From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
It was much worse than we thought!
From the Telegraph:
Experts say the events of June 23 prove the UK’s energy network is dangerously exposed
As they sat down to watch England’s World Cup showdown with Ghana, millions of football fans were oblivious to the crisis unfolding on Britain’s power grid.
It was June 23 and the country was sweltering under a heatwave, prompting many to crank up fans and air conditioners at home.
With large numbers also glued to their televisions late into the night, it meant demand on the electricity system was unusually high.
What the fans didn’t know, however, was that in a control room in Reading, engineers at the National Energy System Operator (Neso) were sweating to keep the show on the road.
At 17 seconds past 8pm, just an hour before kick-off, the crisis reached its nadir. Disaster was only averted after grid bosses begged their French counterparts for help over the phone.
The story is being seen by some experts as the clearest example yet that Britain’s power network is exposed.
“It’s a warning, and one we’re going to have to learn from,” says Ben Watts, an independent energy analyst. “I think everyone accepts we were very close to having a problem, but it didn’t quite get there.”
Neso also faces whistleblower allegations – which are being independently investigated – that bosses sought to cover up the evidence of instability on June 23.
The grid operator has insisted the system worked properly throughout. That is one possible telling, say experts. Another is that the day was only saved thanks to sheer luck and goodwill from the French.
So who is right? And what happened?
Full story here.
According to the Telegraph:
With 8pm approaching, Britain’s 3.3GW battery fleet was running low on power and the amount of available spare gas capacity had dwindled to just 80MW in the South.
At 7.50pm, the frequency dipped below normal operating levels again and at 8pm precisely it hit 49.656Hz – the lowest level observed this year.
It was enough to prompt Neso to plead for emergency help.
Just before 8pm, engineers in the British control room picked up the phone and called their counterparts at RTE, the French grid operator. An official market notice was then published at 8.01pm, but gave no detail.
Within minutes of Neso’s call, grid operators in Paris swung into action.
Between 7.55pm and 8.05pm, three French interconnectors changed direction and started funnelling nearly 2GW of power back into Britain.
With this, the grid’s frequency rapidly climbed back into the comfort zone and didn’t leave it again for the rest of the evening. France had saved the day.
Kathryn Porter commented:
“There was no reserve left,” she wrote on social media. “This is deeply worrying, because if we’d lost a major generator that evening it could have been game over particularly with so many grid boundaries running over capacity.
“It looks like Neso ran the grid past its limit that evening and was saved by two things: France delivering extra megawatts and nothing breaking during the critical evening period.”
Some would find it quietly ironic that England (which defeated Napoleon) is now asking France for energy. I simply find it unfortunate that environmentalist excesses are causing the West to decline. It is not inconceivable that France could eventually suffer a similar fate.
(Oh, by the way, my English friends: Master and Commander is among my all-time favorite films.)
England, defeated by the Vikings in 1066 also get electricity from Vikings. Times have changed.
I think you mean the Normans or the French.
England had just repelled a genuine Viking invasion at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in September 1066 (King Harold defeated the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada, often called the last great Viking king).
Only weeks later, Harold marched south and was defeated at Hastings by William of Normandy (AKA Conqueror), a ruler whose ancestors had been Vikings but who was, in language and culture, essentially French.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Conqueror#Background
Norsemen first began raiding in what became Normandy in the late 8th century. Permanent Scandinavian settlement occurred before 911, when Rollo, one of the Viking leaders, and King Charles the Simple of France reached an agreement ceding the county of Rouen to Rollo. The lands around Rouen became the core of the later duchy of Normandy. Normandy may have been used as a base when Scandinavian attacks on England were renewed at the end of the 10th century, which would have worsened relations between England and Normandy.
I understand that Charles the Simple ceded the lands to Rollo the Viking on the basis that Rollo stop raiding Paris and agreed to keep other Vikings from doing so. William the Conqueror was a descent of Rollo hence it was a Viking that defeated the Saxons in 1066 conquering England. Other descendents of Vikings are now supplying England with essential amounts of oil and electricity which England refuses to produce for itself with the readily available resources the country has at hand. An odd series of events.
Matilda of Flanders, William the Conqueror’s wife, was a direct descendant of Alfred the Great, thus strengthening William’s claim to the English throne. … And it would be odd if an odd series of events did not occur at some point over a thousand years.
Sad truth.
As Ronsard said :
“Le temps s’en va, le temps s’en va, ma dame
Las ! le temps, non, mais nous nous en allons”
Hey, spicka da English, willya? We Colonials donna spicka Frog and view anybody who does with deep suspicion. That is meant as humor, seriously. (I have been told, BTW, that my sense of humor sucks.)
You ‘ave plenty peeple in de souf dat speek frog.
T’u dat.
Time is gone, time is going away, my lady
Las! Time, no, but we’re going
Thank you.
England didn’t defeat Napoleon, England stopped existing as a sovereign nation in 1707. Gt. Britain defeated Boney.
Ah the folly of Renewables (Unreliables).
For any country to be self reliant…
With Traditional (Reliable, Dispatchable) Energy generation (Gas, Coal, Nuclear, Hydro) the grid needs 120% of Peak Demand Capacity available at a moments notice. Just in case a generator goes down or is taken out for maintenance or refueling in the case of Nuclear (2 weeks every 2 years)
.
In the case of Wind and Solar you need over 400% peak demand capacity installed renewables to meet 100% peak demand when the system is working at nominal capacity (which cans create a massive overcapacity production when conditions are optimal). Plus you need another 100% peak demand capacity (MWhs) of Reliable energy sources
.
If batteries are used to Back-up the grid you need an additional overcapacity of dedicated renewable sources providing TWhs of generation to recharge them as you can’t necessarily use the grid power if its being used to meet demand
.
So Traditional Generation (without Wind and Solar) require 120% of peak demand available while Renewable Generation requires greater than 400% peak demand PLUS the additional 100% reliable sources
.
That’s not to mention the further quantity of additional renewable generation 1 grid needs to have installed to be able to have capacity available to Share with A neighboring Grid or State or Country.
Hmm – 400% peak capacity plus another 100% backup. One for the price of five. Ouch!
It’s worse than that.
I assume your 400% over build is to counter the fact that wind is only available about 25% of the time.
The problem with wind is that when it isn’t blowing, it’s typically not blowing for the entire continent. Your over build could be 10,000% and you would still not be getting any power.
The same goes for solar, when the sun isn’t shinning, it isn’t shinning on the entire continent.
The only solution is to over build by 400% (at least), everywhere. Then build huge inter-connects to make sure that no matter what part of the planet the power is being generated at, the power can be transported to the rest of the planet that needs it.
Much worse than that in the near future. Britain has only five nuclear power reactors in operation. Four of them, Heysham 1 and 2, Hartlepool and Torness, must be shut down in 2030. During that time, only Hinkley Point C will be added. Beyond that, the only additional nuclear generation will be Sizewell C scheduled for completion by 2036.
Much of this generation disaster can be blamed on Tony Blair and his idiotic white paper on electricity generation, commiting Britain to massive reliance on wind energy.
An appropriately named paper. The consequences are bleeding the UK white.
and replace the millions of acres of wind turbines and solar panels every 20-30 years forever. Give it up, “ain’t hapnin”.
You need to replace Solar after every strong wind, Hurricane, Tornado and Hail Storm. Almost yearly in some places.
“The same goes for solar, when the sun isn’t shinning, it isn’t shinning on the entire continent”.
That’s a big statement. In my small country down in the Southern Hemisphere, the coast can be cloudy and raining, and 80 miles away it can be sunburn clear skies.
Just saying.
Waiting for Nick to show up and declare that the fact that the system did not collapse proves the system as designed works, and we are worrying about nothing.
Shhh. He’s like old MouldyWart. Say his name and he shows up.
Technically speaking, the system did work as designed. The interconnectors are part of the system. French cooperation is part of the system.
That does not prove anything about the robustness of the system design. Robust it IS NOT.
And such a technical appraisal does not intend to intentionally ignore just how effing lucky UK was that France had enough spare energy.
In this case,, the system literally approached the threshold of a tipping point.
No surprise. At this precise moment wind is supplying 1.5 GW to the UK grid!
When demand can get to 40+ GW and you are actively pushing for more demand EV’s, Heat Pumps etc, and most of all AI Data Centres which are due to consume many gigawatts of power in the near future,then you can see the disaster unfolding.
Nuclear is not coming over the hill any time soon and Gas generators are more likely to be closing than opening, coal is a non-starter. We have Russian ships mapping our under water cabling system and we have little to no defence against any attack on them.
Still, don’t worry we can triple our wind resource by 2050, if we are very lucky. What magic we will then be able to do with an extra 3 GW!
Alan Millar
Maybe coal needs to be back in the picture- it’s the radical greens that have pushed it off the table, time for it to recover its seat at the energy table. And get rid of Net Zero- it’s otherwise going to get worse for my English cousins.
Calling England’s offshore wind farm . . . calling Mr. Hornsea 2 . . . calling England’s offshore wind energy “investment” . . . please pick up the red emergency house phone in a jiffy.
If I were French rather than just living there I would quote De Gaulle.
“Non” and maybe “demerdez vous” and not supply any extra power to the “brexit” UK.
“You choose to leave we choose to ignore your bleating!”
England was very close to experiencing a debilitating black-out like Spain endured. The underlying problem is a direct result of the implementation of policies crafted by the Net Zero nut jobs.
re: “England was …”
Bet not. UNLESS the system operator is really, really incompetent.
Ever hear of ‘load shedding’ (a Google-able term)? Yeah, that … various distribution circuits (customers) are cut for a period of time to reduce load and avoid a TOTAL system collapse.
But the only reason for “Load Shedding” is an insufficient quantity of Domestic supply as is inherent with A 100% renewable supplied grid. If Capacity falls below a certain percentage of demand (available capacity within a small single digit percentage of demand) then Load Shedding can occur. It can’t happen if a system is designed with a grid capacity equal to 120% of peak demand in Reliable generation.
Another name for load shedding is rolling blackouts. The grid operator manually cuts off loads to keep the frequency and voltage within limits. You don’t wait for them to crash into a full system blackout.
Not the only reason. Load shedding happens as a result of a large generator dropping off the grid too, and that has nothing to do with renewable energy.
Is it not true that a large generator dropping off the grid creates an insufficient quantity of Domestic supply?
Renewables aren’t large generators that drop off the grid. Dropping off the grid is a failure condition.
Have been working in a chlorine factory that must reduce its normal 132 MW input to 32 MW within 15 minutes if there was a probability of a huge national peak in demand in The Netherlands. That is some form of “controlled load shedding”. In reality that was forcing the industry to build more capacity for the same output, to cover the loss in production, instead of installing more (reliable) power production…
I assume the interruptible service for the chlorine factory comes with a lower cost per MW-hr. So there would be savings that may compensate for the cost of the increase in installed capacity. FWIW, this has been standard practice with US utilities since before WW2.
More likely, they were told that if they wanted reliable energy, they would have to pay much more.
Its standard practice in Australia and almost certainly, everywhere.
Load shedding is the defence against cascading failure for the case where any sufficiently large generator drops and grid operators know how and where to drop that load ahead of time.
As Mr. Millar mentioned above, windmills are presently generating about 1.5 GW of electricity for the UK. The UK’s average electricity requirement is about 30GW. If wind is all there is, about 95% of the UK’s electricity users would have been “shed” by now. I believe those 95% would consider their situation a total collapse.
Its not that the system operator is totally incompetent, its just that in career terms a load shed blackout is as disastrous as a full country blackout.
So they threw the dice and mostly survived. And shredded the records of what had gone down in te control rooms
They have been told to ‘make renewables work’. Or at least hide the fact that they do not for a long as possible.
“Load shedding” is an alternative description of rolling blackouts.
re: “Between 7.55pm and 8.05pm, three French interconnectors changed direction and started funnelling nearly 2GW of power back into Britain.”
Um, ‘splain what the heck you were doing EXPORTING power to begin with?
My guess would be Peak Demand. Demand for power peaked between 7:55pm and 8:05pm and domestic supply was insufficient due to the transient nature of Renewables. Nature decided to Not Deliver Fuel to the renewable generation.
They forgot that when the sun goes down the PV power reduces. And before you say that is stupid then so is spending £57M on dimming the sun while at the same time promoting solar farms on productive farmland. Same dept.
https://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/sun-dimming-is-the-new-climate-colonialism-and-the-uk-is-funding-the-runway
Why were they exporting? My guess would be contractual obligations.
That is, they had a contract with the French to sell them electricity. A contract that was signed when the British still though wind and solar were reliable forms of power.
The result of the switch in direction was that the British not only had to pay for the electricity they were buying from the French, but also for the electricity that the French now had to buy from someone else.
And France had to get back up from Dutch coal fired plants to help supply the UK.
Seconds from proving there just might be a problem in design and energy policy focus. Exxon knew of course.
Nah, its all Trump’s fault.
😅🤣😂
You mean seconds away from a new PM.
You have to look beyond the ballot box to fix this. At some point you have to hold individuals responsible and administer serious punishment.
Not re-electing politicions is administering serious punishment. /sarc
Looks like someone in the control room knows who to phone when emergency threatens….we are very fortunate that call isn’t required by statute to be to elected politicians…
Control the language, control the ideas.
Renewables is a Trans-Reality Alarmist word.
Stop using it.
Using it only gives unearned, undeserved credibility to the alarmists.