This GWPF report paints an uncomfortable picture of increasing instability in the UK electricity supply system, as ever more renewables are injected into it while older but more predictable thermal power plants are retired. The author says bluntly that until recently customers ‘could rely on the system. That is not the case today.’ Come the power cut, you’re on your own.
It has been widely claimed that Distributed (or embedded) Generation, such as solar and wind connected to the low voltage distribution network, reinforces electricity system stability.
The final reports into the widespread blackout of the 9th of August last year by the UK electricity regulator, Ofgem, and the British government’s Energy Emergency Executive Committee, E3C show that this is not the case.
Distributed Generation is now under the spotlight as a leading cause of the severity of the 9 August blackout, and as a hazard increasing future risks to security of supply.
Both the UK electricity market regulator, Ofgem, and the Energy Emergencies Executive Committee (E3C) of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) have now (3 January) released their final reports into the blackout on the 9thof August 2019, a blackout that disconnected over 1 million for nearly an hour with knock-on impacts that persisted for days in many cases and in case, an oil refinery, for several weeks:
Ofgem, Investigation into 9 August 2019 power outage
E3C, Great Britain power system disruption review
. . .
The GWPF report concludes:
It will be interesting to see what comes of the E3C requirement that National Grid review the crucial Security and Quality of Supply Standard (SQSS) with the aim of understanding the “explicit impacts of distributed generation on the required level of security” (p. 15).) If the consumer interest is respected this could be very interesting.
Taken together these studies of the 9th August blackout report systemic fragility problems in the UK electricity supply industry, but not only within the production side of the industry.
National Grid, the generators, the DNOs, none emerge smelling of roses, but the E3C also observes that the consumer sector itself is poorly prepared (p.18ff). As a matter of fact, they are encouraging consumers of all kinds to develop “strong business continuity plans” covering “a range of credible power disruption scenarios”. This is MBA Jargon, but is not too hard to put into everyday French: Sauve qui peut.
It seems probable that consumer side weakness is the outcome of a long period of robust electricity supply, under the CEGB and its inheritors, meaning that consumers never had to test, adapt or even go to the difficulty and expense of developing measures that ensure their lives and businesses are robust in the context of a fragile electricity system. They could rely on the system. That is not the case today.
The costs of a largely decentralised generation portfolio, much of it composed of low inertia generators such as wind and solar, are not limited to the technical athletics of the System Operator, but also involve the need for a forewarned and forearmed consumption market.
Thanks to energy and climate policies, British consumers from households to hospitals must now ensure that they are able to handle not only the more extreme grid management measures required by a “smart”, “clean” system but also the consequences emerging when those measures prove inadequate.
Taking up the slack, which is what “strong business continuity plans” means, will not be cost free.
Full report here.
– – –
See also – Delingpole: Welcome to Boris’s Blackout Britain… (4 Jan 2020)
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
January 5, 2020 at 06:00AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 