Should we start mining our own coal and use it in power stations until we can rely on renewable energy to supply all of our needs?

[JamesT]

Last night did their happen to be a short-lived burst of wind that's now subsided? Because according to the graph below, showing generation for the past day from the NG Live status site, wind power surged up overnight to almost 12GW, but then this morning plummeted back to 6GW with gas replacing it almost like-for-like. My guess is that wind power potential has maintained roughly the higher level, but its in the wrong places for meeting demand:

National Grid: Live

Shows the live status of Great Britain’s electric power transmission network

grid.iamkate.com

View attachment 120322

There were some thunderstorms overnight, wind related to that?
Looking at the current forecast on the BBC website, there's wind off to the South-West of the UK, and also to the North-East, but not a great deal for most of the UK.

 

[Bald Rick]

Last night did there happen to be a short-lived burst of wind that's now subsided? Because according to the graph below, showing generation for the past day from the NG Live status site, wind power surged up overnight to almost 12GW, but then this morning plummeted back to 6GW with gas replacing it almost like-for-like. My guess is that wind power potential has maintained roughly the higher level, but its in the wrong places for meeting demand:

National Grid: Live

Shows the live status of Great Britain’s electric power transmission network

grid.iamkate.com

View attachment 120322

Yes there was. Wind will be picking up from tonight through the week though.

 

[najaB]

My guess is that wind power potential has maintained roughly the higher level, but its in the wrong places for meeting demand

Oh, there's no doubt that there is a transmission problem - wind farms in Scotland regularly have to curtail output while, at the same time, gas is being burned in the south of England.

 

[Dai Corner]

Oh, there's no doubt that there is a transmission problem - wind farms in Scotland regularly have to curtail output while, at the same time, gas is being burned in the south of England.

Which begs the question 'why build more capacity than you can use?'

 

[tomuk]

Which begs the question 'why build more capacity than you can use?'

Well its intermittent for a start. The more there is the higher the average output will be.

There is also storage being built/planned. There is pumped storage being built by Scottish power now.

There are more interconnectors being built, there is already one in the Irish sea and another is coming down the east coast in the north sea to Drax.

 

[najaB]

Which begs the question 'why build more capacity than you can use?'

To expand on @tomuk's point, because it's cheaper/better overall to over-provision because you get to 100% sooner. As an example, I installed a solar power system for my parents which has a 800VA inverter but 2.2kW worth of solar panels. Yes, during the peak there is power 'going to waste' but they get up to 800W from about 9:30am through until around 4:30pm, had I installed half the panels they would only hit peak for around an hour or so mid-day. Adding those three extra panels only added about 20% to the total system cost. So money well spent!

In addition to that there are new transmission lines in the planning/construction phase. They would have happened already, but for objections about pylons spoiling views.

 

[Bald Rick]

Bumping this.

Interesting day in the power market today. Windy, sunny, temperate day, not just here but also in Northern Europe. Consequently the current wholesale market price (at 1400) for electricity is minus £68 per MWh. Take that Vladimir! All those battery storage facilities will be lapping it up. I also expect quite a bit of wind is switched out.

Need a few more days like this!

 

[DoubleLemon]

Very expensive. Environmentally difficult. Predictable, but (obviously) very peaky, and with the peaks moving through the day it is often at times it’s difficult to deal with.

But if there is enough of it, it would be very reliable? I'm genuinely curious as I know nothing about it.

 

[najaB]

But if there is enough of it, it would be very reliable?

Yes, very reliable. Unlike wind or solar, tidal power is pretty much invariant day to day and throughout the year.

 

[Domh245]

Yes, very reliable. Unlike wind or solar, tidal power is pretty much invariant day to day and throughout the year.

Surely that depends? If you go for system depending on tides (rather than currents) then surely the changing volume of water moving (spring vs neap tides, etc) will affect both peak power and total energy generated unless the system is designed to generate 100% at the least energetic tide and then bypass the remainder

And that's before accounting for the period during which peak power is achieved will shift daily (less of an issue with storage, but still) - all forecastable and predictable long in advance, but still variable!

 

[najaB]

If you go for system depending on tides (rather than currents) then surely the changing volume of water moving (spring vs neap tides, etc) will affect both peak power and total energy generated unless the system is designed to generate 100% at the least energetic tide and then bypass the remainder

Yes, sorry. I should have said "In comparison to wind and solar..." rather than "Unlike..." - there is variance but it's on the scale of weeks/months rather than hours. Meteorological considerations can also cause some variance (e.g. storm surge), but in the margins.

 

[brad465]

Bumping this.

Interesting day in the power market today. Windy, sunny, temperate day, not just here but also in Northern Europe. Consequently the current wholesale market price (at 1400) for electricity is minus £68 per MWh. Take that Vladimir! All those battery storage facilities will be lapping it up. I also expect quite a bit of wind is switched out.

Need a few more days like this!

Bar the odd transient lull, the next week pretty much is forecast to be windy at least for us.

 

[Bald Rick]

The main reason for not doing tidal is that on a £/MWh basis, is that it’s bloody expensive! Around twice the price of nuclear, and in the region of 5 times the price of wind.

 

[ABB125]

Around twice the price of nuclear,

What nuclear costs is this comparison based on? Hinckley Point?

~~

Worth pointing out that Hinkley point may be rather expensive, but the new reactor being built at Flamanville, which is effectively "half a Hinckley Point", is at least 4x over budget (13 billion Euros according to Reuters, compared with 3.3 billion originally; Wikipedia claims a report states nearly 20 billion!) and over a decade late; this is arguably worse than Hinckley Point.
Which should fill everyone with confidence, as EDF are building basically the same (but two of them) at Hinckley Point...

 

[Dai Corner]

Surely that depends? If you go for system depending on tides (rather than currents) then surely the changing volume of water moving (spring vs neap tides, etc) will affect both peak power and total energy generated unless the system is designed to generate 100% at the least energetic tide and then bypass the remainder

And that's before accounting for the period during which peak power is achieved will shift daily (less of an issue with storage, but still) - all forecastable and predictable long in advance, but still variable!

Indeed.

I always say 'tidal power is guaranteed .... to almost always peak at a different time to demand.'

What nuclear costs is this comparison based on? Hinckley Point?

~~

Worth pointing out that Hinkley point may be rather expensive, but the new reactor being built at Flamanville, which is effectively "half a Hinckley Point", is at least 4x over budget (13 billion Euros according to Reuters, compared with 3.3 billion originally; Wikipedia claims a report states nearly 20 billion!) and over a decade late; this is arguably worse than Hinckley Point.
Which should fill everyone with confidence, as EDF are building basically the same (but two of them) at Hinckley Point...

Those building Hinkley Point will benefit from the experience built up at Flamanville though.

 

[Bald Rick]

What nuclear costs is this comparison based on? Hinckley Point?

Yep. Of course the price of the power that HP C will generate is already known.

And it’s just as well EDF are doing all their ‘learning the hard way’ on this type of reactor at Flamanville, so that HP C goes much more smoothly

 

[ABB125]

And it’s just as well EDF are doing all their ‘learning the hard way’ on this type of reactor at Flamanville, so that HP C goes much more smoothly

Would you be willing to bet that it opens on time and budget? Not sure I am - my prediction is a year or two late, and £1-2billion over...

 

[Class 317]

I'm not sure that Tidal energy is more expensive than Nuclear.
If you're talking about tidal barrages it's based on hydro technology and has been generating very cheap electricity at La Rance since the 60's.
Tidal stream is currently very expensive but it is a very immature technology much like wind in the 90's. As it improves and gets more widespread it's unit costs will reduce.
Interestingly if it's deployed widely geographically around the UK the tide times suggest that it should allow a very constant base load generation.

 

[Bald Rick]

Bar the odd transient lull, the next week pretty much is forecast to be windy at least for us.

Indeed - I wouldn’t be surprised if the peak output record is broken on Wednesday or Thursday.

Would you be willing to bet that it opens on time and budget? Not sure I am - my prediction is a year or two late, and £1-2billion over...

Definitley not betting on that market! Not least because it is already over budget and late (depending when you count the baseline).

I'm not sure that Tidal energy is more expensive than Nuclear.

Have a read around. The Swansea Tidal project* was (very optimistically) costed at £1.3bn** for a 320MW peak output and 530GWh pa output (Note that 19% capacity factor, and compare to offshore wind at 40+%)

Hinckley Point C will cost 20 times as much (£26bn), but produce 47 times as much power (25,000GWh pa)

Dogger Bank (ABC) will cost 7 times as much (£ 9bn) but produce 34 times as much power (18,000GWh pa)

These figures don’t allow for the operational costs of running the facility, my educated guess is that Nuclear will cost the most due to fuelling and safety matters, but that wind power is cheapest to run.



*Swansea Tidal has a fabulous website, suggesting start on site will be in 2020…
** A BBC report earlier this year puts the cost at £1.7bn. I’ve used £1.3bn in the analysis above.

 

[Ediswan]

Interestingly if it's deployed widely geographically around the UK the tide times suggest that it should allow a very constant base load generation.

Have you got any links ? I had wondered that myself, but failed to find the data combined in one place. I didn't have the patience to look at the tide tables for all the individual locations round the coast. Also, normal tide tables don't give the details of tidal currents, which can be ... complicated.

 

[Class 317]

Have you got any links ? I had wondered that myself, but failed to find the data combined in one place. I didn't have the patience to look at the tide tables for all the individual locations round the coast. Also, normal tide tables don't give the details of tidal currents, which can be ... complicated.

I used tidetimes.org.uk and just put in some widely separated places north - south and east- west. It's about a 2.5 hour window for tides around the UK.

Installed capital costs of tidal power are higher than some generation technologies due to the dams required but generation costs are very low due to low running costs.

Also like at la Rance turbines can be replaced at end of life and the dam's used can continue to generate for very long timespans much the same as Hydro.

Tidal turbines are still currently much more expensive but assuming they fall in costs as seen with PV and wind will get much cheaper.

Also it's worth bearing in mind that currently we use a variety of generation methods of different costs depending on demand that vary in cost dramatically.

 

[Bald Rick]

Tidal turbines are still currently much more expensive but assuming they fall in costs as seen with PV and wind will get much cheaper.

PV and wind have relatively small ‘units’ and therefore big economy of scale potential, which is exactly what has happened. That’s not the case for tidal, not even the turbines.


in other news, the wholesale price for electricity is now £287 £/MWh. Anyone with battery storage on the wholesale market who was paying attention has just made a £350/MWh trick in half a day.

 

[brad465]

Something else I've noticed is the IFA-1 interconnector has not had any power flow in either direction for over a week now, while IFA-2 has (mainly us exporting to France). I wouldn't be surprised if this is because work is underway to restore the lost capacity after last year's fire.

 

[reddragon]

the answer is yes, 1) new coal fired powerr stations are quite cheap and quick to build compared to nuclear, it is not impossible the Engineers could install exhaust cleansing systems on new build stations as a means of mitigating CO2 emiussions.
It is not 100% certain that man-made global warming is the guaranteed outcome, there is division within the scientific community over the issue, do we freeze to death or do we fry?

There is worldwide consensus that we have caused Global warming by all scientists. Stating otherwise is now considered misinformation and can get you banned on some social media platforms.

What there is no consensus for is the speed of the consequences and scale of or type of, but many good theories are being proven in the real world.

 

[high camera]

With the ongoing energy supply issues whats happening with our old coal power stations ?

Perhaps our net zero policy makers are feeling the pressure right now ?

Any extra coal flows likely ?

 

[NSEFAN]

Is our energy supply actually at risk? Or is it just that the gas price itself is high?

If anything, the recent issues have helped improve the economic case for more wind turbines, rather than bringing back closed coal-fired stations.

At the very most, I would expect Ratcliffe to see output ramped up, assuming it is capable and it is economic to do so.

 

[Bertie the bus]

Without wishing to appear pedantic or a member of the grammar and punctuation police I don't really understand this thread. The title reads like a statement of fact but the opening post is a series of questions.

Has there been a reprieve for UK coal power stations and OP is asking what effect that will have on railfreight or should the title read 'Reprieve for UK coal power stations?'?

 

[NSEFAN]

I presume OP is asking, given the post content?

 

[MadMarsupial]

With the ongoing energy supply issues whats happening with our old coal power stations ?

Perhaps our net zero policy makers are feeling the pressure right now ?

Any extra coal flows likely ?

Go ahead has been given for their possible use as back up.

The Environmental Protection (England) Coal Fired Power Station Direction 2022

Ministerial direction to the Environment Agency about the operation of coal fired power stations in England.

www.gov.uk

Even if never used some coal flows will be necessary to ensure that they have sufficient reserves.

 

[high camera]

Without wishing to appear pedantic or a member of the grammar and punctuation police I don't really understand this thread. The title reads like a statement of fact but the opening post is a series of questions.

Has there been a reprieve for UK coal power stations and OP is asking what effect that will have on railfreight or should the title read 'Reprieve for UK coal power stations?'?

Bertie, apologies you are quite correct, I have changed the heading