Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Observa; Britain may face the embarrassment of being forced to ramp up coal power during Glasgow COP26, as a critical undersea cable failure has cut the ability of imported French nuclear power to help maintain the fantasy that Britain’s renewable heavy electricity grid is fit for purpose.
Power prices soar after key electricity cable between UK and France catches fire
British electricity prices jumped by 19 per cent to £475 per megawatt hour on Wednesday.
A key electricity cable between Britain and France has been shut down after a fire, sending wholesale prices soaring.
The fire will reduce imports from France until the end of March 2022, the National Grid has warned.
They said the blaze broke out on Wednesday while planned maintenance was taking place at the site near Ashford in Kent.
Prices of natural gas, which have already been at record highs in recent weeks, soared more than 18 per cent at the news.
British electricity prices meanwhile jumped by 19 per cent to £475 per megawatt hour on Wednesday.
The IFA1 interconnector had been used to import electricity, generated largely by nuclear power, from France.
…
Glenn Rickson, head of European power analysis at S&P Global Platts Analytics, said the fire “couldn’t come at a worse time for the UK”.
…
Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/business/energy-prices-france-uk-fire-b1921154.html
This new PR and energy supply disaster comes hot on the heels of recent claims that Britain withdrew hardline climate demands in the free trade agreement being negotiated with Australia.
What can I say BoJo – despite your harsh words and attempted bullying, Australia stands ready to deliver all the coal you need for Britain to stay warm and keep the lights on this winter.
Or you can do what China allegedly does, since they tried to punish Australia by blocking some of our imports – covertly buy Aussie coal through secondary markets, to avoid the embarrassment and loss of face of admitting you can’t live without our coal exports. I hear Singapore provides a discreet service and reasonable fees. If you pay a little extra, they might even relabel the coal shipments as “wood chips”.
BoJo, you better get your order in quickly. Goldman Sachs just forecast an imminent global coal supply crunch which could almost double already sky high current world prices.
On a serious note, my heart goes out to Britons who will be caught by skyrocketing energy prices. But there is still time to avert the worst of this crisis. Write to your MP and demand they produce a rational plan for maintaining reliable and affordable electricity supplies this winter.
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Funny how the UK only gets 23% of its RE nameplate output.
Soon any port can order a compact molten salt reactor barge for delivery in 2026.
The least impacting energy source on nature: https://businessdevelopmentinternational.biz/seaborg-co/
These are the unintended consequences of relying on outside and overseas energy supply lines.
Honestly, if a company director did this s/he would be sacked for gross negligence.
This is a serious misjudgment by UK government and Opposition parties, ALL of whom are bang onside for Net Zero.
Heads should roll but obviously won’t.
Certainly, all the Brits need to do is chin up and sit in the cold and dark.
Living without electricity and heat has after all, been their plan for sometime now.
Please hurry up with your disaster. We need some wake up calls in U.S. policy before it’s too late. It does get cold here, commutes are longer, and the Bernie bots are dumber than ever.
California will deliver, its just a matter of time.
I bet NO ONE ever suspected that relying on undersea cables for power was a weak link in the national power grid… It will also be a weak link if the UK is ever involved in another war.
Build power plants close to where they are mostly needed (factories), and use a reliable power generation technology (coal, gas, nuclear).
Oh, and keep the controls to your national power grid off of the Internet! (US still has to learn this)
How fortunate that at just the moment that gas is in short supply, a brand new gas pipeline into Europe opens up, Nordstream 2. Just in time!
But wait – it’s gas coming from … that place? Where those people live??
Umm – where else can we get gas from?
Given the way market conditions are shaping up, I’d say it’s going to have to come from your pants.
So that’s why your shirt is brown 😂
The “fire” on the electricity interconnector to France broke out on Wednesday 15 September 2021.
French President Macron on 16 October 2020 :
“Following the EU summit in Brussels on Friday, Mr Macron told French radio that if the UK does not allow French fishermen in its waters, the EU would have to block the UK’s energy supplies to the European market.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1349210/Brexit-news-Emmanuel-Macron-France-fisheries-energy-blockade-threat-EU-punishment-vn
Et, voila …
MG
Double-dip La Ninas could also mean we are in for an extra-cold winter.
…with declining north Atlantic temps
I recall part of the case for wind generation is that it would be “home grown”, improving energy security by sheltering the UK from volatile world market fuel prices.
Looks rather hollow today as we see local energy prices sky-rocketing due to world energy prices. Contribution to supply from wind generation sitting in the doldrums (pun intended) for days and weeks.
Here’s the first wave of impact.
WSJ
Surging Energy Prices Close U.K. Factories, Another Bottleneck in a World Full of ThemU.S. fertilizer company halts production at two British plants, citing high natural-gas costs
Soaring natural-gas prices in Britain have prompted U.S. fertilizer maker CF Industries Holdings Inc. to close two U.K. plants, in a sign that Europe’s energy crunch is affecting industry as the economy struggles with several other disruptions amid the recovery from the pandemic.
Businesses across Britain are complaining about high energy costs, with some steelmakers forced to halt production for periods during the day as the price of electricity rises almost seven times higher than at the same point last year. Power markets have also jumped in France, the Netherlands and Germany, ahead of anticipated higher demand in the winter.
On Wednesday, the price for Europe’s regional gas benchmark, the TTF month-ahead contract, closed at a record high of $24.2 per metric million British thermal units, according to S&P Global Platts.
A colder-than-average winter in Europe or Asia could send power prices spiking even higher and potentially prompt electricity blackouts in Europe, Goldman Sachs said in a research note this week.
RG
Following directly from that, in a sweet irony, there is now a shortage of … carbon dioxide! Yes – a shortage.
CO2 gas is used in the meat industry for humane slaughter and is a biproduct of fertiliser manufacturing – which is being curtailed due to high natural gas prices. So costly gas means no fertiliser means no CO2 (!) means no livestock slaughter for meat.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58600583
So…I’ve a great company supplying gas at a good price. It could be better but for the interconnector. Now, what’s the best thing could happen to it to make my business boom???
Thanks but we have plenty of good quality coal – underground
It just needs political will to do something about it
Repeating a prediction I’ve made before, a lucrative market is opening up in Europe and in the United States for mobile gas-fired aero-derivative power generation turbines for use as emergency peaker plants.
Rolls Royce and General Electric are both well-positioned to service this market.
Build these mobile peaker plants as packaged modular components which can be delivered by truck or by rail wherever they are needed and then be quickly assembled on an existing power generation & distribution plant site.
Electricity prices here in the UK are already going up without this disaster. Already the vultures from the energy companies have been knocking doors in our area trying to persuade people to switch supplier in the hope of getting a cheaper deal & thus avoiding the increase. Fortunately I was busy stripping the paint off my front door for repainting at the time. I saw the salesman pause at the end of my garden path after visiting the neighbour on one side, then he must have thought better of it & went to the neighbour on the other side. I wonder if the people he was visiting really understood why electricity prices were rising?
Because natural gas prices have risen substantially
Thanks totally unnecessary restrictions on drilling and production.
So the secret is out how BoJo planned to make the UK carbon-neutral–by importing nuclear-generated (zero CO2 emissions) electricity from France!
From about the 1950’s on, France had built many nuclear reactors, so that France gets about 75% of its electricity from nuclear power, with most of the rest from hydroelectric power plants in the Alps and Pyrenees, and a few percent from wind turbines. France probably leads the world in nuclear power generation per capita.
Over the years, the French have been very smart about nuclear power generation–they even made a deal to have the radioactive wastes buried in Germany!
Hey BoJo, why don’t you learn a lesson from (the late French President) Charles DeGaulle and build your own nuclear power plants?
Current UK policy is to build 17GW of new nuclear, including Hinkley under construction.
However nobody can finance Wylfa or Moorside plants, Sizewell is in doubt and the others would be built by the Chinese, with the obvious problems…
Greens do everything in the power, both legal and illegal, to make it expensive to build nuclear. Then they turn around and say that nuclear is a non-starter because it’s too expensive.
Great Marketing Ploy, Eric; in future, all Australian Coal will be labelled as ‘Black Wood Chips’ to avoid discrimination and boycotts.
Its an idea, feed it straight into Drax and pretend the smell is pine tar 😉
Looks like it stopped working for about a day (Wednesday into Thursday). It would be a bigger problem if it failed for several months like our TAS-VIC link did.
According to the article, it was supposed to be down until March 2022.
There is humor in this with politicians grasping for climate virtue except for the British people who will pay the price for representative failure.
Who pulled the plug on Britain?
“Write to your MP and demand they produce a rational plan for maintaining reliable and affordable electricity supplies this winter.” Eric, you are joking. 99%of our MPs are ignorant and useless.
‘Write to your MP and demand they produce a rational plan for maintaining reliable and affordable electricity supplies this winter.’
Ha ha ha: you obviously don’t live in the UK if you think that would achieve anything!
The North Sea Link came on line just in time.
Might have to use the coal-fired Flying Scotsman.
Knock on effects in EU industrials……..
Energy Crisis Worsens as Rally Hits Europe’s Industry Giants (yahoo.com)
Who cares? Locally sourced is better, they said.