Gas alert as demand and prices rise

snow hope · Post by **snow hope** » 07 Feb 2017, 16:22

woodburner wrote:A few years ago the cold weather went on until June!!!! We got through quite a lot of wood.

Can you recall what year that was?

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 07 Feb 2017, 18:29

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 09 Feb 2017, 02:13

I can remember that year as well because we had hardly any grass on the common for the cattle and all the early planting we did came to nought. What year?

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 09 Feb 2017, 08:04

It was likely spring of 2011 or 2012.

Post by **mikepepler** » 17 Feb 2017, 11:42

Update from Centrica on Rough yesterday:
- No injection of gas before 1 May 2017
- "CSL cannot offer injection services for the storage season 2017/18 at the present time."
- testing will continue, hoped to be complete 30 April.
- Analysis of test results should be complete by 30 June, at which point they will give a further update.

So basically it's out of action for injection until 1 May anyway, and probably until 1 July. After that, it will depend on what they find. I doubt it will ever go back to how it was...

Full details here: http://www.centrica-sl.co.uk/sites/defa ... _umm_0.pdf

Post by **mikepepler** » 29 Mar 2017, 10:40

I missed this due to being rather busy with work, but a couple of weeks ago Centrica got approval to reduce the minimum capacity for Rough to zero for the coming winter... http://www.reuters.com/article/centrica ... SL5N1GN2FU

New issues crop up almost daily on Centrica's REMIT page, Rough really does seem to be quite broken... http://www.centrica-sl.co.uk/regulation/remit

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 29 Mar 2017, 20:00

That could just be interesting.

Post by **adam2** » 12 Apr 2017, 05:14

Next winter could indeed be interesting.
LAST winter we still had significant gas stored in Rough, that could be, and was drawn upon. The fact that the gas used could not be replaced was of little relevance during the winter.
THIS coming winter we will be reliant on the very limited medium range storage and LNG storage.

This may be of little consequence if imports are readily available as needed, but we are very vulnerable to any disruption of imports.

I can not foresee significant new storage capacity being built due to the NIMBY factor.

Greater renewable electricity generation will help a bit. Every extra GWH of electricity from renewables is several GWH of natural gas not burnt and therefore remaining for later use.

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 12 Apr 2017, 06:15

adam2 wrote: Greater renewable electricity generation will help a bit. Every extra GWH of electricity from renewables is several GWH of natural gas not burnt and therefore remaining for later use.

I'm not following your math here (or maths as you Brits say, I have not figured out why you need an s on a process that is never singular.)
But back to my point. How can one GWH of renewable energy replace several GWH of natural gas generated power? A GWH is a GWH and 1 can only replace 1 unless you have some new maths to enlighten us with.

johnhemming2 · Post by **johnhemming2** » 12 Apr 2017, 07:08

Its the second law of thermodynamics which is not a recent innovation. The efficiency of conversion from gas to electricity is not 100%. It can be as high as 55%, however. Hence the word several is probably an exaggeration whereas "a couple" would not be inaccurate. Arguably efficiency can be as low as 33% where "several" would be fair enough.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 12 Apr 2017, 10:23

vtsnowedin wrote: I'm not following your math here (or maths as you Brits say, I have not figured out why you need an s on a process that is never singular.)

I'm no etymologist but at a guess, 'maths' is short for 'mathematics', whereas 'math' is a mistake.

johnhemming2 · Post by **johnhemming2** » 12 Apr 2017, 10:32

Language may be different in the USA, but the Laws of Physics are the same.

Post by **adam2** » 12 Apr 2017, 11:20

To produce a GWH of electricity from natural gas takes typically between about 2 and about 4 GWH of natural gas.
The best case would be the best and most modern CCGT plant running at optimum load for days at a time.
The worst case would be old or cheap OCGT plant run for less than an hour for a brief peak in demand.

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 12 Apr 2017, 11:37

adam2 wrote:To produce a GWH of electricity from natural gas takes typically between about 2 and about 4 GWH of natural gas.
The best case would be the best and most modern CCGT plant running at optimum load for days at a time.
The worst case would be old or cheap OCGT plant run for less than an hour for a brief peak in demand.

Fine but every use of natural gas has an efficiency factor so your saying that a GWH of gas varies in size with the device it is burned in?
Could you not consider that gas burned in the most efficient CCGT is the smallest volume of gas that constitutes a GWH of gas and that is the volume replaced by a GWH of renewables?

Post by **adam2** » 12 Apr 2017, 13:23

A GWH is a known amount of energy, regardless as to the type of energy.

When Natural gas is burnt to produce electricity there is considerable loss, therefore to produce a GWH of electricity, a lot more than a GWH of gas must be consumed.

A GWH of electricity produced from wind, hydro, or PV therefore saves the amount of natural gas that would otherwise have been burnt to produce the electricity. The amount of gas saved varies according to the efficiency of the gas power station, but will always be substantially more than 1 GWH.