UK gas/electricity supply shortages this winter

[elbows]

I can't find it in my YouTube history, but bloody hell Germany !
Lignite FFS
And "Atomkraft Kein Danke" ...
And importing coal as well as gas from Russia.
The only mitigation compared to us is better insulated homes - versus continental winters ...

Yes the negatives in Germany are not hard to spot from a climate change perspective.

However on the bright side one of the things I've learnt is how some of these countries are doing with renewables. It was easy for me to be ignorant of that since most of the focus on wind etc in UK reporting is on how much the UK has increased its wind capacity, and this meant I didnt really hear about how the likes of France, Germany and Spain have been doing with renewables.

I havent studied maximum installed capacity but from looking at various daily output figures in recent times, France has occasionally been capable of generating from wind a number that is not too many GW behind the UK. And Germany seems to have a few GW more wind generation than us. Spain has a somewhat comparable amount of wind generation to us too, and a big dollop of solar.

As for nuclear in Germany, although their current future plans are very different to the UKs, at the present moment the amount they are generating from nuclear is really similar to what the UK is managing to generate right now. Although the UKs would be higher if a couple of temporarily offline reactors were on again right now.

Germany appears to have a really huge amount of solar too, although now is obviously not the right time of year to see more than a small fraction of its potential. I had a quick look back at their summer and saw days where their solar peak was well over 35GW!

I use sites like this one to look at generation data for Germany:

Energy-Charts

Die Energy-Charts bieten interaktive Grafiken zu: Stromproduktion, Stromerzeugung, Emissionen, Klimadaten, Spotmarktpreisen, Szenarien zur Energiewende und eine umfangreiche Kartenanwendung zu: Kraftwerken, Übertragungsleitungen und Meteodaten

energy-charts.info

 

[elbows]

I was also quite impressed by how much hydroelectric power France has. A chunk of it is of the pumped storage variety, likely helping them meet peak demand and making use of their nuclear generation, but lots of it isnt just of the pumped storage type.

 

[elbows]

By the way I'm not really setup to properly report on total TWh of electricity generation for entire years from different sources yet. And looking at an individual year isnt always the best guide since, for example, our wind generation was down in 2021 due to unfavourable weather conditions. But I better chuck a couple of numbers out there anyway since they give a different picture to the one I described in a recent post. It looks like UK total wind generation in 2021 gave us 64.7 TWh and a figure I've seen for Germany was 113.5 TWh! Germany managed 48.45 TWh of Solar in 2021, ours was so modest that they didnt give a figure in the report I've just been looking at. Our nuclear that year gave us 45.9 TWh and Germany got 65.37 TWh from that source. Germany got 51.17 TWh of electricity from gas compared to our 123.2 TWh. But their brown coal was 99.05 TWh and hard coal 46.44 TWh, compared to the UKs 6.5 TWh from coal.

Obviously electricity is only part of the energy picture too.

 

[elbows]

Looking at the energy dashboard in regards the situation with the tricky supply-demand balance this evening, it looks like the 'market forces' are having the expected result. The loss of load probability peak is now down to 9%, but 'high offer accepted' alerts have also shown up, for example some Connahs Quay 1 offers accepted at £1240/MWh!

Real time analytics for the GB energy market

LCP Enact is a data integration, analytics and forecasting platform for the GB energy market. Enact helps traders, analysts and managers navigate an increasingly competitive market with ease, make better decisions, and monitor performance

enact.lcp.energy

 

[elbows]

Things continued to look tight for todays peak in demand. So a Electricity Capacity Market Notice was issued at 1.33pm and then cancelled at 2.04pm.

Such things can be viewed here:

GB Electricity Capacity Market Notices - National Grid

This site will display all electricity Capacity Market Notices issued by National Grid. To learn more about these notices please read the Frequently Asked Questions.

gbcmn.nationalgrideso.com

I've been exploring other system notification sites and it seems that one of them includes messages about when they might activate a Demand Flexibility Service period, eg this today:

From: Power System Manager - National Grid Electricity Control Centre NATIONAL GRID NOTIFICATION - DEMAND FLEXIBILTY SERVICE. An Anticipated DFS Requirement Notice has been published for tomorrow Tuesday 29/11/2022 This is an indication that a DFS Service Requirement might be published today at 14:30. This will be Energy Tagged. For full details see the ESO Data Portal at ESO Data Portal: Demand Flexibility Service | National Grid Electricity System Operator. Notification Issued at 10:00 hours on 28/11/2022. Issued by Natasa Dinic National Grid Electricity National Control Centre.

From System Warnings | BMRS

I'm exploring National Grid ESOs data portal for the DFS stuff now.

 

[elbows]

It looks like they decided not to have a DFS tomorrow, so at 2.30pm they said they werent going to bother, rather than releasing the tedious details to the companies at that time.

If they had issued a DFS for tomorrow it looks like it would have been the first one done under the real, live part of the system, not labelled as a test, as opposed to the previous two DFS periods in November which were done under the auspices of the planned testing periods for the DFS system over winter. Although as it happens the previous test was done during a period where the supply-demand balance was tight.

 

[gentlegreen]

Looking at the energy dashboard in regards the situation with the tricky supply-demand balance this evening, it looks like the 'market forces' are having the expected result. The loss of load probability peak is now down to 9%, but 'high offer accepted' alerts have also shown up, for example some Connahs Quay 1 offers accepted at £1240/MWh!

Real time analytics for the GB energy market

LCP Enact is a data integration, analytics and forecasting platform for the GB energy market. Enact helps traders, analysts and managers navigate an increasingly competitive market with ease, make better decisions, and monitor performance

enact.lcp.energy

£1.24 kwh. ?
Are people texted / emailed ?
It would be useless for me.
I will use 0.7 KWH for my 170 watt PC over 4 hours and 0.5kwh to cook my tea - 1.5kw for 20 mins ...
And that's all I ever use...
I'm not ready to eat cold soup or eat late - or switch to eating lunch instead...
"space heating" is about 100 watts for my foot warmer - intermittently ...

Now I understand the pressure on people to have smart meters ...

 

[elbows]

The BBC wrote about the DFS they decided not to do tomorrow:

Emergency energy plan not going ahead on Tuesday

National Grid decides not to activate a scheme to help avoid power cuts after being poised to do so.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[elbows]

£1.24 kwh. ?
Are people texted / emailed ?
It would be useless for me.
I will use 0.7 KWH for my 170 watt PC over 4 hours and 0.5kwh to cook my tea - 1.5kw for 20 mins ...
And that's all I ever use...
I'm not ready to eat cold soup or eat late - or switch to eating lunch instead...
"space heating" is about 100 watts for my foot warmer - intermittently ...

Now I understand the pressure on people to have smart meters ...

Well that price I mentioned was an example of an offer that was accepted for the generation of electricity from a particular plant for a particular period, so on the supply side of things.

The DFS stuff is the demand side thing, features prices offered that are higher still than that - eg National Grid pay the companies we get our electricity from a minimum of £3000 per MWh saved during periods where the scheme is active, and those companies then use various schemes to pay that in for example £3 per KWh chunks to their customers who have signed up for the scheme. If people are signed up to the scheme with their suppliers then they are indeed notified in advance of a saving period coming the next day.

 

[elbows]

I'm not surprised things are looking tight for the coming hours, wind generation has dropped to a very low level indeed.

I dont really know why they didnt decide yesterday to have a DFS period active today.

 

[elbows]

This is the sort of tweet that National Grid ESO feel inclined to make whenever they have to use tools such as Capacity Market Notices. Probably because the press like to write up these events in a way that the Grid people want to take a lot of the sensation out of, and National Grid ESO love to turn the potentially dramatic into the reassuring and dull.



The original intent of this thread was to talk about any situations we end up with as a result of gas shortages etc causing a large supply issue at times this winter. The fact I've already had reason to go on about the DFS possibly being used for real, along with Capacity Market Notices and other stuff shows a level of strain that the system is already under during peak times where wind is lacking, even in the absence of these more dramatic and abnormal supply problems. I suppose this isnt really too surprising given that our wiggle room has clearly reduced over the years, and that the import-export picture has been somewhat affected by Frances nuclear issues. So when you add a few other random events to the low wind, high demand periods, such as a unit of Drax power station being unavailable, the margins get rather tight in the evenings. And on many occasions I would expect all my talk about various things happening on specific days wont actually result in power cuts or forms of industrial temporary demand destruction. I'm just getting into the habit of paying attention, finding the pertinent sources of data, and getting my head round various mechanisms.

 

[elbows]

Another high offer accepted:

Coryton Power Station accepted at £1500/MWh

(showed up on the alert feeds at Real time analytics for the GB energy market )

 

[kalmatthew]

£1.24 kwh. ?
Are people texted / emailed ?
It would be useless for me.
I will use 0.7 KWH for my 170 watt PC over 4 hours and 0.5kwh to cook my tea - 1.5kw for 20 mins ...
And that's all I ever use...
I'm not ready to eat cold soup or eat late - or switch to eating lunch instead...
"space heating" is about 100 watts for my foot warmer - intermittently ...

Now I understand the pressure on people to have smart meters ...

I'm registered for this with octopus, I took part in both tests and for the first one forgot about it. For the second I turned loads of things off including all lights and a bunch of electronics. So far this has made me £0.98. On the basis its so little I will do my best not to run heavy appliances during the time as part of trying to help out but there is no incentive to go any further.

 

[elbows]

The BBC wrote about the DFS they decided not to do tomorrow:

Emergency energy plan not going ahead on Tuesday

National Grid decides not to activate a scheme to help avoid power cuts after being poised to do so.

www.bbc.co.uk

Articles like that BBC one mentioned the lack of wind but also the French nuclear situation and something more specific:

It came after forecasts projected a large drop in the amount of power that Britain will be able to import from French nuclear power stations on Monday and Tuesday evenings.

I dont know about those projections so its somewhat hard to comment on that. Right now France has a little over 4GW more nuclear up and running than they did at the start of November. But demand obviously also goes up there as it gets colder, and they use a heck of a lot of electricity for heating.

I suppose it could be that what they are actually referring to is that 500MW of interconnector capacity between the UK and France was lost yesterday, possibly until December. This is the same interconnector that suffered a fire the other year, and still wasnt back to full capacity before this latest outage. It should be 2GW, was off completely from September 14th to October 20th 2021, then they got it back to 1GW for over a year, now its down to 500MW again. There are a couple of other interconnectors with France which provide 1GW of capacity each.

Anyway as happened a week ago, the direction of travel still reversed along those interconnectors when required during our tight period yesterday. We were just down 500MW on the amount we could get at peak yesterday from French interconnectors compared to the event of Tuesday 22nd, due to aforementioned fault.

 

[Karl Masks]

Thank god Jeremy Chaos isn't in charge

 

[elbows]

National Grid are considering use of the DFS again tomorrow. In a few minutes we should find out whether they are going ahead with it this time or will decide not to as happened yesterday.

 

[elbows]

They have gone ahead and asked for 250MW of savings tomorrow from 5.30pm till 6.30pm using the Demand Flexibility Service.

Unlike what they considered yesterday, this seems to have been placed under the 'test' rather than 'live' side of the system, but I dont think that will make any difference in practice to consumers, its still real. It might make a difference to the detail of price guarantees to the energy providers for this DFS event, but I dont think I'll attempt to unpick the tedious detail of that.

 

[cupid_stunt]

Fucking hell, if it's like this in November, how the hell do they think they can cope come Jan/Feb?

 

[gentlegreen]

Given the increase in tariffs with people suffering, why have things come to a head ?

 

[elbows]

Fucking hell, if it's like this in November, how the hell do they think they can cope come Jan/Feb?

Yes I know what you mean. Probably they always expected things to be tight even without gas shortages affecting generation, and this is why analysts were taking the piss out of the national grids reassuring forecasts earlier in the year, forcing the grid to come out with predictions that were a little more credible.

I expect they also think we'll have more luck with getting a few more nuclear power stations back on line in the first week or two of December. And if France does better with its own nuclear, we can rely on imports more often.

I am also unable to say to what extent temporary problems at other types of power stations in this country have contributed to the recent tightness. I see reports when specific plants undergo periods of expected or unexpected availability, eg one of the Drax units the other day. But what I dont have is the ability to put all of the data about all of the power plants into a fully cohesive overall picture, Im not in a position where I can tell stories about that picture as a whole with confidence.

Loss of wind has been a big factor in recent days, and this is one of the reasons why the word flexibility is used a lot in terms of how our energy system will need to be in future. But in some ways that future is here already. I hate the way it makes all the anti-renewable wankers on twitter etc start squarking, they are happy to speak up when wind falls to 1% of our generation but we dont here much from them when its providing a really nice chunk of our daily power.

Dont get me wrong, I dont like how tight the margins have been during a few of our peak demand periods this week and last week. I'm obviously aware of the potential for trouble which is why I started this thread and am keeping an eye on data. But I have to acknowledge that some of theser tight periods are expected and the mechanisms to deal with these periods have worked so far. There are also some other weapons in their arsenal that I dont think they've had to use yet, eg there are certain large industrial users who can be asked to reduce demand if things get even tighter than seen recently.

The psychology of them having to activate a real licve, non-test period for the Demand Flexibility Service is of interst to me. It looks like they are maybe a bit reticent to take that step and much prefer to go for 'test' versions of it instead at this stage of winter.

 

[elbows]

Given the increase in tariffs with people suffering, why have things come to a head ?

Probably a combination of factors, and when certain combinations happen at the very same time, coinciding with daily peaks in demand, the wiggle room gets tight.

Also greater awareness means that the press and people like me are more likely to go on about it when forecasts suggest especially tight periods.

I will try to dig into some generation data for November this year compared to November last year to see if I can highlight any specific differences that are contributing.

Certainly in terms of recent days its hard to overstate the extent to which wind has fallen off a cliff. See the chart at the bottom of this site for example - going from 16.5GW to way under 1GW is quite the swing!

Also ignore the label of this link, its not how much wind is really currently being generated:

Winderful - Wind energy is currently producing 7,450 MW.

That's enough to power 37,437,186 PS5s!

winderful.uk

 

[elbows]

OK here is an attempt to illustrate differences between generation in November 2021 compared to November 2022 so far.

The danger is that this data wont tell a pure story of generation, since generation of certain types is also affected by demand. And the data might not be perfect, these graphs are made from the half hourly figures by type from BMRS ( Generation By Fuel Type | BMRS ). All the same, it probably offers some clues. I havent included every source, some are less relevant in the grand scheme of things.

The totals are visibly different.

The variations in wind can be seen including this November being more impressive in some ways, but also with the hefty recent drop.

The imports via interconnectors picture looks quite different - a lot of lengthy periods when we werent importing from a bunch of sources (we were exporting but thats not shown in this data) but also some larger spikes when we've needed imports to come to our aid during high demand/other supply shortfalls.

The nuclear story is the most obvious. Thats cost us important wiggle room.

 

[elbows]

Found stories to be told on the coal and biomass fronts too. But other sources will have to be used to unpick this, to see how much of it was a story of demand, and what generation capacity may have become unavailable this year compared to last. I would guess that there are signs of constrained availability here, but cannot be sure from this data alone.

Sorry that I did a poor job of getting some of the graphs in these post to line up.

 

[xenon]

Oh shit, I just put the washing machine on. I had actually meant not to as seeing elbows earlier post re this evening and predicted shortfall load. The Wales England game probably isn't gonna help either...


I only put it on now as forgot and the boiler's been fixed today, so I can stick the heating on if needed re damp.

 

[elbows]

Well for whatever reason this evening doesnt seem to have ended up as tight as yesterday evening was. The loss of load probability stuff and the derated margins havent caused alarm today, and unlike yesterday no capacity market notice was triggered. Some high bids for generation have still been accepted today though. I've reached the limits of my ability to scrutinise the situation beyond that.

 

[_Russ_]

Oh shit, I just put the washing machine on. I had actually meant not to as seeing elbows earlier post re this evening and predicted shortfall load. The Wales England game probably isn't gonna help either...


I only put it on now as forgot and the boiler's been fixed today, so I can stick the heating on if needed re damp.

I dont see the football making much difference, wouldnt people just be watching some other shit if it wasnt on?

might even go the other way as they tend to get together and watch as a group

 

[existentialist]

I dont see the football making much difference, wouldnt people just be watching some other shit if it wasnt on?

You get big synchronised rushes for the kettle with something like a football match, more so than for "general" TV.

 

[elbows]

You get big synchronised rushes for the kettle with something like a football match, more so than for "general" TV.

Here is an article about that sort of thing:

EURO 2020 and the TV 'pick-up' effect | ESO

England's strong showing in the EUROs has audiences glued to the TV. But what impact does this have on the grid?

www.nationalgrideso.com

Features stats such as '2800MW pick up at the end of the penalty shoot-out between England and Germany in 1990'.

I didnt post articles from yesterday because they were sillier affairs that tended to fixate on the possible Demand Flexibility Service period coinciding with tonights game (in the end that period never happened and the timing wouldnt have completely coincided anyway).

 

[rich!]

today is the first day I've had brownouts for a long time - two in an hour about 11-12 this morning.

 

[elbows]

I'm still learning about the mechanisms involved in the DFS.

For example yesterday when they gave notice of this evenings DFS test, they were asking for 250MW and I think they then accepted 158MW of bids which are as follows (they do them in half hourly chunks and Im just showing the accepted ones for the first half hour as the second half hour is very similar.) There is also regional data which Im not showing here.



Clearly Octopus remains the most obvious major player in this so far, although there are some others of note too.

Today they have gone ahead and issued another DFS for tomorrow evening. They have asked for 250MW again. The one tomorrow will be from 5PM till 6PM, so half an hour earlier than todays.