Gas supply crunch

[kenneal - lagger]

............................So we may see Russia slowly turn down the gas flow to squeeze Germany and EU into backing off in military support for Ukraine.

We'll just have to see how well the US and other countries can up the rate of gas supply for next winter. It's a good job that summer is coming up for Europe and the gas requirement will be lower for a while.

A lot of countries will be looking to diversify their sources of fuel and in a few months it will be food shortages as well.

[Default0ptions]

Pretty much no mention of this in the papers today. Maybe we’re hoping it will all just go away if we pretend we don’t notice.

[adam2]

The gas panic may not have gone away, but is now reduced. Gas prices have fallen to about 165 pence a therm, or about twice the previous peak, and and only about 4 or 5 times the historical norm for the time of year.

"The system" will get used to these prices and the whole gas panic will be yesterdays news. Until next autumn when prices may well increase to the levels seen recently.

One might hope that TPTB will take action before the panic resumes next autumn, but I doubt that they will do much.
They could for example;

Increase gas stocks by requiring that storage facilities are kept well filled, our storage capacity is very limited, but two weeks supply is still better than one weeks.
Build another LNG storage tank or two.
Build more wind turbines, so as to reduce the amount of gas burnt in power stations.
PV capacity similarly.

It is limited what can be achieved in the short time available, but even 10% more gas storage would help, as would even an extra 5% increase in PV and wind capacity.
Next winter we will still be heavily reliant on imported natural gas, but even SLIGHTLY less reliance is still helpful.

[kenneal - lagger]

You forgot to add, Adam, that they could make a start at insulating our homes properly both new and existing.

[adam2]

Yes.

[kenneal - lagger]

I'm sorry to keep going on about insulating our houses but it is one of the most important things that we can do to ensure long term energy security and resilience for the people of the country.

[Stumuz2]

I'm sorry to keep going on about insulating our houses but it is one of the most important things that we can do to ensure long term energy security and resilience for the people of the country.

Thank you for drumming it in to us all these years. Really good ideas stand the test of time.

[BritDownUnder]

An interesting quote from the following article about heat pumps. Link.

Gas-fired space heating accounts for around 720 terawatt hours (TWh) of energy consumption each year in the UK. That’s more than double the UK’s annual electricity consumption of around 350TWh.

There's a lot to do. Not a lot of time to do it. Not a good track record of energy saving and efficiency. And Boris Johnson as PM. What could possibly go wrong?
I for one, am not holding my breath... but every little thing helps.

[Potemkin Villager]

I for one, am not holding my breath... but every little thing helps.

But even lots of little things only help so much.

This is not just an obsession of Ken's. There is an intentionally systematic and cynical policy bias against
widespread insulation of homes. I would guess in the UK it's origin is with the fuckwit bean counters in the
Treasury and the heating oil/gas lobby.

I remember here the Association of Irish Energy Agencies banging on about it 25 years ago
to totally no avail, completely ignored by government at the behest of the construction lobby
who succeeded in parking building regulations for the duration of the housing boom. The result
was tens of thousands of grotesquely expensive houses being built, or rather thrown together,
to embarrassingly poor standards now costing a fortune to heat.

Good news for the fuel merchants and the government tax take though!

[clv101]

I for one, am not holding my breath... but every little thing helps.

This is not just an obsession of Ken's. There is an intentionally systematic and cynical policy bias against
widespread insulation of homes. I would guess in the UK it's origin is with the fuckwit bean counters in the
Treasury and the heating oil/gas lobby.

Yep, so we built our own house, U-value ~0.11 in floor, walls and roof.

[BritDownUnder]

If the statistic I quoted is valid then twice as much energy is used by gas in heating houses (and everywhere else) as the total electricity produced in the UK and in the absence of much new generation then gas used for heating cannot be easily substituted for electric heating using electricity generated from non-gas sources.

There are a few things that can help and a lot small. I think the UK (and a lot of other places) needs to come up with a plan on what can be done before the end of the year. So you are looking at 8 months.

For insulation you can draught proof and put secondary glazing film on windows which might take a day.
Cavity wall or loft insulation might take a week.
Putting external cladding might take a month.
Ground source heat pumps might take a few months to install.
District heating schemes will probably take more than a year.

For electrical generation and reductions in uses of electricity.
Household solar systems might get installed in a day.
Storage heaters to use excess non-gas generation might also take a day.
Low energy light bulbs and streetlamps and other lighting could be changed in a day.
Battery systems might take a week.
Small mobile diesel power plants might be installed in a month.
You might get a small solar utility scale system installed in 8 months but probably not a wind farm.
Almost all power plants that are permanent will take more than a year to install.

Let's hope that someone in the Ministry of Energy is thinking about what to do other than a press release saying 'market forces' will suffice.

I think the UK will find itself in a bidding war for Norwegian gas and even electricity quite soon from other European countries come December. It seems like the Germans etc don't have the LNG import capacity so that bidding war may be less important for LNG prices.

[emordnilap]

This is a direct quote from my electricity supplier's newsletter:

Market Volatility

To put some perspective on how volatile the electricity market has become in the last twelve months and why all electricity suppliers are putting up their prices, have a look at the Day Ahead Market (DAM) price comparisons below;

Average (DAM) price for the month of Feb 2021 €56.05/MWh
Average (DAM) price for the month of Feb 2022 €175.20/MWh
Average (DAM) price for the early days in March 2022 €293.00/MWh

Challenging times for all of us

Indeed. My latest electricity bill is roughly 5 times what was considered normal not so long ago. 'Living in the future'? Hah.

[Default0ptions]

Beats me why we think we should be able to central heat our entire houses to t-shirt temperatures.

Sitting close to the real or gas fire in the main living room was normal when I was growing up. No other rooms were heated.

Or lighted.

We moved out to a larger house in Sunningdale, Berks in 1976 and spent the first winter there unheated. We children used to quarrel about who’s turn it was to have the cat down our sleeping bag as we watched tv in the afternoons.

1976 was a really good summer though. Hosepipe bans because of the drought so we used to siphon the bath water down to the veg patch.

We’ve grown spoilt as a country and now have some seriously unrealistic expectations.

[adam2]

Russian gas supplies to Poland are now cut off. Poland states that they can manage without russian gas, this is no doubt true, but will tend to drive gas prices higher.
The UK gets very little gas from russia, but prices will tend to rise as Poland now joins the many other countries bidding for gas from elsewhere.

[automaticearth2]

Russian gas supplies to Poland are now cut off. Poland states that they can manage without russian gas, this is no doubt true, but will tend to drive gas prices higher.
The UK gets very little gas from russia, but prices will tend to rise as Poland now joins the many other countries bidding for gas from elsewhere.

Won't Poland (and maybe Bulgaria) just turn to burning their reserves of coal? I was under the impression they had plenty but were being cajoled not to use them due to environmental reasons?