UK National Grid asks for help keeping the lights on this winter

After a fire put one of the 370MW generators at E.ON's Ironbridge coal-fired power station out of action in February, another fire knocked out two 500MW coal-fired units at SSE's Northbridge power station too, with one expected to return to service no earlier than November 2014, and the other after March 2015. Then EDF announced the shutdown of the 1190MW Heysham 1 and the 1150MW Hartlepool nuclear power stations in August, due to concerns over a design flaw in the boilers - these are expected to return to service during October.

So it's hardly a surprise that National Grid has asked if anybody can commit to providing extra reserves of electricity generation for this winter...

Of course, we don't know how cold the winter may be yet - if it's mild like 2013/14 then we probably wouldn't have a problem. At least the gas storage is nice and full, after light usage last winter. But if it happens to be cold, or if there are further outages at our ageing power stations, then things might get a bit tight...

UPDATE (4 Sep 2014): EDF has now said the reactors will only come gradually back online between October and December...

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UK electricity shortage - I told you so...

Well, surprise surprise, with the shutdown of a number of coal fired power stations only a few months away now, it's suddenly in the news:

Consumers are being warned they face higher energy bills as the UK becomes more reliant on energy imports. In a speech, Ofgem chief executive Alistair Buchanan will say that falls in Britain's power production capacity are likely to lead to more energy imports and customers paying more. The energy watchdog predicts power station closures could mean a 10% fall in capacity by April alone.

It's not just me that knew this was coming, the Large Combustion Plant Directive, which is the cause of the shutdowns, was proposed in 2001, and came into force in the UK in 2007. So we were warned well ahead of time. There were even reports by organisations such as Deloitte that same year, trying to warn us about what was coming:

This paper indicates that if we are to succeed with the collective objective of ‘securing clean, affordable energy for the long-term’, there is a clear and immediate need for change.
...
The importance of the energy debate should not be underestimated – future policy will directly affect the welfare and security of our country, our people and our economy. This is a time for clarity of thought and analysis. Let the debate begin – but not take too long to reach a conclusion.

By the way, the LCPD basically said that we either had to clean up our coal fired power stations with flue gas desulphurisation, or only run them for a further set amount of hours, and definitely close them by 2016. Because gas has been pretty expensive in the past few years, coal plants have run more than might have been expected, so they are hitting the running hours limit before the final deadline.

I wouldn't be surprised if the next thing that happens is that we keep running these dirty old coal plants, and just pay whatever fines are due as a result...

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Decline in UK energy production continues: DECC

DECC published the latest instalment of its quarterly Energy Trends yesterday, here's a quick summary of the key figures:

Oil

• Production down 13% on a year ago.
• Imports increased by 21.7% on a year ago.
• Crude oil stocks have been declining gradually over the past few years.
• About 34% of UK oil demand was met by imports over the past 12 months.

Gas

• Gas production was down 14% on a year ago.
• Imports shifted away from LNG and towards pipelines compared to a year ago - this isn't surprising given that Japan has been importing extra LNG due to the shutdown of its nuclear reactors since Fukushima.
• Net imports were down 13% on a year ago, due to milder weather and a significant fall in the use of gas for electricity generation (coal use increased in its place).
• Despite the fall in net imports, the UK still imported 42% of its gas over the past 12 months.

Coal

• Coal production was down 12% on a year ago.
• Coal imports were up 20.8% on a year ago. This was still lower than Q1 2009, but it's worth noting that stocks of coal are much lower now than then, so it seems the imports would have been higher still if not for this.
• Over the past 12 months, about 66% of our coal has been imported.

Nuclear

•  Generation fell 11.6% compared to a year ago.

Renewables

• Generation was up 39% compared to a year ago, though down a bit on the record set in Q4 2011. High rainfall and stronger wind have helped here, as well as increased capacity.
• Renewable share of total electricity was 11.1%, compared to 7.7% a year ago.
• Installed capacity was up 36% on a year ago, to 13GW.

Page 72 also had a really interesting graph, showing industrial energy and fuel prices:

Note the steady run up in prices to the peak in 2008, followed by a dip as recession took hold. However, you can see that since that dip, prices have reached new highs (in £ sterling) for crude oil, fuel oil and coal, while in 2011 electricity and gas are pretty much back where they were in 2008.

I think this is why the economic problems are not going to go away - the high and rising prices make it progressively more difficult for the economy to grow, even without the growing pile of debt and austerity measures to deal with it.

You can download a copy of DECC's latest Energy Trends here.

Mike

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