National Grid Puts Two Coal-Fired Power Stations on Emergency Standby
Drax had been ordered to close its two coal-fired power stations in North Yorkshire, but this summer it was told to delay that closure in case the National Grid needed to fire them up again this winter in an ‘emergency’. Sure enough, that ‘emergency’, i.e., cold weather, is now upon us and the Grid has told Drax to get the power stations ready. Incredibly – who would have predicted it? – zero-carbon renewables aren’t meeting Britain’s needs. The Guardian has more.
Great Britain’s electricity system operator has put two coal-fired power stations on emergency standby to keep the lights on amid a spell of cold weather.
National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) said the two “winter contingency coal units” will be available if required on Monday as temperatures dip below zero and demand soars. It said the public “should continue to use energy as normal”.
The Government this summer asked the owners of coal-fired power stations to slow closure plans as ministers looked to shore up energy supplies following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Russia was previously a big supplier of natural gas to Europe, so the invasion roiled global energy markets and prompted a scramble for alternatives.
The coal plants in North Yorkshire that are preparing to operate on Monday are owned by the energy company Drax. They will only operate if instructed to do so by National Grid, and Drax will not be able to sell the electricity on the open market.
It comes after temperatures dropped as low as -8.6C on Sunday in Marham, Norfolk, according to the Met Office. It had issued yellow weather warnings for snow or ice for large parts of the country on Monday morning, with snowfall causing travel disruption across south-east England, including London, and northern Scotland.
The drop in temperatures prompted U.K. power prices to hit a record high on Sunday.
Great Britain’s electricity generation system has rapidly moved away from coal in recent years: its first coal-free day was achieved in 2017, while in 2020 the island ran without coal-powered electricity for a month during a sunny May.
The use of zero-carbon renewables has increased rapidly to replace it, but the UK has also increased its reliance on natural gas, a fossil fuel. That reliance has proved problematic during 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Great Britain was heavily dependent on burning gas for electricity generation over the weekend, with low winds and cloudy skies. On Saturday, gas generated 62% of electricity in Great Britain, according to National Grid data. Nuclear power stations generated 14%, while wind and solar accounted for 8% and 1% respectively. Coal accounted for 4%. (Northern Ireland’s energy system operates separately.)
Is there any hope that this ‘emergency’ might prompt a rethink of the Net Zero policy? Not a snowball’s chance in hell.
Stop Press: Vanguard, the world’s second-largest global money manager after BlackRock, is resigning from the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, whose members have committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Net Zero zealots are blaming this on ‘political pressure’ rather cold-headed financial realism. The FT has more.
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Fossil Fuels – fiction. Abiotic self regenerating. Lose the fossil nonsense.
Photo – shows water vapour which is by far the main ‘green house gas’ – only the climat-tards believe that water is toxic.
Green house gases – lose the term. Another non science.
‘Renewables’ – lose the term. Nothing of the sort. Who is putting the 700 g of oil every 6 months into the bird choppers? Let’s not discuss the destruction of Gaia to provide source minerals and materials, or the ecological destruction at the site.
Renewables fast making up energy output – Bullshit. 10% no more during the year on average, against the trillions spent and the ecological destruction and dead birds wrought.
I’m with you on the rest, but Abiotic self regeneration is a theory that appears to have no substantive evidence, other than a few Russian scientists who make the claim. I’m going to leave that on the ‘maybe’ list.
I’m interested in the abiotic theory for two reasons: first, it was clearly in the interests of the oil industry to suppress anything which implied a virtually limitless supply, and secondly that nobody as far as I can see has adequately explained where all the organic matter came from to form the oil, gas and coal reserves that we know about. Natural decomposition processes don’t seem to be adequate. I’d certainly welcome some more discussion on this topic.
“Drax had been ordered to close its two coal-fired power stations in North Yorkshire, but this summer it was told to delay that closure in case the National Grid needed to fire them up again this winter in an ‘emergency'”
What’s truly staggering about this is that some politicia and/or civil servant was able to do the joined-up thinking to foresee the problem
But went ahead and caused the problem anyway. That’s what is staggering.
The same as all the foreseeable problems caused by Govt CoVid policies which they went ahead with regardless.
But let’s be clear. Failure to supply enough electricity to meet demand is a feature, not a bug in the policy.
Here at noon on 12th December 2022 (the Monday of the first cold snap of UK winter) the electricity demand is already 45 GW (50 GW is really critical). Currently wind and coal are each meeting about 3% of that demand, and the majority is being met by burning gas. Under the way that prices set, this means that that the prices paid by distributors this morning shot up to £1400 per megawatt-hour (compared with £400 overnight). This would bring a bonanza to wind-farm operators…except that there is no wind.
IIRC, in 1962-1963 winter the UK average maximum day-time surface air temperature was never above zero during January
Sources : https://grid.iamkate.com/ , http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Perhaps what they need to do is to re-define “renewable” by extending the time frame. After all, coal is an efficient mode of long term energy storage from solar power! Perhaps it is still worth pursuing the concept of building modern coal fired plant using carbon capture and storage (CCS), although it’s bound to be less efficient thermally than just emitting spent carbon into the air.
Carbon capture is an expensive fantasy which is not required if the premise that we need to reduce CO2 emissions is rejected.
We had the possibility of non-CO2 emitting nuclear power with radioactive-waste capture… which we are very good at, but it MUST be understood the aim is not so-called clean energy, but NO energy so that Human population will diminish and stay at a low pre-industrial level so as not to use up the Planets resources or upset Flipper.
The whole point of Carbon Capture and Storage is to try to make coal more expensive than everything else.
No CCS plant has yet been devised to succesfully capture and store the CO2 output of a normal Coal Power Station, although small scale plants have been built for money wasting / virtue signalling reasons, and some to provide CO2 for forcing out extra oil from wells at the end of their life.
Problems include enormous cost, the fact that a third of the energy generated is required to power the CCS Plant, the lack of a sufficiently large, practical and affordable underground storage location and the blatant hazard the store would pose.
Just looked at national grid status for last 24 hours
https://grid.iamkate.com/
5.4% renewable
net zero + no wind + no sun + freezing weather = big mess
Last time I looked at http://www.gridwatch.co.uk this afternoon, so before peak demand between 6-8pm, 12% of our electricity came from Europe. This was equal to at least 4GW. The 2 coal fired units at Drax are probably each capable of generating 1GW. This means that if Europe faces an electricity shortage and has non spare to sell to us even Drax won’t be able to keep all the lights on if demand stays high and wind speeds low.
What a load of virtue signalling nonsense. So DRAX will be putting electricity into the grid. But like topping up a bank account, saying “this money I’ve just put in, won’t be sold back into the energy market” is disingenuous bunkum because other operators will be doing it. It’s like continuing to pay money into your child’s bank account, when that child has started work on the condition the money you have paid in doesn’t go on paying for a horse. Your child buys a horse anyway and says “I bought the horse with the money I paid in – not your money.”
The net effect will simply be that DRAX will charge more the the temporary operation, which I’m pretty sure will end up falling to the tax payer but will have zero effect on carbon emissions. So we will end up paying as taxpayers purely so our politicians can pretend we are being a good “global citizens.” Off the scale hubris.
Reform UK all the way.
I assumed it was meant to suggest they they are fulfilling a need out of the kindness of their hearts and not being nasty profiteering energy suppliers fleecing us on the open market. Of course the opposite is true, firing up these short term backups at short notice costs a fortune!
The intention is bankruptcy – of small businesses and the population generally.
Not least the cost of preventing the plant (now very old fashioned, of course) in operable condition and the cost of very highly trained operatives hanging about twiddling their thumbs.
This is the worst kind of state planned market. The Marxists in charge of our energy policy and the CCC have made sure of this.
We pay the virtue signalling barstewards the thick end of a Billion a year, anyway.
Despite the fact that burning wood chip produces half as much energy and MORE CO2 than burning coal.
Your genius Government at work.
You could triple our wind and solar capacity and you would STILL need coal or gas backup for days like this (that happen most winters).
Also why does the Graun article read like it was not intended for a UK audience, the phrasing is very iffy:
It was probably copy-pasted from a US climate lobbying group’s press-release. Churnalism at its finest.
‘The use of zero-carbon renewables…’
Do you mean Zero-Electricity unsustainable output, unreliable?
Naturally, eco lunatics will now have to attack Tesla owners as their cars use one of the dirtiest sources of energy possible?
Here’s another site that gives both current and historical perspectives on electricity demand and the various different sources of supply. Renewables are about as useful as a chocolate teapot in current weather conditions: http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
The Net Zero lunacy will only end if we refuse to vote for the Westminster Uni-Party.
There’s no point switching from Con to Labour or LibDem: they all operate basically the same policies.
If you want Reform, vote for it.
Telegraph readers can have a laugh at Ben Marlow’s piece, and comments btl
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/12/13/wind-doesnt-blow-sometimes-coal-cant-answer/
Serious point being picked up, at last. Marlow claims “wind has provided 28.5pc of our total energy output over the past year.”
No. It was 28.5% of Electricity, which is about 20% of total energy. The greedy greenies like you to forget energy needed in agriculture, industry, transport, heating etc.
There are only 3 kinds of ON DEMAND energy—– Gas,Nuclear and COAL. I keep hearing about the “transition to renewables”. But this is absurd. Renewables are not ON DEMAND. They are part time energy solutions. They are at best a supplement to Nuclear coal and gas, which provide energy 24 hours a day everyday. This NET ZERO nonsense, which is pretending that the impossible is possible, and burying heads in the sand as to cost is quite astonishing.