On 11th May an article appeared on the BBC website with the heading “Renewable energy projects worth billions stuck on hold”). It bemoaned the fact that [b]illions of pounds’ worth of green energy projects are on hold because they cannot plug into the UK’s electricity system” and stated that “[s]ome new solar and wind sites are waiting up to 10 to 15 years to be connected because of a lack of capacity in the system…”.

This evening, BBC Radio 4’s PM programme followed up with an interview between Evan Davis and Ben Wilson, Chief Strategy Officer for the National Grid, which contained more than a few interesting snippets.

ED: Now, if you build a new wind or solar farm, helping to de-carbonise the electricity grid in Great Britain, be aware you might have to wait fifteen years for National Grid to connect your facility to the Grid. In fact, there are real worries that it is the Grid which is the constraint on building up renewable energy. Ofgem wants things to change, it says the current National Grid regime is not fit for purpose, some of the delays are unacceptable. National Grid wants thinks to change, but why is there such a problem? Earlier I spoke to Ben Wilson, Chief Strategy Officer for National Grid, and I asked him if I wanted to build a wind farm, what would the process of connecting it to the Grid be?

BW: You have to come to us with an application, and so you have to indicate the size of the project, where the project will be located. We then work out where on the existing network that will need to connect in to, and then that in turn would determine what new infrastructure is required. And then we’ll work out whether any reinforcement of the network deeper into the network is required. Large-scale connections will then have an impact on power flows on the Grid as a whole. If we can connect you without doing that additional reinforcement initially, we will do that, and then we will make a connection offer to you which will have a date in it and will detail those works. If that’s acceptable you then accept that, and then you are in the connection queue, you’re in the connection pipeline for your connection.

ED: How long will I have to wait to get connected to the Grid?

BW: We’ve got about 170 Gw of connections in the pipeline, and more than half of that is within a…is being offered a connection day within twelve months of what has been requested by the customer, so essentially is on time. And that ranges between sort of now through to about ten years from now depending on the scale of the project.

ED: So hang on, there are people waiting ten years to connect their projects. Obviously, they probably won’t build the project if they’re not going to be able to connect it for ten years, but, but, but well theoretically if I order now I might be told “Yes we’ll fit you in in 2033”.

BW: If you want to connect a very large, many hundreds of megawatts or even a gigawatt scale, offshore wind farm, and if you’re coming new in a place which requires new transmission infrastructure to be built to connect that, then it can take that long, absolutely, to offer you the capacity. And that’s a function of what’s already in the connections system ahead of you and it’s also a function of how long it takes to build a new transmission line.

ED: Everybody – the regulator, the investors in renewables and National Grid – everybody agrees we’ve got to speed this up if we’re going to meet any kind of 2035 target for de-carbonising the electricity system. I understand it takes a long time to get planning to build transmission cables and all of that, I understand that. Why there is a queue; why – it sounds like the old GPO, you know, when you ordered a telephone and there would be a big wait for two months while they would deign to install it for you. Why do you not just have the resources, once you’ve got the permission, to get on with the work?

BW: So, it’s, again, we’ve got to come back to the scale point to start with. So peak demand on the system is about 50 Gw today, and I just mentioned that at National Grid alone we have 170 Gw in the queue, and I think for the system as a whole it’s more like 280 Gw. So we are dealing with a transition here where we have multiples of the entire system in the queue ahead of us, so this is a, you know, an absolute step-change and inflection point, so that scale point can’t be made strongly enough. We do need to make changes: so we have a strict first come first served system at the moment under UK regulation where if you come and make a connections application you go back to the back of the queue even though not all the projects in front of you are actually ready to connect at the date they’ve been offered or in fact may ever connect. So we’re advocating for what we call “connect or move”, which means if you’re not ready at the date that you’ve been offered, then you have to get out of the way. So we don’t want people sitting in the queue blocking people behind them who have got ready to go…

ED: Projects which are ready…

BW: Yeah, exactly.

ED: How much difference are all the measures you’re proposing and Ofgem are proposing – the change in the queue – how much difference is this going to make? Or do you see this as just carry all the way through to 2035?

BW: I see the collective changes that we have been proposing, that Ofgem has been proposing today, I see those making a significant difference. So we could see years come off certain applications. So we will start to see that coming through. It is important to note, though, the targets for 2030 and for 2035, they are ambitious targets, there is risk attached to them, and we do collectively all need to do things differently if we’re going to hit those targets.

ED: Just a final one. Shouldn’t you have seen this coming, that we needed to adapt the Grid to the 2035 carbon tar…the target for de-carbonising electricity? And it’s been obvious for quite a while that we’re not…that the Grid is slowing the whole process down?

BW: You know, I’d point to the progress that has already been made. You know, the UK is one of the most de-carbonised advanced economies, I think our national emissions, the last time they were this low was in the 1890s, so I think we have seen this coming and a lot of progress has already been made. But the scale of transition ahead of us – these are, you know, once in several generations worth of changes, the scale of this means that everybody’s got to come together and push through these changes if it’s going to happen. It’s not for one company or for one party alone to deliver.

ED: Ben Wilson there, the Chief Strategy Officer at National Grid.

54 Comments

  2. “So hang on, there are people waiting ten years to connect their projects.”

    To be fair, it’ll probably take Nat Grid only a year or two to carry out the physical infrastructure installations, but maybe 8 to overcome the inevitable objections and lawfare of Greens & enviros regarding a proposed route.

    https://midsuffolk.greenparty.org.uk/2022/04/28/greens-call-for-undersea-electricity-grid/

    “As concern and opposition grow to National Grid proposals for huge new electricity pylons and cables from Norwich to Tilbury, the Green Party has proposed a radically different approach for getting power from wind turbines to the main areas of consumer demand. Some opponents to more and bigger pylons stretching across East Anglia have already pointed to the possibility of undersea cables to carry power further afield, notably towards London and its surrounding suburbs.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-64913250

    “Opponents of a 112-mile (180km) line of pylons have welcomed an electricity transmission review of East Anglia.
    National Grid’s proposed network of pylons, from Norwich to Tilbury in Essex, would carry electricity generated by offshore wind farms.”

    https://www.nationalgrid.com/electricity-transmission/document/146091/download

    “In summary, the capital costs of the options considered are as follows:
    • AC onshore option (Norwich/Bramford/Tilbury) at 6.9GW £793.50m
    • HVDC offshore (Norwich/Tilbury) at 4GW £2,028.20m
    • HVDC offshore (Norwich/Tilbury) at 6GW £3,104.90m
    • HVDC offshore (Norwich/Bramford/Tilbury) at 6GW £4,168.40m
    With lifetime costs as follows:
    • AC onshore option (Norwich/Bramford/Tilbury) at 6.9GW £1,136.00m
    • HVDC offshore (Norwich/Tilbury) at 4GW £3,769.00m £2,475.00m
    • HVDC offshore (Norwich/Tilbury) at 6GW £5,654.00m £3,713.00m
    • HVDC offshore (Norwich/Bramford/Tilbury) at 6GW £7,332.10m £5,099.83m

    NB – “This letter was updated and republished in January 2023 with updated lifetime cost figures”

    Liked by 2 people

  3. They’ve got applications whose total capacity is THREE TIMES the peak demand. It’s a feeding frenzy. Renewables companies are frantically trying to cash on on a highly lucrative profit-making business funded by the tax payer and bill payers. They are NEVER going to connect the majority of those applications, even if they can re-engineer the national grid to accommodate 100% penetration of renewables.

    Liked by 2 people

  5. Jaime,

    For me, that was one of the key matters revealed by the interview. This was another:

    …You have to come to us with an application, and so you have to indicate the size of the project, where the project will be located. We then work out where on the existing network that will need to connect in to, and then that in turn would determine what new infrastructure is required. And then we’ll work out whether any reinforcement of the network deeper into the network is required….

    And this was another:

    …It is important to note, though, the targets for 2030 and for 2035, they are ambitious targets, there is risk attached to them…

    …But the scale of transition ahead of us – these are, you know, once in several generations worth of changes, the scale of this means that everybody’s got to come together and push through these changes if it’s going to happen….

    The scale of the transition is massive. It’s expensive, it’s disruptive, it’s very difficult. So why are we doing it? Needless to say Mr Davis didn’t pick up on any of the real issues revealed by his interviewee. He didn’t ask about the cost, he didn’t ask about the risk, he didn’t really ask anything about the difficulties involved. Still, an alert listener will have picked up that all of these issues exist.

    Of course, when we are continuously told (wrongly) that renewable energy is cheaper than gas, none of these costs or difficulties are factored in to that sum.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. “Damned By Their Silence: What Happened to the Grid Engineers Who Fought For Reliable Power?”

    https://stopthesethings.com/2023/05/18/damned-by-their-silence-what-happened-to-the-grid-engineers-who-fought-for-reliable-power/

    Engineers built reliable and affordable power supplies; ideologues obsessed with intermittent wind and solar are rapidly dismantling them. Why engineers allowed that to happen is something of a mystery.

    Sure, renewable energy rent-seekers have exploited opportunities created around ‘saving the planet’ by purportedly ridding it of man-made carbon dioxide gas by using wind turbines and solar panels (which do neither).

    And, yes, a naïve and gullible political class – backed by an equally naïve and gullible press – have provided the basis for the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time.

    But to explain how disciplined professionals, who actually know what they are talking about, to allow it to happen, is something else.

    Bureaucracies are naturally bloated and filled with dimwits and yes-men. Regulators are usually in on the scam (whatever it might be) – with those employed always eager to join those that they’re meant to be regulating and benefit from a substantial uplift in their pay scale.

    In this essay, Russell Schussler attempts to explain how and why the experts who built our reliable and affordable power supplies have run silent and allowed the world to fall for the fantasy of an all wind and sun powered future.

    Worth a read, IMO.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Perhaps the moral code of grid engineers should be ‘first do no harm’ and they should stick to that, rather than abandon it under pressure from their ideologically driven and financially persuaded managers and employers. Rather like doctors and nurses abandoned this fundamental pledge during the Covid crisis and remained largely silent in order to keep their jobs.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. At this moment in time the Grid is running at 79% generation and 21% imported . The wind on most of the country is a bit variable but mostly moderate 13mph it can only produce13% wind, solar 17%. Do we have Gridlock in the North Sea or is the sun shining to much ? 13mph seems to be a decent speed for the high efficiency blades or is it a bit fluffy today ?

    Liked by 2 people

  10. Jaime
    Being presumptuous and speaking on behalf of other power station/ grid engineers, we have very little if any influence on the decisions made about developments and operations. Go through directors & senior management of the companies and see how many are first, heavy electrical engineers, and then how many have had a proper career in the coal face of the industry. There are more people on boards because of diversity box ticking than those actually know and understand the industry. Often the CEOs don’t.
    Then there is all the political and activist shareholder influence on board decisions. Are Blackrock or the like there? Institutional investors are often the worst – the demented reef fish.
    Planning Engineer at Climate Etc has written a number of articles on the issue of warnings and potential industry problems, one of which Mark linked to. No doubt many engineers have written reports warning of the dangers, which may come out if a collapse happened. Until that blackout happens, no-one will do anything. Then in the witch hunt afterwards, the guilty decisionmakers will weasel out.

    Liked by 4 people

  11. Chris,

    There were a few things which stood out to me from Russell Schussler’s essay at Climate Etc. The first is the siloing of experts into highly specific fields and the creation of a silo mentality among workers, such that very few had sufficient breadth of knowledge and general expertise to enable a focus on the bigger picture of grid reliability. The second is the apparent prevalent culture of belief among grid engineers and other utilities personnel in the moral propriety of ‘going Green’ – even to the point that they would stack the deck in favour of Green hopium, a kind of altruistic wishful thinking enabled by the aforementioned silo effect. The author says:

    “Despite what you may have heard, most engineers want to be environmentally responsible. Instead of being opposed to new technology, most of us have sought to support potential “green” applications that had at least small hopes of promise. I was never aware of anyone stacking the deck against “green” options, but the reverse frequently occurred.”

    This prevalent culture operated to disincentivize any dissent among the ranks:

    “/ There were few to no near-term incentives for individual utility experts or for utilities corporately to speak up as regard planned threats to reliability
    / There were significant near-term disincentives for speaking up.”

    I can imagine one of those disincentives was the threat of being fired.

    But the most shocking of all is the transition of the corporate responsibility of utilities from ensuring grid reliability to ensuring compliance with reliability standards set by a higher authority:

    “Perhaps the greatest impact came in the shift of responsibilities. Utilities used to have responsibility for ensuring reliability. They had skin in the game. They had a number of tools including generation and transmission options to better ensure reliability. But regulation by FERC through NERC, took the reliability function away from utilities. Utilities are no longer responsible for ensuring reliability. They are responsible for compliance with reliability standards. That was a profound and consequential change. Utilities are no longer developing reliability experts; they are developing experts in standards compliance. When outages occur, it’s hard to figure out where blame lies now. Will there ever again be grid experts who have skin in the game again?”

    So, utilities are no longer responsible for the safety and functionality of the grid; they just have to ensure they comply with overarching regulations. This is eerily similar to the sea-change which has occurred at the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, admitted to by the head herself, June Raine, who says that the principal role of the MHRA is not to aggressively regulate the safety of drugs but to ‘facilitate the speedy authorisation of safe drugs to market’, an ‘enabler’ rather than a watchdog.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Jaime
    Every country has its own grid management and electricity system. That means what may be happening in one place is not replicated in others. The US is not the same as Australia or NZ. It doesn’t appear to be the same as UK. What the US has as the utility in say Georgia is a lot more encompassing than say National Grid in UK or AEMO in Australia. This is why one has to be wary of extrapolations.
    If you go back to PE’s passage you quoted “But regulation by FERC through NERC, took the reliability function away from utilities. Utilities are no longer responsible for ensuring reliability. They are responsible for compliance with reliability standards.” The political bureaucracy changed the rules without regard to the views of the grid engineers. Invariably the lawyers and economists have more say in them than engineers do. Have a read of those rules and see if you can understand them, let alone run something to meet then. Compliance is often ensured by eyewatering fines on companies. And companies take it out on their staff. In those situations, what does one do? Meet the rules, no matter how stupid they are, and cover your arse.
    If you work among power station people, you would quickly recognise why siloing occurs. To understand parts of a system in an engineering context, you need a very deep knowledge within a very narrow field. It is very hard to communicate the issues to someone with even a basic understanding. There are many concepts hard for people to understand, even for those working in other parts of the same workplace. The interactions between turbines, generators, transmission components, and protection systems especially under fault conditions, cross many boundaries both physical and specialisation. I haven’t met anyone who understands the lot at anything more that a superficial engineer’s level though they can know their part very thoroughly. The grid rules take very few of these issues into account.
    I can understand why Ben Wison was expressing reticence. The politicians have a plan not based on engineering reality. They believe legislation will get compliance from the laws of physics. He is expressing the company line, not his own opinion. He can’t say things will turn to custard or will even that it will cost megabucks, though he might well know that. Politicians and bureaucrats are really vindictive when cornered.
    To increase capacity of a grid, you just can’t make the lines bigger. You have to do a huge amount of protection work going through all the scenarios of generating under different condition or what happens in faults. Then you need to plan how you will meet those challenges. That is long before the first sod is turned. But the bureaucratic morons can’t understand this.
    It is only when things go wrong that focus occurs. Then the rules do catchup. Go back to AEMO South Australia blackout in 2016 or Odessa Texas trip in 2021 & 2022 to see the problems discovered by compliance with the rules.

    Liked by 5 people

  14. Jaime
    I have to declare a vested interest. I co-authored a number of articles on the Australian grid with PE. I know it is very hard to write about analysis of technical issues at a level lay people can understand.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. Chris,

    Your efforts to communicate the problems of adapting grid infrastructure to renewables to the wider public are effective and necessary.
    I do appreciate that aspects of grid function are extremely complex and almost impossible to understand by non specialists, even trained engineers, let alone the general public. What I would say though is that, up until the point when ‘renewables’ started to seriously perturb the operational effectiveness of the grid, national grids worked reliably and predictably and minor perturbations due to extreme weather, lightning strikes etc., were dealt with efficiently and effectively. There must have been experts with overall wide knowledge of the system to oversee the putting together of the components of the system in such a way that it functioned reliably, interconnected, as a whole. Those experts seem to be absent with regard to designing/updating ‘sustainable’ and ‘smart’ grids. It seems to be a case of ‘bolt on the extras and hope for the best’.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Jaime
    What makes you think politicians would seek, let alone listen to the advice of people who know what they are talking about? We are seen as stick in the muds or dinosaurs. Those bright young thinks with PPEs or the shiny suits are masters of the universe. Dissent is not tolerated.
    Look at how the CEO of Pacific Hydro was dumped because he told the Minister Snowy 2 pumped storage was a dog and they were wasting your time trying to build a CCGT to run on hydrogen when the fuel didn’t exist. The whole industry worldwide noted this and buried their heads back in their shells. The only ones saying things are the retired and semi-retired as we don’t have to worry about careers.

    Liked by 3 people

  17. Chris,

    “What makes you think politicians would seek, let alone listen to the advice of people who know what they are talking about?”

    I don’t think that. Never have. They are arrogant, unthinking, uncaring fools. But the public; they might listen to that advice, offered to politicians, especially when they are left in the dark on cold winter nights or forced to have their electricity rationed, and they might say ‘why the bloody hell didn’t you listen to expert advice?’

    Liked by 1 person

  19. The public doesn’t listen to the advice because it is not put to them. The elites receiving it ignore as it doesn’t fit the narrative. The Covid machinations showed that contrary views are not allowed. And look how power prices rises are explained – unreliable thermal generation is the current excuse isn’t it. Where are the Yellow Jackets?
    If one reads the AEMO technical reports, the warnings are there for Australian politicians. I am certain similar documents are there for other grids. However, the grid works on multiple factors of contingency cover that there needs to be a number of serious events occur concurrently for a major event to happen. That is why they aren’t appearing – just two or three of the four layers are used. When they do, it will be one-offs with bandaid patches until they can no longer deny them. That is when the no-one told us excuses come out. But until the lights no longer go on, everyone up top believes all is well and no issues.

    Like

  20. I could post this on so many threads, but it seems topical to put it here for now:

    “Wind farm curtailment costs see Scottish renewable power ‘wasted'”

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/23532508.wind-farm-curtailment-costs-see-scottish-renewable-power-wasted/

    The National, being IMO the SNP’s version of Pravda, pushes the idea that Scotland is suffering because of UK government folly, but in the process unwittingly demonstrates that the real folly was devastating Scotland’s wild places and wildlife by going on a windfarm-building frenzy when the infrastructure to cope with it wasn’t in place:

    FIVE-HUNDRED and seven million pounds. That’s how much was added onto British energy bills in 2021 alone because of fees the National Grid has to pay wind farms to shut down.

    That money – an increase on the £299m which was spent in 2020 for the same reason – was “utterly wasted”, SNP MP Philippa Whitford told the Sunday National, because there is not the capacity to send the renewable power generated in Scotland to where it is needed.

    The £806m in “curtailment costs” – 82% of which was paid to wind farms north of the Border – arose because the National Grid has not been upgraded sufficiently to handle the renewable power that Scotland can generate….

    Liked by 1 person

  21. That’s a very enlightening read Mark. It emphasises the fact that National grid have not built the interconnectors to transport this electricity to where it is needed, or could be used, in the islands and in England. Yet we’re busy building the Viking Link in Lincolnshire to transport renewable electricity from Norway!
    Besides that, the huge potential for pumped hydro storage and hydrogen storage is not being exploited in Scotland. Instead, our government is obsessed with huge batteries, which are resource intensive, extremely expensive, and hopelessly ineffective.
    It’s all about money. Short term massive profits for crony Green capitalists. National Grid knows that it cannot possibly incorporate these huge pulses of renewable electricity into the grid during times of high winds in Scotland – the infrastructure just isn’t there. So instead of investing in proven energy storage (pumped hydro has been around since the 60s), which would reduce bills for consumers, instead they just turn off the turbines and the renewables companies and investors profit handsomely for doing NOTHING.
    It’s happening in Germany:
    “Together, these suggest that limiting emissions is at best a secondary goal. There is of course the puzzling mania to phase out nuclear power, but there are many other things too. This Twitter thread, for example, draws attention to the general hostility of Agora Energiewende to energy storage, which is crucial for any grid that is to be powered by intermittent energy sources like wind and solar. Agora has churned out statement after statement declaring that “the energy transition need not wait for power storage facilities,” until the grid runs on 60% or more renewable power. The little-noticed effect of this neglect, is to make the market for reserve power much more lucrative. The more intermittent energy sources there are in the grid, the more participants in this limited market can earn, either by taking payments to reduce energy consumption, or by supplying expensive short-term reserve power to counteract intermittent production. Investments in storage technology would destroy the possibility of profiting from intermittency, and it’s very likely for this reason that nobody is interested.”
    https://www.eugyppius.com/p/energy-transitioner-in-chief-patrick

    Liked by 1 person

  22. Mark
    Curtailment (and the costs associated with it) are going to happen more and more often. Rather than rewrite what is covered elsewhere, and trying to avoid link kiting, we cover it in the articles on Australian grid in Climate etc. South Australia has to do it near daily and keep the GTs on.
    Even if the lines had of been built, there can be major problems in transporting the unreliable generation long distances. As the output swings, the VARs change even more and the voltages become hard to control. Lightly loaded lines can be a nightmare. Can be cured but needs a lot more infrastructure than just transmission lines. When one looks at the construction cost numbers, the curtailment may be a cheaper option than overbuilding to carry everything south.

    Liked by 1 person

  23. @All – Seems the “your fault National Grid/Central Gov” finger pointing has finally started re the “renewable power wasted” reality that is finally hitting home (in some countries).

    as Chris says above – “That is when the no-one told us excuses come out. But until the lights no longer go on, everyone up top believes all is well and no issues.”

    I would only add, for the UK, it beggar’s belief that so many “renewable power” projects were given the go ahead without the National Grid saying something like “not so fast, we don’t have the infrastructure to cope with this many”

    Like

  24. ps – just read comment last line from Chris above –
    “Can be cured but needs a lot more infrastructure than just transmission lines. When one looks at the construction cost numbers, the curtailment may be a cheaper option than overbuilding to carry everything south.”

    not sure if you are talking about UK, but as Jaime pointed out above –

    “It emphasises the fact that National grid have not built the interconnectors to transport this electricity to where it is needed, or could be used, in the islands and in England. Yet we’re busy building the Viking Link in Lincolnshire to transport renewable electricity from Norway!”

    will this madness never end.

    Like

  25. dfh
    I was talking about the UK and getting power from the north of Scotland down into the middle of England. What I meant by the comment was as well as the transmission lines there is a lot more equipment needed. From prices seen, it can be more than the lines cost. I gather it would be a central spine rather than cross-connected parallel paths. They would need to minimise the tie ins of the spine so easier to built a totally new line than restring existing ones. Because the lines will have significant periods with little or no generation at
    the ends of the spurs, you will need at the very least statcoms at generation sites to control line voltages. There will also need to be syncons down the spine to provide inertia if you have islanding. Any smaller parallel circuits will probably need phase shifting equipment to limit spring washers. The protection system needs major uprating and probably new switchyards built. There will also need to be massive batteries (I assume GTs are a nono for Zero Carbon) to provide reserves. I believe all those terms were covered in Climate Etc articles to save tedious definitions here.
    I’m from the generation side of the grid, rather than transmission so I will stand corrected by someone with more knowledge.
    Connecting two full grids by DC (the Lincolnshire to Norway lines) is often a cheaper cost that bringing in the equivalent in new build generation. This is because as long as the DC is less than about 10% of grid load, and it’s a strong grid node it is connected to, both grids don’t need major upgrades.
    All the above can be done. The British consumer has to decide if the benefits are worth the cost. I don’t think they will which I would agree with.

    Like

  26. I tried several times posting a response to dfh (no links or naughty words) but the system didn’t seem to like it.
    I will try later

    Like

  27. Chris,

    It’s just wordpress again. I had to release your comment from spam.

    Like

  28. Chris,

    It seems to have appeared now. Apologies for the vagaries of WordPress.

    Like

  30. From what I can gather, the Viking Link interconnector is a high voltage DC twin power cable linking AC-DC converter stations at Bicker Fen, Lincs, UK and Revsing, Jutland, Denmark. National Grid is selling it as ‘importing renewable energy’ and it seems that Revsing is connected to the offshore Horns Rev wind farms in Denmark (infamous for those photos of wind shadow revealed by condensing water vapour). The Viking link is 765km long! Probably the world’s longest interconnector, which begs the question: why can’t National grid build something similar (of much shorter length) to transport electricity generated by Scottish wind farms to Middle England? What am I missing here?

    Like

  31. Jaime
    Bicker Fen and Revsing are very likely to be strong grid nodes. Where would the DC start in Scotland? The other big factor is how reliable the power is at the sending point – the load factor of the line. For wind maybe 30%. For something tapped into Norwegian Hydro and the European nukes maybe 80%. Economics look at the line loading in pence per MWh.. The other thing is the more interties your grid has, the more secure. If there are multiple AC, you get plagued by circulating currents, so DC is good for interties.
    In general terms, DC is cheaper than AC if longer than 50km in water and about 750lm on land. DC is point to point. AC often has tie-ins. These add to the costs.

    Liked by 1 person

  34. Chris M: many thanks for your input here, and elsewhere, which confirms that, to borrow a climateer cliche, it’s worse than we thought.

    Lacking your expertise, I thought this excerpt from the interview just defied common sense:
    “So peak demand on the system is about 50 Gw today, and I just mentioned that at National Grid alone we have 170 Gw in the queue, and I think for the system as a whole it’s more like 280 Gw. So we are dealing with a transition here where we have multiples of the entire system in the queue ahead of us, so this is a, you know, an absolute step-change and inflection point, so that scale point can’t be made strongly enough.”

    In addition, there’s no mention of the point that most of this massive hike in generation will be connecting to the periphery of the grid whereas, historically, the flow has been in the opposite direction. That must add to the challenge.

    Like

  36. Jaime. I apologise for not writing in terminology you can understand, but if I had explain each of the terms and how they fit together, it would take a textbook. In the Dilbert dictum “Do you want the simple but misleading explanation or the one you won’t understand?” I was trying for the middle but it looked like I missed. Sorry about that. But the takeaway is that to allow for all the unreliable intermittent generation from remote sites, the grid will cost megabucks and take decades to build.

    Mike – it isn’t that unusual to have generation some distance from load centres. Think of where the nukes are. All those 170GW of “generation” plans are kiteflying to attract subsidies. That is what they harvest.

    DFH
    They are trying to sell their power electronics (which is good) A solution looking for a problem.

    Rephrasing and simplifying what I had previously written. Think of grids or sub- grids that contain both generation and load centres. They about balance so can run without power from outside. There are a number of these that are or can be independent of each other. It can be very beneficial to electrically connect the two grids so that aa surplus in one area can be used in the other. However, the connecting lines need to be heavy duty to take large loads. At both ends, they need terminals/ switchyards well connected to their own grids so power can get to or away from the connector. The connection lines are interconnectors or interties. In general, they go across political boundaries or between big islands. If the two grids are well tied together, they may run at exactly the same frequency and phase angle using AC interconnectors. Think of the North European grid France to Poland where a lot of power goes across the borders. If the two grids have different timing of their frequency, undersea connections or a long way apart, it is DC.

    We have a cynical saying. The three parameters of electricity are that it can be clean, cheap, reliable. You can only choose two. What would it be?
    I .

    Liked by 4 people

  37. Chris; thanks for that correction. I should have given my comment a little more thought before posting: Wylfa is certainly on the periphery!

    Liked by 1 person

  38. Chris – thanks for the response.
    I like your “cynical saying. The three parameters of electricity are that it can be clean, cheap, reliable. You can only choose two. What would it be?”

    My 1st thought/answer would be “cheap + reliable” but seems that is not an option for net zero UK. If I answered “clean + reliable” for the UK that’s when “cheap” goes out the window.

    “clean + cheap” is a tricky option, maybe Nuclear power?

    Like

  39. DFh
    Clean and cheap is wind and solar. The lights go out at sundown or when the wind stops blowing though.
    Now how many would opt for the realities of this option if giving a choice?

    Like

  40. Chris – just flipped a switch to turn on the light & sat at my computer to read/respond to comments.
    my only worry up till now was a light bulb may need replaced or disc failure on the pc.
    the things we take for granted thru the existing grid hits home with your last comment – https://youtu.be/ratQlft_G5c

    Like

  41. It is not only the UK that has realised they can’t build the transmission lines to go from generation to load. The US have got it a lot worse. They had that line from Quebec to New York to bring down hydro power which was canned because of opposition. Then there was 17 years to get a line in California. Now there is this in Nevada.
    https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Mammoths-Sloths-And-Camels-Are-Hurting-The-US-Renewable-Revolution.html
    One would almost believe that the activist opponents don’t want the plebs to have any electricity, even if it does come from windmills. Or is everything supposed to run on unicorn droppings?

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  42. Chris,

    What a dilemma for “greens”. They insist we have to stop using fossil fuels and replace them with renewables, because of the damage fossil fuels are causing to the environment. Then it slowly dawns on them that renewables kill bats and birds, require intensive mining, complex infrastructure, building in pristine and valuable locations etc, etc. What to do? It seems to me that we have a choice. We can continue using fossil fuels, which (contrary to the relentless propaganda) are cheaper and more reliable than renewables, while working out over a sensible time-frame how we can transition away from them; we can trash our economies and the environment by rushing to try to achieve the unachievable net zero (which will also involve the lights going out); or we can just give up, let the lights go out now, and go back to living in mud huts. None of the options are great, but I’ve listed them in order of preference. Only a religious zealot could think that options 2 or 3 make any kind of sense, IMO.

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  43. Chris,

    Note how the author of that article constantly interchanges ‘transmission line’ with ‘transition line’ throughout. I understand the concept of an electrical transmission line. What though is a ‘transition line’? The excessive and apparently unconscious use of the curious term ‘transition line’ to describe a physical transmission line is a dead giveaway – this is a technical challenge, but one which is steeped in an ideological imperative – the ‘transition’ away from fossil fuels. As such, it is doomed to fail, as the author tacitly admits:

    Present estimates figure that more than a million miles of additional transition lines will be needed to prepare the grid for the renewable revolution, meaning that the current system will have to increase by two or three times its current size in just a couple of decades. “The current power grid was constructed over more than a century,” The New York Times recently reported. “Building what amounts to a new power grid on a similar scale in a small fraction of that time is a daunting challenge.”

    It’s not a daunting challenge, it’s an impossible challenge.

    Liked by 1 person

  44. On the Occam’s razor principle and the inference that Engish is not her first language, I would say her spellcheck just auto-corrected to the wrong term. And yes, it was an appropriate change.
    Almost everyone who knows anything about the workings of grids knows that it can’t be done. The activists don’t care if it can or not – facts are irrelevant. I suspect they want it to be impossible but to bankrupt the West trying. Politicians are just not very clever dolts with no intellectual horsepower. Anyone who wants to be one should be automatically disqualified from the job. The majority of citizenry aren’t interested until and unless it directly affects them but can be bought off with baubles and tawdry promises. We have reaped what was sown.

    Liked by 3 people

  45. As someone who knew absolutely nothing about grids and was totally unaware of any future problems, might I offer a potential solution. That is to do the changes necessary in stages. If the problem is the integration of energy from distant and dispersed renewable energy locations, why not start at those locations and gradually extend away from them, removing electricity supplied from conventional (=horrid fossil fuels) at the same time?

    I suspect I’m guilty of sucking eggs and offering advice to others on how to do it. But how else will I learn?

    Like

  47. Chris,

    Occam’s Razor is blunted somewhat by the fact that Haley Zaremba, though based in Mexico City, and having a foreign sounding surname, has a long list of articles written in near perfect English, from what I can see. Also, her spell checker seems to be on the blink because sometimes it auto-corrects ‘transition’ to ‘transmission’ (or vice versa) and sometimes it doesn’t!

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  48. Chris – as you can see from this thread, your input/feedback is much appreciated.

    not sure what age you are, but sounds like we need 1000’s more like you or similar types, to even stand a chance with this.

    just to be cheeky – if I was a young person, would you say Lecy/power engineering is a good future?

    Like

  49. I’m a pensioner, but still in the workforce helping train the next generation of engineers among my other jobs.
    I believe there will be a good and rewarding future for heavy/ high voltage electrical engineers and power station engineers in general. The current workforce is really top-heavy with gray-hairs. The grid won’t be going away and once power cuts start, steamers and nukes will be very much top of the agenda for any popularist government coming in.

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  51. “Warning over eco-friendly Reading homes hampered by electricity cap”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-66845442

    Plans for eco-friendly new homes could be hampered by restrictions on the electricity supply, a council has warned.

    Reading Borough Council said Scottish and Southern Electricity’s (SSE) had set a cap on some new connections.

    It said it prevented heat pumps and electric vehicle charging points being installed on some housing developments.

    SSE said it was making “every effort” to fulfil requests to connect to the network.

    The council said the increasing number of restrictions could hamper its plan to become a “net-zero carbon town” by 2030.

    It said it meant future developments of between 50 and 100 homes that use heat pumps or electric vehicle charging points are unable to secure the electricity network capacity needed to meet the council’s C Local Plan requirements.

    Other projects in Reading which may fall foul of the new restrictions include a proposed solar farm and the installation of more than 5,000 new charging points as part of the council’s new Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Strategy.

    Like

  52. “£16 Billion of Scottish Wind Energy Is Blown Away”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/31/16-billion-of-scottish-wind-energy-is-blown-away/

    “Inefficient transmission of wind power from Scotland to England is projected to waste over £16 billion this decade due to regulatory and planning failures, resulting in higher electricity bills for consumers. This is Money has the story.

    The cost, calculated by think-tank Carbon Tracker, is expected to find its way into higher electricity bills for cash-strapped households and businesses.

    The average energy bill is £1,928 a year, falling to £1,690 a year from April 1st. 

    The problem arises because, although the U.K. is a wind super-power, there are not enough cables to take renewable electricity from Scotland, where most of it is produced, to England, where most of it is needed.

    When bottlenecks arise, wind farms are paid to switch off their turbines, and gas stations in England are paid extra to supply the necessary electricity.

    The system, known as curtailment, cost more than £700 million in 2023, with a further £140 million spent in January and February of this year alone.

    But costs are expected to shoot up, as offshore wind farms continue to grow, while cable construction remains mired in long drawn-out approval processes.”

    Liked by 1 person

  53. Mark – “although the U.K. is a wind super-power” has to be an April fool joke given the rest of the article.

    From the Money article –

    “Last week, regulator Ofgem said it would fast-track a so-called ‘electricity superhighway’ between Scotland and England with an additional £2 billion in funds. The proposed subsea cables could transport wind-generated electricity between East Lothian and County Durham.

    And earlier this year, ESO, the electricity system operator, unveiled Beyond 2030, a £58billion plan to ensure power can be transported more effectively around the UK in future. Beyond 2030 estimates that electricity demand will be 65 per cent higher in 2035 than it is today, fuelled by a growing reliance on electric cars and heating.”

    Nobody seems to be able to add 2+2 in this “wind super-power” fiasco, which I call “Pissing money in the wind”

    Liked by 1 person

  54. “Capacity crunch: why the UK doesn’t have the power to solve the housing crisis

    Our inadequate electricity network is stopping the building of thousands of new homes. And the necessary move to low-carbon heating and cars is only increasing demand”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/04/capacity-crunch-why-the-uk-doesnt-have-the-power-to-solve-housing-crisis

    Oxford has a severe housing problem. With house prices 12 times the average salary, it has become one of the least affordable cities in the country. Its council house waiting list has grown to more than 3,000 households, with many having to live in temporary accommodation.

    An obvious solution is to build more homes, but those trying to do this face a big barrier: electricity.

    “When I talk to developers or potential developers, one of the first questions they now ask me is about grid capacity,” says Susan Brown, leader of Oxford city council.

    With housing developments competing for power against energy-hungry tech companies and the city’s increasingly electrified transport network, connection prospects are a matter of concern for housebuilders.

    “The problem [for developers] is securing sufficient energy, and the time it takes to connect to the grid,” Brown says.…

    …And as households move away from using fossil fuels to heat homes and power cars, the challenge will only grow.

    “We can see examples of developments being knocked back because of grid capacity,” says energy expert Adam Bell of Stonehaven Consulting. “That problem will only get worse in the future without expansion of the distribution network.”…

    …In a country where electricity use is expected to increase by 50% by 2035, as millions of electric cars and domestic heat pumps are plugged in, the transmission network will require significant upgrades, at a cost of tens of billions of pounds. But it is at the distribution level, the A-roads, that the biggest roadblocks come for housing developments.

    The operators are often left waiting for major National Grid transmission upgrades to provide extra capacity to their network, but the five-year funding cycles set by regulator Ofgem mean local upgrade plans can become outdated as demand changes.

    Bell says: “These [cycles] made sense in a slow-paced world where demand grew through economic growth and population growth, but now that we are electrifying stuff, more data centres are coming online and the view taken five years ago is going to be wrong.”

    Even when upgrades or new connections are agreed on, completion can take years. Spiers says this is forcing more and more developers to mothball building projects.

    The Observer has spoken to several developers who have had to scale down, change or scrap plans because of electricity capacity issues…

    …The most high-profile example of electricity shortages causing housing delays is in the west London boroughs of Hounslow, Hillingdon and Ealing. The area has become popular over recent years with data centre developers, thanks to the fibre optic cables that run along the M4 corridor to the Atlantic. Crucially, for an area with a large housing shortage, they have sucked up capacity that could have been used for vital housing schemes…

    …Situations like the one in west London will become more common as the government’s Future Homes Standard legislation turbocharges the electrification of homes. The new law, which will come into force next year, will reduce the maximum permitted carbon emissions of all new homes by 75%-80%.

    David Adams, strategic adviser at the Future Homes Hub (which was set up to develop a long-term delivery plan for the sector) says this will effectively ban the use of fossil fuels in homes, and make electric heat pumps the only option…

    …According to the National Grid electricity system operator (ESO), the body that ensures supply meets demand on the network, heat pumps will require 80 terawatt hours a year by 2050, if the country is to hit its decarbonisation goal. This is four times the current usage, but achieving this could be hampered by capacity constraints.

    Last year, Reading borough council raised concerns that its net zero housing ambitions could be curtailed because of SSEN restrictions on new connections. On a planned development of more than 220 homes with heat pumps, nearly two-thirds converted back to gas after capacity concerns were raised.

    “We had a developer that was willing to fit air source heat pumps, fit electric car chargers, but couldn’t get the capacity, and had to come back to planning so it could fit gas boilers,” says Micky Leng, the council’s planning lead. “This is a massive issue that has the potential to put the country’s race to net zero at risk.”..

    The depressing thing is that it ought to be obvious that far from this being a danger to “the country’s race to net zero”, it is net zero that is a danger to the country.

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