3rd world Britain? Are we running out of power?

[Nickfromwales]

I’ve heard mention of planned power outages / reduced consumption windows a-la some other countries, is this to be implemented in old Blighty? Eg grid dropping available power between x o’clock and x o’clock each day, or it going off altogether. 

 

Surely not!? Discuss please! I will loiter in the background. 

[Pocster]

11 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

I’ve heard mention of planned power outages / reduced consumption windows a-la some other countries, is this to be implemented in old Blighty? Eg grid dropping available power between x o’clock and x o’clock each day, or it going off altogether. 

 

Surely not!? Discuss please! I will loiter in the background. 

I’m ok with 23kWh of storage - but thanks for asking .

Edited October 30, 2022 by Ferdinand
Steamy Tea's blood pressure.

[Nickfromwales]

1 minute ago, pocster said:

I’m ok with 23kw of storage - but thanks for asking .

I’ll install 24 killer-whales of battery now, just to piss you off  

 

 

 

Tbh, I was hoping the grown-ups would reply………  

[billt]

National grid do some reasonable forecasting, which includes worst case fuel shortages, hence the possibility of short rolling power cuts, which is an entirely rational, first world, course of action.

 

The press get hold of it and report with the strong implication that rolling power cuts will happen, to suit their need for panic causing click bait.

 

And, of course, we have had rolling power cuts before.

 

My batteries are 32kWh, with another 12 kWh on the way.

[ProDave]

We have been obsessed with CO2 reduction for some time, and not been watching fundamentals.  Closed all our coalmines, closed all our coal power stations (though one still burns wood and thankfully a couple have not been decommissioned so can be re started and still used)

 

We are building wind farms as fast as we can but we all know they need wind, that does not always blow.

 

This created the "dash for gas" as burning gas to produce electricity is a little less harmful than burning coal.  Great. Except we don't have enough of our own gas. No problem, we live in a global economy now, we can buy anything from anywhere, why bother going to all the trouble of producing something ourselves when someone else will make it or produce it and sell it to us.  Oh look those Ruskies have a lot of cheap gas and they are even building a nice big pipeline to deliver it.  What could possibly go wrong with such a global trading situation?

 

Oops.  Someone forgot to think about "Energy security" let alone security of anything else we import, like food, certain high tech products like microchips, even steel and other raw materials.  Oops indeed there are very few things now that Europe is self sufficient in, let alone the little old UK.

 

Now our government is talking about drilling for more gas in the North Sea.  About time but will take some years to come on stream.  Lets hope the environmentalists don't stop that as we are really stuffed if they do.

 

Re the forecast power cuts.  They will be a nuisance.  I don't see they will actually save very much power for the average domestic user.  We might get a few hours power cut, they don't predict how often, but apart from not being able to watch the telly and the lights will go out, that is about all it will save in terms of power.  The fridge will warm up a little and use the same electricity when it comes back on to cool down again.  Heating with an ASHP, the house might cool down slightly, but hardly measurable, and the ASHP will fire up again later if it needs to when the power comes back.

 

If there is really more demand than supply, you have to remove demand, which really means industry, which means not making things that take a lot of power to make.  I know, lets just buy those things from abroad instead..............

 

[joe90]

No batteries here or PV but I have candles and an old genny  I need to mend, seriously tho as said above, always good to plan for the worst but the press are scare mongering, if they did no planning that would be worse. Yes scarey times ahead what with Putin and his war etc. Hopefully our gov will act together to do what is best and not just slag each other off. (Ever the optimist).

[joe90]

4 minutes ago, ProDave said:

We are building wind farms as fast as we can but we all know they need wind, that does not always blow.

Yes and PV, It’s been said it’s not always sunny or windy but @SteamyTea has pointed at figures that say that’s not a problem, I.e.  wind and solar will cope?

[Pocster]

My suspicion with the supposed power cuts is won’t some families simply cook earlier to avoid them ? . Charge the phone etc / EV earlier .

Effectively cause a demand spike before the outage .

Edited October 30, 2022 by pocster

[Kelvin]

The NG has explained this as a worst case scenario planning and say it’s unlikely to happen. Their plan includes bringing coal power stations back on stream to make up the shortfall and implementing load shifting which is the more interesting plan and something that should/will become the norm. If we do have an intense cold snap it’s not likely to go on for weeks so even if we do have rolling power cuts it will be very short term. 
 

 

[Kelvin]

9 minutes ago, pocster said:

My suspicion with the supposed power cuts is won’t some families simply cook earlier to avoid them ? . Charge the phone etc / EV earlier .

Effectively cause a demand spike before the outage .

It’s exactly what will happen like panic buying fuel which we know people will do. 

[SteamyTea]

10 minutes ago, joe90 said:

@SteamyTea has pointed at figures that say that’s not a problem

Lack of wind or sun is not a problem, building thousands of windfarms and millions of PV modules is.

But not as big a problem as many people think.  We are not reinventing the wheel, it is purely a planning, connection and manufacturing problem.

[Nickfromwales]

1 minute ago, pocster said:

My suspicion with the supposed power cuts is won’t done families simply cook earlier to avoid them ? . Charge the phone etc / EV earlier .

Effectively cause a demand spike before the outage .

That’s exactly what I’d do, I doubt I’d be on my own there. Plus, folk will buy batteries, and charge them prior-to each outage. 

 

 

15 minutes ago, billt said:

National grid do some reasonable forecasting, which includes worst case fuel shortages, hence the possibility of short rolling power cuts, which is an entirely rational, first world, course of action.

Power restrictions, managed by increasing the cost of energy consumption by an order of magnitude when x number of units have been ( over ) consumed at set times per day, would be a little more rational imho, switching the juice off I think would be irrational, much for the reasons above.
 

Human beings are selfish and fragile little things, so will just engineer consuming more before / directly after to compensate for the inconvenience…….thus negating any initiative to stop the problem in the first place.

 

If you make something painfully expensive, beyond how expensive it already is deemed to be, then people will protect their purse accordingly. Rationing power could work well, but increasing cost/unit at a set time each day would of course would be difficult and unsympathetically indiscriminate, ( but simply switching it off is just barmy afaic )…….barmy, but deliciously simple and almost irreplaceably effective.

 

Yikes. 

[SteamyTea]

12 minutes ago, pocster said:

Charge the phone

My phone charger is 5 W, but probably only delivers a mean of 2W over a couple of hours, phone charging is not a problem, even multiplied by 40 million units.

200 MW if they were all started at the same time.

About half what the waste incinerator plant in St. Awful kicks out.

So just the rubbish in Cornwall, one small county by population, could charge all the UKs phones in about an hour.

[Kelvin]

Buying batteries and charging them just in case isn’t a bad idea if the charging is done off peak. My car has a V2L option and we rarely have less than 20% state of charge so we can run a few things from that. Most likely a few lights, a small induction hob, charging phones and Starlink. 

Edited October 30, 2022 by Kelvin

[SteamyTea]

Just now, Kelvin said:

Starlink

Who would you chat to if everyone else's batteries had failed.

 

 

[Kelvin]

Movie watching, music streaming etc assuming the main internet hubs were still up which is pretty likely 

[Pocster]

12 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

My phone charger is 5 W, but probably only delivers a mean of 2W over a couple of hours, phone charging is not a problem, even multiplied by 40 million units.

200 MW if they were all started at the same time.

About half what the waste incinerator plant in St. Awful kicks out.

So just the rubbish in Cornwall, one small county by population, could charge all the UKs phones in about an hour.

Yes yes yes . I was just trying to imply people will charge everything they can before an outage . Which in turn increases demand which then causes an outage .

[SteamyTea]

8 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

Movie watching, music streaming etc assuming the main internet hubs were still up which is pretty likely 

Server farms use between 3% and 13% of world energy, but real figures are hard to come by.

[SteamyTea]

3 minutes ago, pocster said:

Yes yes yes . I was just trying to imply people will charge everything they can before an outage . Which in turn increases demand which then causes an outage .

I doubt recharging batteries is a major concern.  Maybe the 7 million homes with E7 could make a difference.  Load shifting even 5 kWh/day (about half the E7 daily usage) would make a very big difference.  35 GWh.

Would take all the shit in Cornwall 3 1/5 days to generate that.

[Ferdinand]

The short answer is no, we won't run out in any serious way unless it is a 1 in 100,000 case.

 

Our media take a 1 in 100,000 case, and go "this *could* happen to all of you" - Panic. Panic. Panic !!!. That is a problem with an almost universally tabloid and political media. Did the forecast £6500 energy bills happen?

All this happened last year. and there were hysterical articles then. Extensive power cuts did not happen then either. Example:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/07/risk-of-uk-power-cuts-this-winter-has-increased-says-national-grid

 

With ref to @Billit's National Grid outlook reports, the Gas ones are here:

https://www.nationalgrid.com/gas-transmission/insight-and-innovation/winter--outlook

and the Electric ones are here:

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/research-publications/winter-outlook

 

It's worth reading one of each at least once to appreciate how they do the modelling. When I looked at the early outlook reports back in August (ish), the risks of cuts were about the same as last year, and it did not happen then. They measure to something like "five times this winter a few people may have short power cuts at peak demand time if it is a really, really cold day". ie Not very likely. Then the media go ape for clicks / attention / to poke the Govt / whatever; just a problem of the UK media.

 

AFAICS the risks are not much different to last year, though supply is perhaps better in that we have much more renewables and interconnectors on stream than last year. Plus our main North Sea Continental Gas field has not been under maintenance this year. In 2022 over 2021 UK domestic oil production is up by 10%, and gas by 50%. See the most recent Energy Trends report:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1107461/Energy_Trends_September_2022.pdf

  

 

Gas demand is down on last year by 5-10%. And we have been happily exporting huge amounts of both gas and elec to the continent to prop up the European Grid throughout the year, because we have 20% of Europe's LNG import facilities, and a whole fleet of CCGT Electricity Stations currently producing Elec for France and the continent. The UK has been a net exporter of electricity this year for the first time since 2010. The shift in terms of trade is around £5-10bn - not small.

 

Plus Rough gas storage came back on line last week at 20% capacity - increasing our storage capacity by 50%. From small to rather less small - but we have domestic production so don't likely need to cover 100% of our usage.

 

So what if Mr Putin sends his subs to wreck all our offshore infrastructure? I'd say we are resilient to interconnectors going off, as we are exporting. And taking all the offshore wind off stream would be quite an ask, but would be more of a potential disruption.

 

So me, I'm fairly relaxed, but I do have a Super SER in the garage.

 

F

[SteamyTea]

UK consumption figures here

2021_Consumption_tables_July_2022_update.xlsx

[Ferdinand]

I can confirm that the 650g loaf of bread I just made has used about 0.8 kWh of energy to make 🙂.

[SteamyTea]

2 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

I can confirm that the 650g loaf of bread I just made has used about 0.8 kWh of energy to make 🙂.

You could have made more in the oven though.

But a man needs his daily sandwich.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001df6c

[Ferdinand]

1 minute ago, SteamyTea said:

You could have made more in the oven though.

But a man needs his daily sandwich.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001df6c

 

The next one won't use any because solar PV.

[SteamyTea]

Just now, Ferdinand said:

 

The next one won't use any because solar PV.

That is only at the local level (your house).

At the national level that 0.8 kWh could have helped, in part, to run a heat pump, which would have been more efficient.