Large scale UK power cuts

[XFool]

Yep, here in London we had a power cut for around 15 minutes around 5pm.

Interesting. Here in London, I didn't notice a thing.

[Urbandreamer]

with more renewables (great) that can fluctuate , we must have some rapid startup generation capacity , gas turbines perhaps.

We do. One failed yesterday!

And two years ago a nuclear plant went offline unexpectedly!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... astructure

Of course, we can as you say have gas turbine plants to replace them, and one could fail.

The solution is to pay for more standby plant, but who pays? Natioal grid? Does that mean their customers, share holders or at the end, the state?

Look it is a serious question. Denationalisation in the 80's was supposed to make the state not responsible for such things. So why 40 years later do we expect the state to be responsible?

[scotia]

Grid scale batteries, decentralised and installed locally (ie in old telephone exchanges) are the future. No reason why renewables cant make up most, if not all of the power supply. .

Have a look at a previous discussion https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=205057#p205057
Batteries may provide aid with short term power fluctuations, but they do not provide the long term storage which will be necessary if an all-renewable generation policy is contemplated, based on Wind Turbines.

[tjh290633]

The solution is to pay for more standby plant, but who pays? Natioal grid? Does that mean their customers, share holders or at the end, the state?

In my view it should be the responsibility of wind farm owners to have sufficient back-up power available, to meet their typical capacity. As it is, they are getting money for nothing, effectively, by expecting others to provide the back-up.

TJH

[JohnB]

A wind farm, by its nature, can only promise to supply so many MWh per year, not provide an instantaneous supply. It would be absurd to hold them to an instant supply guarantee.

[tjh290633]

A wind farm, by its nature, can only promise to supply so many MWh per year, not provide an instantaneous supply. It would be absurd to hold them to an instant supply guarantee.

The wind does not stop blowing instantly. They should be able to back up their supply to an agreed percent.

TJH

[JohnB]

No power supply contract would have a instant continuity of supply clause. It would cost the generator more to provide than the grid, so the grid would rather provide the cover itself. And the grid could have coped with one big generator going out, it was the timing of 2 outages that caused it problems.

[jackdaww]

side note on batteries.

i was fascinated to learn that the seaton tramway in devon is powered by clusters of trackside batteries .

120 volts i think .

perhaps could be done on a larger scale.

[Urbandreamer]

In my view it should be the responsibility of wind farm owners to have sufficient back-up power available, to meet their typical capacity. As it is, they are getting money for nothing, effectively, by expecting others to provide the back-up.

TJH

So, the wind farm owners are responsible if the grid that accepts their electricity fails? Are you sure that you have thought that through? After all, as you yourself have said, the wind doesn't instantly stop blowing. Indeed as I understand it other windfarms in the same area continued to generate.

Then again, why single out the windfarm? The power cut started when a gas fired generator ceased to supply the grid with the wind farm following shortly. Possibly it is gas generators that should have back-up? If so, what should they be?

As it happens the digital planet podcast had an expert on shortly befor this power cut (talking about different power cuts) and he was talking about a similar UK event that he was involved in. In that case one supply went down which lead to increased demands upon another. Which then caused the current limiters to trip.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csy66k

[tjh290633]

In my view it should be the responsibility of wind farm owners to have sufficient back-up power available, to meet their typical capacity. As it is, they are getting money for nothing, effectively, by expecting others to provide the back-up.

TJH

So, the wind farm owners are responsible if the grid that accepts their electricity fails? Are you sure that you have thought that through? After all, as you yourself have said, the wind doesn't instantly stop blowing. Indeed as I understand it other windfarms in the same area continued to generate.

Then again, why single out the windfarm? The power cut started when a gas fired generator ceased to supply the grid with the wind farm following shortly. Possibly it is gas generators that should have back-up? If so, what should they be?

As it happens the digital planet podcast had an expert on shortly befor this power cut (talking about different power cuts) and he was talking about a similar UK event that he was involved in. In that case one supply went down which lead to increased demands upon another. Which then caused the current limiters to trip.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csy66k

That is not what I said. I contend that wind farm operators should be obliged to provide back up generation for the times when they are unable to provide their contracted supply to the grid. Why should others have to provide this because of the intermittent nature of wind power?

TJH

[bungeejumper]

Is it me, or are we getting a bit bad-tempered with each other?

BJ

[simsqu]

Why should others have to provide this because of the intermittent nature of wind power?

because of the intermittent nature of wind power

[scotia]

Short term backup was traditionally provided by having Spinning Spare - e.g. oil or coal fired power stations running below their maximum (and most efficient) output under governor control. As the frequency dropped, so the governors opened the steam valves, and the power output increased. For a large outage this immediate response provided time to bring on fast-start up generation - e.g. gas turbines or hydro, if available. The current problem is that the traditional oil or coal fired power stations no longer exist. The primary fossil fueled generation is now carried out more efficiently by a two -stage process - a gas turbine generator plus a steam generator operating from the waste heat of the gas turbine. These power stations are not as flexible in their response to grid demand as were the traditional fossil fueled power stations but they are still the best we have. So its a question of guessing how big an outage is likely to take place - and try to plan a response on a reasonable basis - which will involve running a substantial fraction of generation in a sub-optimal fashion. Would a very large battery installation have helped? Probably yes.
However fluctuating Wind Generation is an entirely different problem - if we rely on it for a large fraction of our generation, then we will need a substantial long term backup for no-wind periods (e.g. a winter high sitting over the UK with little wind, and freezing conditions). We could store the Wind Power for possibly days on end, but if you do the sums you realise that even huge central battery installations are impractically small, and very large pumped storage systems are possibly the best solution. But these will need to be built in mountainous areas with large lochs (or lakes). SSE proposed such stations in the Great Glen, but have not proceeded. Again its cost that is the determining factor. E.G suppose we store the energy from the huge Hornsea Wind Farm in a pumped storage scheme in the Great Glen, then we need to transmit all of the Electricity most of the way up and back from the Midlands of England to the North of Scotland with significant transmission losses.

[Alaric]

However fluctuating Wind Generation is an entirely different problem - if we rely on it for a large fraction of our generation, then we will need a substantial long term backup for no-wind periods (e.g. a winter high sitting over the UK with little wind, and freezing conditions).

Isn't there also a problem that they shut down to avoid possible damage when there's too much wind? That may been the problem in the last couple of days.

[UncleEbenezer]

However fluctuating Wind Generation is an entirely different problem - if we rely on it for a large fraction of our generation, then we will need a substantial long term backup for no-wind periods (e.g. a winter high sitting over the UK with little wind, and freezing conditions).

Isn't there also a problem that they shut down to avoid possible damage when there's too much wind? That may been the problem in the last couple of days.

They seemed to be spinning nicely in Cornwall on Friday as we passed quite a few. And (for a change) we in West Devon didn't get a power cut.

What Blighty needs more than anything is to invest in Tidal energy - the entirely predictable renewable source with which our geography has richly endowed us. Sadly we're not seeing the kind of government support that has helped other energy sources (not just renewables) become mainstream and economically competitive.

[Slarti]

with more renewables (great) that can fluctuate , we must have some rapid startup generation capacity , gas turbines perhaps.

We do. One failed yesterday!

And two years ago a nuclear plant went offline unexpectedly!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... astructure

Of course, we can as you say have gas turbine plants to replace them, and one could fail.

The solution is to pay for more standby plant, but who pays? Natioal grid? Does that mean their customers, share holders or at the end, the state?

Look it is a serious question. Denationalisation in the 80's was supposed to make the state not responsible for such things. So why 40 years later do we expect the state to be responsible?

We have at least 2 water powered plants standby plants, one in North Wales, one in Southern Scotland, which are probably why, where fuses didn't trip out, the outages were quite short.

As to why we expect the sate to be responsible, perhaps privatisation of basic resources was not such a good idea after all?

Slarti

[Slarti]

side note on batteries.

i was fascinated to learn that the seaton tramway in devon is powered by clusters of trackside batteries .

120 volts i think .

perhaps could be done on a larger scale.

Trains https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... passengers

Slarti

[Slarti]

However fluctuating Wind Generation is an entirely different problem - if we rely on it for a large fraction of our generation, then we will need a substantial long term backup for no-wind periods (e.g. a winter high sitting over the UK with little wind, and freezing conditions).

Isn't there also a problem that they shut down to avoid possible damage when there's too much wind? That may been the problem in the last couple of days.

I'm sure that they said on the news that it was the switching place, where the power comes ashore, that tripped out. But details are few and far between.

Slarti

[gryffron]

Electric cars will help a lot as their batteries can be rigged to deliver power back to the grid.

Well they could. However that would require much more control and coordination than is currently anticipated for the grid. With them being left plugged in all day and all night, and users trusting that they will be fully charged when needed. Seems more likely to me that self driving taxis will reduce the number of vehicles dramatically.

Gryff

[SoBo65]

A few years ago, I looked into how the Grid is fed as part of a financing deal for an energy supplier. It is all quite sophisticated with suppliers committing to supply a certain amount at a certain day and time, if they don’t then the shortfall has to be made up (at a different price) and of course there are unscheduled spikes for various reasons. If a shortfall has to be made up, some sources are more instant than others, power stations, hydro plus connections to overseas there a number now. It was all quite fascinating. So I assume what happened here is the two suppliers did not supply and the short fall could not be made in time.