23 June. It's the high-drama Telegraph headline I was commenting on… and the underlying tone of the accompanying article correlates with that.

In my mind the heatwaves along with the more frequent extreme weather, all of which was forecast as part of human-induced climate change, do rather underline the point that we need to change our ways - and that includes changing how we generate electricity.

QrizB

Would you prefer to read it in other media

Yes, I would. Per the Guardian:

Great Britain’s grid operator has brought in independent investigators to look into accusations that its staff were involved in a cover-up over the power system being at a greater risk of blackouts during the heatwave.

That's a very different story to the one you'd imagine from a "Seconds from disaster" headline.

the record over £9700/MWh in July 2022 paid on Belgian interconnect

That particular event wasn't a shortage of UK electricity, but a combination of grid constraints that meant the simplest way to get electricity into that corner of the grid was to buy it from the Continent.

Paying £9700/MWh for a few hundred MWh was the cheapest available option. We discussed it on this forum in depth at the time, if your memory needs refreshing.

It's misleading to try and pin it on renewables.

michaels

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82082361#Comment_82082361

Seems like the issue was that, possibly for political reasons, a CMN was not issued the day before this event.

QrizB

FWIW, there was an Octopus Saving Session on the 23rd of June so the Demand Response Service was being exercised. That suggests the supply constriction was foreseen.

It paid me 60p.

There were saving sessions most days that week, and the following day (the 24th) was the best-paying session of the year to date.

debitcardmayhem

Yep I got 2p (16pts) and whilst checking I won and declined Greggs hot drink again.

Scot_39

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82082253#Comment_82082253

8 houses for a year - really.

Did that analysis come from a grid control engineer (rhetorical) ?

Grid stability - live day in day out operational stability - depends largely on power balance real and reactive - not long term energy flow over a year.

Think about that analogy for a second - even without any engineering background - put 8 homes in context of say over 4m homes and businesses in the Greater London area alone. Do you really think its a meaningful comment ?

The significance of it happening then is we still had 4.1GW → 5.3 GW (if Drax coal was under CMS type standby contract - it was by one report later in year from Oct 22- Mar 23 iirc) - but as to whether Drax or Nottingham close enough regional grid link bottleneck wise ??). With those we may not have needed as Telegraph "begging" headline - bit extreme given buying GW of power day in day out on interconnects - 4 years ago - or for that matter last month - on interconnects.

Real energy security - if allowed to use British coal - as the Germans are doing with their coal and coal stations.

To put that sort of year analogy to death once and for all

Take the recent Spain / Portugal grid failure case - the final analysis concentrates on around a 1 min 30 sec window - when grid voltage rose - then spiked from 400kV over the 435kV limit and beyond as grid lost sync and collapsed. See e.g. pdf at

https://www.entsoe.eu/publications/blackout/28-april-2025-iberian-blackout/

On the last 27 seconds when another 400MW - (conincidentally yet another - mixed renewables - to add to the 208MW in previous 57 seconds) feed transformer pulled even more generation adding further to imbalances - tripping on primary side overvoltage (chicken or egg given secondary voltages drifting to 418kV - still within 435 max though - by then ?).

Although you can see the impact of that 400MW feed trip on Frequency it was small - maybe 0.05Hz ripple and still stayed clearly always above 49.9x Hz chart line.

Again another indication of the potential imbalances dragging last months UK grid frequency down.

it wasnt until grid went overvoltage that the frequency really collapsed below that level in about last 8 seconds.

By comparison the UK grid reportedly dropped to 49.66 Hz in June incident - almost 0.3Hz below the Spanish grid for most of that blackout analysis period.

One site suggests a range up to nearly 8% to induce a 0.34Hz shift in real power demand at low reactive powers - or about 2.3 GW around yesterdays 30-31GW at teatime.

The lesson of the report charts - as any grid transmission or regulation engineer will tell you is they are very dynamic - grid dynamics working in seconds, mins, not hours, not days not weeks and certainly not ("8 homes for a") years.

In old days we built Dinorwig with a fast 12 sec spin up to sync its 1.7GW - a surge response capacity - for a reason. Other more normal PSH worldwide can take 1.5-2 minutes.

Today I suspect we might have access to a fraction of the c7 GW of new battery farms that can respond in 0.1- 0.5 seconds.

[Battery farms replaced some diesel grid farms - could be iirc upto 2 minutes from cold to full power - more demand / grid bottleneck top up on at least one Scottish island ) than surge - in context of grid dynamics.]

And if so - well that just makes the June incident (or is it or was it as bad during the othef 2 NESO demand warning incidents) report arguably potentialky more worrying.

And to be fair - it doesnt help thatt Hinkley isnt on stream yet, and other plant undergoing largely statutory scheduled refueling - no doubt presumably scheduled for summers lower peak demands and higher at least daytime solar delivery. So c1.5-2 GW down on more normal 4.5-5GW. Which takes me back to the folly of the premature closure of UK coal generation. That could have been spun up in its place.

debitcardmayhem

The other side of buying that of course is they had to stop exporting too, which would not have been welcomed at the other side of the interconnectors.

QrizB

There are operational constraints on two nuclear reactors in Hungary and Romania due to low water levels in the Danube. Hungary's only plant is operating at less than half power, while the Romanian navy has been blasting the channel of the Danube to increase flow to their one (of two) remaining operational units.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/03/romania-blasts-divert-danube-water-nuclear-reactor-energy-crisis-hungary

Video of the blasting at the link.

Martyn1981

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82090501#Comment_82090501

And France had to shut 3 reactors down in early July due to low water levels and high water discharge temps, and another a few days ago. Plus 7 or 8 more operating at reduced power. Fingers crossed that future years won't get hotter. ;-)

molerat

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8rn42jp7d6o

Approximately 80p a year will be added to all energy bills to fund the discount scheme.

And in my dreams the reduction in restraint payments will offset that !