France and 'leccy...

odaeio · Post by **odaeio** » 09 Dec 2013, 17:08

What's happened to France? I thought they had zillions of nukes and were selling 'leccy to all 'n sundry due to humungous over capacity. Indeed we usually suck a gig or so off them continuously, but right now, 5 pm, we are running balls to the wall, over 20 gigs on gas we can't afford to waste, and France is sucking 1.27 Gigawatts from US????? That's the second time in a week that I have seen that, things have changed hugely over the last year, everything seemed to just plod along for the last few years, but there seem to be some quite dramatic changes this winter.....

Is France under strain due to Germany shutting down a load of nuke plants? Can we really afford to supply others when we don't have excess ourselves?

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 09 Dec 2013, 17:20

I don't think it has much to do with what we can or cannot 'afford'. Since energy got privatised, the generators sell to the highest bidder. If the French are willing to buy electricity from a British gas power station then that's the way the energy flows. It's a Europe-wide market place.

I notice right now we're importing a GW from Holland while exporting a GW to France.

You'd think the Dutch and French would talk to each other.

odaeio · Post by **odaeio** » 09 Dec 2013, 18:30

Yeah Biff, I wondered about that to, maybe we buy cheap from Holland and sell expensive to France?

I get your point about privateers making a profit - doesn't matter where the power stations are situated, the 'leccy will go to the deepest pockets. Could end up with us in black-out while the generators supply everything they have to other countries. A similar thing happened in South Africa 2008/2010, except it was coal. China was paying top dollar for South African coal, but the S.A. gov'mint refused to pay the price. The private mines were therefore exporting all their good coal to China, and supplying Eskom with the dregs. The power stations could not burn the crap coal properly - not enough Kw's per kg - so S.A. went through a year or so of rolling blackouts. They fixed it overnight when the guv'mint gave the mines an ultimatum, give us the good coal at our price, or we just nationalize you and have the good coal anyway.....your choice. They got the coal at the right price.....

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 09 Dec 2013, 20:19

odaeio wrote: Could end up with us in black-out while the generators supply everything they have to other countries.

I don't think so. National Grid has a legal obligation to balance supply and demand so they (we) are just forced to pay whatever the price is. We would only have a blackout if there was a physical shortage with the interconnectors on maximum import. Anyway, the interconnectors can only manage a very small part of the demand/supply.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 09 Dec 2013, 20:34

I would say that there are too many streetlights, but those lamp-posts might come in handy some time...

There's a lot of electric heating in France: it took over fairly rapidly from wood. Now they want to (or have to?) start decommissioning their nukes, which were all built at about the same time so are all, surprise surprise, reaching the end of their life simultaneously. So my money's on a combo of nuke maintenance and cool weather putting pressure on France. My money's also on the Dutch having more sense. In any context, not just electricity

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 09 Dec 2013, 20:57

RenewableCandy wrote:I would say that there are too many streetlights,

Yes, and lots of other lights.

but those lamp-posts might come in handy some time...

Who did you have in mind?

Murf · Post by **Murf** » 10 Dec 2013, 12:01

Where do you get this information from?

Post by **adam2** » 10 Dec 2013, 12:25

Murf wrote:Where do you get this information from?

About street lights ?
Or about power flows to/from France ?

If the latter, then useful data on the grid may be found here
http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php

Shows from what our electricity is produced, and how much is being imported or exported at any time.

Murf · Post by **Murf** » 10 Dec 2013, 12:40

adam2 wrote: If the latter, then useful data on the grid may be found here
http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php

Shows from what our electricity is produced, and how much is being imported or exported at any time.

Thanks for the link. That is what I was referring to. Interesting stuff.

Tarrel · Post by **Tarrel** » 10 Dec 2013, 21:44

I'm no expert in the way grids work, but it does strike me that having the physical infrastructure to enable electricity flow between countries, and the market mechanisms to allow it to happen, does increase everyone's resilience. Drop in wind speed for a few days? Energy flows our way. French nuke on unexpected shut-down? Energy flows their way.

Of course, the above does rely on supply-capacity generally exceeding demand in each country. One has to be independent before you can afford to be inter-dependent.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 10 Dec 2013, 22:20

Exactly so.

Post by **adam2** » 11 Dec 2013, 08:21

biffvernon wrote:Exactly so.

Agree, international interconnection of grid systems is a good thing. As electricity can not be stored economicly on a grid scale, interconnection can achieve almost the same effect as storage.

Ample wind power production ? then in effect store it by reducing hydroelectric or CCGT production and use the wind power instead. This leaves more water behind the dam, or natural gas in the store for latter use.

Broken nuke ? then in effect replace the lost production by drawing on the "stored" natural gas or hydroelectric power.

It is however unwise to become unduly reliant on interconnectors, they are liable to breakdown, and the other country might not have power to spare.
The French interconnector has been used largely to import power from France, to the detriment of our balance of payments, rather than true 2 way operation.
It can be used to export power as has been the case very recently, but this is not typical use unfortunatly.

BritDownUnder · Post by **BritDownUnder** » 11 Dec 2013, 09:21

Any one know what happened to the "North Sea Grid" idea where there would be lots of HVDC cables across the North Sea. Supposedly to use the Norwegian hydro stations as a giant battery to smooth out the fluctuations in the wind generation in the UK, Denmark, Germany and Netherlands.

I see that the Germans and Dutch have DC cables to Norway but the UK seems to have missed the bus yet again. The same thing was supposed to happen with a cable between the UK and Iceland but I suppose there is an aluminium smelter built in Iceland by the Chinese that has sucked up all the surplus Icelandic power.

odaeio · Post by **odaeio** » 11 Dec 2013, 10:59

Quick question:

Are the pipes and ships carrying capacity for the U.K. big enough to supply us gas adequately?

Price doesn't seem to be a major factor for the U.K., since a couple of years ago we were paying £2.50 or so, (when things got a bit tight supply/storage wise), when everyone else was paying around 50p, just to try and get some gas through the inter-connectors. Last year we drew storage down to unprecedented "negative" levels - why?

It certainly isn't a "supply" constraint, USA has a gas "glut" from fracking, with associated dramatically low price levels, Russia has more than enough - (if Ukraine stops stealing it) - so why do we, (UK), consistently run down to scary, "will we make it, won't we make it" levels every winter?

Either the gas "glut" is a lie and world supply is indeed constrained, or we do not have enough infrastructure to import as fast as we need to - which is it?

Obviously storage is only used in order to buy "cheap" so we can "wait" a bit till prices come down before we buy again. If storage is also used because the import infra-structure can't cope with peak demand, then we would obviously build more storage - unless TPTB don't give a s**t whether we run out or not...........

Or are we doing our best to cut the "just in time" model to as fine a line as possible, irrespective of possible consequences?

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 11 Dec 2013, 11:47

BritDownUnder wrote:Any one know what happened to the "North Sea Grid" idea where there would be lots of HVDC cables across the North Sea. Supposedly to use the Norwegian hydro stations as a giant battery to smooth out the fluctuations in the wind generation in the UK, Denmark, Germany and Netherlands.

I see that the Germans and Dutch have DC cables to Norway but the UK seems to have missed the bus yet again. The same thing was supposed to happen with a cable between the UK and Iceland but I suppose there is an aluminium smelter built in Iceland by the Chinese that has sucked up all the surplus Icelandic power.

The Dutch and French interconnectors are DC. There's not much commercial incentive for the now private electricity industry to build an HVDC grid. It will happen piecemeal, the first part being when the Hornsey and then Dogger windfarms are constructed towards the end of the decade. (Assuming the economy still supports such things by then.)