National Grid Share Discussion Threads

[jonwig] 08/9/2019 12:17

Both Lab and Con are questioning its role:

UK energy minister Kwasi Kwarteng has questioned whether National Grid should retain its flagship role operating the country’s electricity system following a power cut last month that disrupted more than 1m homes and businesses in England and Wales.

[henchard] 05/9/2019 23:18

Wilc42

"Why did this crash. Do people think that labour will get in and privatise."

None of the other Corbyn nationalisation targets (water companies, energy companies, Royal Mail and so on) dropped like NG. Some were even up on the day. Whatever was behind NG's fall it doesn't seem to have been nationalisation risk.

[coxsmn] 05/9/2019 20:37

During his first Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons, Mr Johnson called on Mr Corbyn to "confirm now that he will allow the people of this country to decide" in a general election on Oct 15, adding: "Or is he frit?" He continued: "I know he's worried about free trade deals with America but there's only one chlorinated chicken that I can see in this House and he's on that bench."

[bountyhunter] 05/9/2019 20:08

just the political chaos fear factor I think, I can't see a Corbyn government ever myself

[wilc42] 05/9/2019 20:05

Why did this crash. Do people think that labour will get in and privatise.

[m100] 05/9/2019 19:03

New Capacity Market evidence lodged with European Commission as High Court date looms



My only printable comment is what a bunch of grubby, subsidy chasing, market disrupting, greedy bunch of shysters.

[doggle] 05/9/2019 16:21

yeh seen that the other Day as well roby! That wont swing the sentiment though I dont think?
Glad I got out though as boris seems to be having a bad time much is the pity as Commy Corbyn will be back into the favourite spot pretty soon I bet
Will get back in when it goes down to 780!

[roby37] 05/9/2019 12:34

doggle
"What NG are doing over the pond is totally out of order!"
Two sides to that story!
New York is running out of fuel and power — just as Cuomo planned.
hxxps://nypost.com/2019/08/31/new-york-is-running-out-of-fuel-and-power-just-as-cuomo-planned/

[doggle] 02/9/2019 12:39

£ All time low by look of it!

[1carus] 02/9/2019 12:18

Why such an upturn?

[doggle] 29/8/2019 06:59

What NG are doing over the pond is totally out of order! Throwing their toys out of the pram and taking it out on their customers Old and New!
Imagine that happening here? I dont think so! Or am I wrong?
Im out of here until they get this nonsense sorted
Washington — New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered state regulators to broaden their investigation of National Grid USA's natural gas moratorium in parts of downstate New York, raising the possibility that the gas utility could be replaced in its service territories
www.newsnow.co.uk/h/Industry+Sectors/Energy/Energy+Utilities/National+Grid

[beckers2008] 23/8/2019 11:45

W,
NG. provide what is specified in the contract so of course Ofgem have an idea of what and how much etc NG. Distribute on their antiquated system that NG. control. You can only work with what you've got!
The point is that NG. have and will continue to provide costs for upgrades which has and will continue to be ignored (They stopped doing extra works up front as Ofgem screwed them so Ofgem now issue PO's before any extra/small project work commences so NG. have a good chance of getting paid!!!)
I'm afraid that Ofgem have totally screwed up. NG. don't invest in the UK anymore as the trust between the two parties has gone.
I am looking forward to continually increasing investment in the US and leaving the UK behind.

I have heard that JP is nearing completion of the impending full US listing. Of course that will come with substantial investment that sadly would have been for the UK.

Ofgem have only themselves to blame. Last one Out and all that!

[willoicc] 23/8/2019 10:48

Their knowledge is relevant if they do not understand that NG does not generate electricity, only distribute it.

If Ofgem is going to impose huge fines on NG because they tried to avoid paying huge amounts for standby generation which is only going to be called on once in a blue moon, then the cost to the consumer is going to be much higher as NG will be forced to pay for emergency standby generation in future.

[beckers2008] 23/8/2019 10:29

W,
Their technical or operational knowledge is unfortunately irrelevant as UK Gov will not spend the required funds to pay for the upgrades to provide resilience. If they did the can of worms would be publicly opened and billions needs to be spent to solve other resilient grid issues.

I hope UK Gov finally start much needed investment then NG.will reap the benefits.

[willoicc] 23/8/2019 10:28

Dermot Nolan, the chief executive, is an economist.

Does not sound like he has a lot of experience of actually running a power station or the distribution grid.

[willoicc] 23/8/2019 09:53

What experience does top management at Ofgem have in electricity generation and grid distribution?

[pierre oreilly] 23/8/2019 09:04

Yes, you are perfectly correct. Battery use is fine, but there is a massive scale mismatch. It's a drop of water in an ocean. As m100 said, any problem needs the best solution, not just any old shoehorned part solution. We have tried and tested high tech full almost perfect fit solution in nukes. Being steam plant they can supply primary response or extra generation in seconds to correct for failures such as the recent one. Their heat output changes only slowly, but their generation can change very quickly for frequency response, although you'll often hear the incorrect criticism that they can't change their generation. As well as the scale mismatch, batteries are theoretically limited in their penetration due to momentum considerations. To match the constantly varying demand instant by instant, the grid needs the angular momentum of spinning plant to absorb and release energy. The less momentum, the greater the frequency rate of change, and this is now emerging as a concern with the reduction in big steam plant.

[1carus] 22/8/2019 23:17

m100. Good response. In the media battery storage is talked about as though it is generation and the public probably don't get that you have to charge them and only offer a time limited supply. I am not saying it does not have it's place, even if it is to act as storage for renewables or even fossil fuel powered stations during off peak etc.

[m100] 22/8/2019 22:37

You don't need to cover the instantaneous demand, just the lost generation, and/or the demand around the peak, so for the UK in the current marketplace you are back into the range of something maybe 10x the capacity of the Australian Tesla battery.

The Australian one is 100MW but the capacity is probably more important, 129MWh, The cost being €56m



Lets scale it up 10x to the size of a gas fired power station, call it just over £500m for 1GW and 1.29GWh. That's quite a bit less per MW than a gas fired power station would cost to build

For instance Carrington, £800m for 884MW, plus the ongoing cost of fuel.



It's cheap and relatively easy and quick to build battery storage compared to the likes of pumped storage.

But like all storage 'solutions' you need some means to charge it, and then a market where you can sell the output for more than it cost.

Plus you need to hope the battery capacity you bought doesn't time expire before you've covered the cost of the hardware and the cost of finance.

Of course if you want to cover the daily and seasonal intermittency of UK solar and wind thirty years hence, to cover all our energy needs, you might need a spare country to place the battery in.

It all gets rather silly building storage to cover intermittency with gas as a backup solution when maybe eighty nukes rated at around 3.2GW, each producing 25TWh/annum would cover all the UK's energy requirements and not just those presently using electricity.

[1carus] 22/8/2019 20:10

So, this battery storage solution to all solutions. I think the Tesla one in Australia is something like 120Mw. The grids consumption is something like 27Gw. Other than a localised supply to something essential I don't see the big answer here. There appears to be 3 orders of magnitude difference. Am I being too simplistic here?

[pogue] 20/8/2019 14:45

Further to costs here is a report from the E&T, formerly the IEE, pointing out the need for a European not just UK smart grid to deal with renewables. Some day someone will pay wonder who :)

hxxps://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/08/view-from-brussels-energy-disunion/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_campaign=New%20EandT%20News%20-%20Automation%20FINAL%20-%20MEMBER&utm_medium=Newsletters%20-%20E%26T%20News&utm_content=E%26T%20News%20-%20Members&utm_term=hxxps%3A%2F%2Feandt.theiet.org%2Fcontent%2Farticles%2F2019%2F08%2Fview-from-brussels-energy-disunion%2F

[utyinv] 20/8/2019 10:21

Report as expected. However, ofgem will no doubt want to point the finger to justify their own existence, with recommendations. These recommendations can include a higher level of battery storage positioned at strategic locations to cater for the generation mix of today. However, one question needs to be asked of OFGEM, who is going to pay for this investment when recent history has proven that OFGEM are quite hard on allowing NG investors to get a reasonable return on investments, ie, nothing is free and security of energy comes at a cost. A cost that people should be prepared to pay if they want security of supply. As always, people are so blasé about electricity in their homes, they just take it for granted until it is lost then they realise how much they desperately need it and miss it when it’s not there at a flick of a switch.

[m100] 20/8/2019 08:55

National Grid ESO interim technical report for event on 9th August 2019

[buywell3] 14/8/2019 17:35

Salt water is worse than sulphuric acid IMO


Seems the height of madness putting such structures in it

Even worse --- expecting same to generate electricity in such an element for 20 years and more

buywell can't see it happening


pride cometh before a fall

Proverbs 16:18

buywell thinks FTSE 6000 is on the way by end of November

BEAR is awake … batten down your hatches for stormy weather

dyor

[1carus] 13/8/2019 23:06

UTY -- the static converters used in offshore wind generation frighten the hell out of me. They must be ridiculously expensive. Have potentially, no pun intended, horrendous failure modes... and I am afraid their upkeep is going to impractically expensive. They are the size of an oilrig on the new farms they are building.
I like the good old, almost Victorian, engineering of the old grid.