Energy news in general

debitcardmayhem

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82169312#Comment_82169312

For those who don't like Twitface/X here it is on NESO https://www.neso.energy/news/emergency-assistance-what-it-and-why-we-used-it-over-last-week

molerat

The main take aways from that are

The HV infrastructure is in desperate need of upgrading - NIMBYs take note, do you want the lights to go out ?

Wind (and solar) are not reliable generation sources. We need more storage, both battery and hydro - once again NIMBYs take note.

michaels

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82169328#Comment_82169328

Explained not explained….I can't believe total demand was that large compared to what we will have through the colder months so how will they be met? Over powering some transmission does also not sound a great solution, what if this results in an additional failure? Finally any call for emergency assistance makes it sound like we are in a situation where any additional generation or transmission unexpected failure would be difficult to manage?

Scot_39

Welcome to the reality of UKs failing renewables strategy over many years.

Made infinitely worse in last 2 - with Milibands rush to install more generation into an over saturated market - often generation that cannot be delivered, hence the looming £3.x bn pa curtailment bill NESO c25 value (current?)- and unsurprisingky market insisting he - i.e. us as consumers - pay an ever higher CfD rate and now for 20 not 15 yrs - to do so.

Uk is now less energy secure - more dependent on interconnects and gas pipes from EU/EA gas fields and stores on many of our winter days.

Expect these NESO events - as industry insiders have been warning for years - to become more regular.

Sea_Shell

I'm no expert, but having read that, it doesn't fill me with much confidence for the coming winter and high demand season.

This bit tickled me though...

Great Britain had not run out of electricity: generation was available elsewhere, but network constraints prevented enough power reaching London and the surrounding region.

Oh, that's ok then. 🤔🤷🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

It's like Tesco saying that bananas aren't out of stock (despite the empty shelves) because they have stock in shops 100s of miles away, just with no lorries to move them.

Scot_39

You have to remember they do have strategies to cope.

Although admittedly the crude one is just to cut local power on a rota basis iirc the recent strategy published - completely. It seldom really came to that for many domestic consumers and many smaller businesses in the past. (Unless you go right back to the 70s and the 3 day week)

I can still remember for instance when 10's MW would be taken off line at big industrial sites like Port Talbot and Llanwern - for several hours on some days - as part of grids wider load control strategy - to cover the sort of 4-7pm peak demand window - to make sure that the houses of SW - e.g nearby Cardiff and Newport remained powered.

Big sites got a discount iirc media articles at the time - for taking the load sharing hit to production.

London and the surrounding areas in SE have had several scares - remember the record £9700/MWh in 2022 - on interconnects - that was to keep the E London grid up.

And words like "emergency" are emotive - just often slightly larger or quite often much smaller but unplanned actions that go on at a lower level day in day out to balance our grids.

And there was IIRC a lower priced "emergency" buy - again on interconnects - this summer - as part of a series of grid events in June - again for London/SE.

Of course if you go back long enough - Inner London itself had a reasonable amount of their own generation capacity. Near 2GW of generation capacity in Inner London itself - largely fossil - even coal and oil fired. At one stage - a lifetime ago admittedly for many - Battersea at around 500MW peak was estimated to supply around 20% of London's power needs.