Coming shortage of UK generating capacity?

[clv101]

Interconnector has caught fire

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... e/#comment

Starting to look like the opening scenes of a bad film.

I expect it'll be on well within a month though.

[clv101]

This is the loss of 2GW, which presumably will be made up by extra gas burn in coming weeks - could impact gas storage situation going into winter?

[BritDownUnder]

Mention was made in the article linked about the high price of gas. There did not seem to be too much panic though.

It would be interesting to know what happened with the interconnector and what caught fire.

[kenneal - lagger]

Tonight, nuclear power is very low at under 4 ..........

So much for Mr Reliable Nuclear as it is sold to us.

All political decisions in this country are usually made on a strictly economic basis so what might seem logical to the man in the street probably isn't the way a politician decides. Interconnectors are probably the cheapest way of providing power so no matter what the security arguments we will have interconnectors.

And gas prices have never risen much in the past so as the future will always be like the past, in economist think, we don't need expensive storage. The market will always provide a commodity at the right price so why store anything?

[adam2]

Nuclear has improved a bit since a wrote the above, still under 5 GW though.
I think that electricity imports from France were reduced BEFORE the fire, from looking at Gridwatch, whether physically restricted or simply too expensive I know not.

OCGT plant has been running regularly which suggests scarcity or very high prices.

[clv101]

The bad news: one of the pair of cables of the France-UK interconnector (1 GW) will be down until March 2022 due to fire. The good news: another pair of cables (1 GW, which was undergoing maintenance) may return to service in just 10 days. Power and gas markets selling off now

And the new 1GW HVDC link with Norway went live today!

[clv101]

Great post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFina ... gy_prices/

Maybe *this* is the winter when the much anticipated grid crunch finally happens.

One of the my first public presentations on 'energy' back in 2005 was on 'Britain's Energy Future'. Remarkably slides still available here: https://chrisvernon.co.uk/wp-content/up ... future.pdf

I was raising the alarm about the threats our electricity grid faced.

[BritDownUnder]

It is interesting to note the extension in the life of the nuclear plants from 2005 until now. I would guess that UK domestic gas production is a bit more than 20% of UK consumption but not much.

What about the Irish situation? Are they suffering too? I have not heard much news about this but according to their grid webpage they relied on gas for 55% of their generation in the last 24 hours.

Would there be any sense in looking at coal gasification (perhaps using wind generated hydrogen) to produce methane as a stop gap measure or too little too late?
Or could there be a fleet of small coal powered CHP power stations perhaps located in cities, built quickly?

Looks to me like there is a slow-motion train crash in progress if something is not done quickly or concessions made to Russia.

[adam2]

I cant support any new coal burning power stations.
What we need IMHO is a substantial increase in renewables so as to meet the majority of our needs, and LIMITED gas burning. Our limited gas storage and domestic production of natural gas would suffice for LIMITED electricity generation if the majority was from renewables.

[clv101]

...and demand reduction, particularly at peak hours.

[BritDownUnder]

The problem is it would need to be a pretty big demand reduction as when there is no wind and at night, e.g. a cold winter evening, you will need about 10GW of demand reduction to offset gas. Just when people are putting on the heating and dinner.

[Potemkin Villager]

Mention was made in the article linked about the high price of gas. There did not seem to be too much panic though.

It would be interesting to know what happened with the interconnector and what caught fire.

Transformer oil burning?

[kenneal - lagger]

I suspect that there are a lot of people in Ireland out looking for some dried peat and another bunch digging up new peat supplies.

My log supply is in a good position even if it is twenty odd tonnes of old pine. I do have some hardwood to mix in as well and I've got a few trees to plank which will give we some more hardwood offcuts to burn. Shame for the Irish that they don't have as many trees as we do.

[UndercoverElephant]

Great post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFina ... gy_prices/

has been deleted

[adam2]

"No chance the lights will go out this winter" says government spokesman.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58620167

A sure sign of impending doom

Or to be more accurate, he said "no chance of the lights going out DUE TO HIGH GAS PRICES this winter" My emphasis. In that he is probably correct in that high gas prices will greatly increase electricity prices but should not result in outages, indeed higher prices will limit consumption and arguably REDUCE the risk of power cuts.

That of course does not exclude the risks of power cuts caused by physical shortages of gas, nor the risks from lack of generating capacity.