Wind Power and UK Energy Use

[edwin_m]

There's a huge wind farm either side of the WCML on the hills above Beattock - just the right place to feed the uphill railway where power is most needed.
NR has been getting its power from EdF (ie French nuclear is in the mix) for the last decade - I think the contract is up for renewal.

All but the very smallest electricity suppliers just feed into the grid, which pools the supply for all users. Specific suppliers connecting to specific users is meaningless in a technical sense, although the electricity market requires suppliers to put as much power onto the grid as their own customers take out. There's less need for long-distance transmission and therefore less power loss en route if generators are located close to consumers, but this would require a 25kV grid feed near Beattock. If there is one then the saving is exactly the same (and probably pretty small) regardless of who NR officially buys its power from.

 

[HSTEd]

And that impact will be positive, because the population will be able to spend what they have saved by using less energy to buy other goods and services instead.

Well that depends.

If they are saving energy by efficiency this is true.
If they are saving energy by being cold or otherwise doing without, it is false.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Not really a new idea. The stationmaster at Fahan on the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway, one James Bond, tried out his first 'gadget' in 1885. A windmill to power a dynamo and make Fahan the first electrically lit station in Ireland.

Obviously he hadn't learnt from these Forums that it was all too difficult/inefficient/expensive/impossible in planning terms/etc.

 

[Elecman]

NR has been getting its power from EdF (ie French nuclear is in the mix) for the last decade - I think the contract is up for renewal.

It had indeed been retendered

 

[Magdalia]

If they are saving energy by being cold or otherwise doing without, it is false.

In most cases that's positive too. Most of those people will be spending all of their income. That are making economic decisions to spend their limited income on other things, which they regard as more beneficial to them.

 

[HSTEd]

In most cases that's positive too. Most of those people will be spending all of their income. That are making economic decisions to spend their limited income on other things, which they regard as more beneficial to them.

Their decisions made in the moment do not necessarily align with their long term health interests.

Lack of heating causes major health impacts, which is one of the many reasons that high energy prices are a serious social and economic issue.

EDIT:
Fall in energy consumption does not necessarily mean that spending on energy has fallen. Those are two very different metrics.

 

[Magdalia]

Their decisions made in the moment do not necessarily align with their long term health interests.

That's true, but every economic decision implicitly takes into account present value of future expectations.

 

[MotCO]

Agreed.


Meanwhile, some draft data for 2024, with comparisons to 2023 and 2019 (5 years ago and last full year before Covid), all are annual averages for the Grid, taken from the Electric Insights data portal:

Demand 29.6GW, exactly the same as 2023, but -9% on the 32.58GW of 2019

Price / kWh. £70.76, -24% on 2023, but +69% to 2019

Carbon emissions 119g/kWh, -18% on 2023, and -38% to 2019 (and -71% to 10 years ago)

Average temperature of 11.71C, colder than the 11.94C in 2023, but warmer than the 11.37C in 2019 (where this is measured, I don’t know, Drax presumably!)


Gas generation: 8.23GW down 16% to 2023, down 37% to 2019
Solar : 1.48GW up 13% to 2023, up 19% to 2019
Wind : 9.54GW up 5% to 2023, up 44% to 2019
Imports: 4.36GW up 14.3% to 2023, up 53% to 2019
Nuclear: 4.37GW exactly same as 2023, down 28% to 2019

The other generation (Biomass, Coal, Hydro, etc) is all roughly the same and between them provide about 3GW, most of which is Biomass.


Interesting (to me at least!) that demand in 2024 was the same as 2023, but emissions fell significantly, due to imports and wind replacing gas. Solar increased by 0.17GW, despite it being about 10% less sunny on average (data from UK Government website). Imports were also up, mostly because the Viking link interconnector was commissioned right at the end of 2023 and has been supplying us with (generally) excess Danish wind and solar power through 2024. I expect the increases in UK wind and solar to be replicated (and more) in 2025 and 2026, and therefore expect emissions from electricity generation to drop to an average of less than 100g/kWh in 2026. That compares to 415g/kWh in 2014.

I hope some people find this interesting.

Thanks for the useful comparison.

Wasn't there also an issue with the interconnector with France which would have reduced imports, and wasn't French production reduced by outages on their nuclear power stations? Can't remember when this was - three or four years back?

I'm surprised demand is down 10% between 2019 to 2023. Is it due to reduced domestic demand (people changing to low consumption bulbs), or industrial production reducing / relocating abroad?

Edit: Also, how does householder solar / windmill electricity production feed into these figures? Do they show as reduced demand or increased production?

 

[Trainbike46]

household solar, as well as most other rooftop solar, usually shows as reduced demand.

Other things that could play a role, beyond low consumption light bulbs, rooftop solar generation increases, and industrial production leaving/relocating include:
- efficiency improvements in other household devices, e.g. washing machines, fridge-freezers, etc.
- changes in people's habits, e.g. using the dryer less, washing on cold, etc.
- Industrial efficiency improvements, e.g. better efficiency refrigeration systems, heat pumps for low temperature industrial heat, etc.
- Changes in office efficiency and habits

Obviously not an exhaustive list!

 

[Bald Rick]

Wasn't there also an issue with the interconnector with France which would have reduced imports, and wasn't French production reduced by outages on their nuclear power stations? Can't remember when this was - three or four years back?

There’s 3 interconnectors with France. The biggest (IFA1) went offline in September 2021, came partly back on line in 2022, and was fully on line by January 2023. Seperately, the French nuclear fleet was on reduced capacity for much of 2023, and therefore we exported much more than normal to them that year.

I'm surprised demand is down 10% between 2019 to 2023. Is it due to reduced domestic demand (people changing to low consumption bulbs), or industrial production reducing / relocating abroad?

Some is reduced demand through increased efficiency, in homes and commercial buildings - partly through technology, and partly because the price has risen and therefore people / companies are being lest wasteful.

Some is reduced demand simply because we have had, on average, warmer winters (I think, noting it was -4C here yesterday!) and therefore lower heating demand.

And some is further reduction in heavy industry.

Off setting this is increased demand from electric vehicles, which is in the region of 0.3GW on average, plus all those data centres which really suck in the power.

Edit: Also, how does householder solar / windmill electricity production feed into these figures? Do they show as reduced demand or increased production?

AIUI a bit of both. Generally it is reduced demand, but some of it is shown as production and estimated. Don’t forget its not just housholders, but even some quite large facilities on commercial buildings.

 

[brad465]

Especially this bit. Imports impact on emissions depends on how the imported electricity is generated.

I suspect little in the way of imports is fossil fuel power:

- France is mostly nuclear, with wind and hydro to a lesser extent, so low emissions
- Norway is mostly hydro
- Denmark is mostly wind and solar as mentioned above
- Ireland is more fossil-fuel dominated, however the UK mostly exports to them than imports from them.
- The Netherlands is also highly fossil-fuel dependant, however they are a lesser-importer to us than others.
- Belgium is nuclear-led but does have a notable fossil fuel share, so I'd say all our imports are clean except for the latter two countries.

I'm very surprised solar is only up 19% on 2019, I thought lots more had gone in recently, although obviously the terrible weather will have affected that

Solar is also skewed by the day/night variation. While there is no solar power at night for obvious reasons, energy demand is usually much lower so doesn't matter so much. Battery installations in homes also help, but this will be very hard to measure in specific volumes.

 

[Bald Rick]

I'm very surprised solar is only up 19% on 2019, I thought lots more had gone in recently, although obviously the terrible weather will have affected that

Lots has gone in recently, and as you can see from the data, two thirds of that 19% came last year. And it was a notably unsunny year compared to average. Expect another increase this year if we get an averagely sunny year, plus the impact that the commissioning of the first of the new wave of grid scale solar installations will have - there was a massive rush on this when energy prices leapt three years ago due to the local difficulty in Ukraine, and this is now beginning to output.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The 1GW Eleclink connector through the Channel Tunnel went off line in September and hasn't yet restarted, at least according to the Gridwatch graphics.
Apparently it is a fault onshore at the French end, but several posted dates for restarting have passed.
The typical daily interconnector situation has the UK importing about 6GW from the continent, and exporting 1GW to Ireland, so generally a 5GW contribution to the GB grid.
Weekends/holidays generally have a lower demand by about 25%.

GB Fuel type power generation production

GridWatch | Live statistic of UK National Electricity grid by type of generation | Solar PV power Generation | Coal Stations output in Gigawatts | Wind Output Gigawatts | Nuclear energy output |Biomass power generation Output

gridwatch.co.uk

 

[Bald Rick]

The 1GW Eleclink connector through the Channel Tunnel went off line in September and hasn't yet restarted, at least according to the Gridwatch graphics.
Apparently it is a fault onshore at the French end, but several posted dates for restarting have passed.
The typical daily interconnector situation has the UK importing about 6GW from the continent, and exporting 1GW to Ireland, so generally a 5GW contribution to the GB grid.
Weekends/holidays generally have a lower demand by about 25%.

GB Fuel type power generation production

GridWatch | Live statistic of UK National Electricity grid by type of generation | Solar PV power Generation | Coal Stations output in Gigawatts | Wind Output Gigawatts | Nuclear energy output |Biomass power generation Output

gridwatch.co.uk

Due back on 10 February, a new fault was found during testing of the repairs to the original fault.

 

[AlastairFraser]

I agree with the poster who said small scale solar on station/TMD/other railway asset roofs (in combination with a battery solution) may power NR's estate, a useful contribution. I can't see enough railway land being available to power the traction electricity needs of Britain's railways though.

 

[quantinghome]

I'm very surprised solar is only up 19% on 2019, I thought lots more had gone in recently, although obviously the terrible weather will have affected that

It's more the terrible policies than the terrible weather. Once they had dispensed with the Libdems' services in 2015, the Conservatives removed government support to solar schemes with the results clear to see in the chart below. It's even clearer when you evaluate the annual solar output per sunshine hour to remove the effect of the variation in sunshine from year to year. We can see three phases - strong growth from 2012 to 2016 when schemes had government support, flatlining after removal of that support, then resumed growth from 2023, almost certainly due to the marked reduction in solar panel costs.

 

[Harpo]

- efficiency improvements in other household devices, e.g. washing machines, fridge-freezers, etc.
- changes in people's habits, e.g. using the dryer less, washing on cold, etc.

Binning a failed 10 year old fridge/freezer and getting an efficient (but still large) new one took 10% off our domestic power use. New one ticks over at 0.75 kwh/day when we’re away

On dryers, our condenser uses 1 kwh per cycle and clothes hung immediately need no ironing. If I dry clothes outdoors they’ll need my 2.4 kwh iron run over them.

I do wonder though if people are less bothered by these fine margins when they start charging electric cars at home?

 

[WAO]

I hope some people find this interesting.

Splendid post, comprehensive and clear, thank you.

WAO

 

[JamesT]

Although the overall numbers are positive with more renewables being used, there seems not to be as much attention being paid to security of supply.
https://x.com/KathrynPorter26/status/1877232061347438985 is an interesting thread on how close we're getting to the margins.

Yesterday the GB power market came within 580 MW of demand control or a blackout on what was the tightest day since 2011 or before

@neso_energy issued its first Electricity Market Notice of the winter and third (quickly cancelled) Capacity Market Notice

Especially with the drive to switch heating from gas to electric, where is the power going to come from on the infamous cold still winter's night?

 

[brad465]

Although the overall numbers are positive with more renewables being used, there seems not to be as much attention being paid to security of supply.
https://x.com/KathrynPorter26/status/1877232061347438985 is an interesting thread on how close we're getting to the margins.

Especially with the drive to switch heating from gas to electric, where is the power going to come from on the infamous cold still winter's night?

There were stories yesterday about newly-approved battery storage schemes being setup and how this is a rapidly-expanding area. At max discharge they'd only provide power for 2-3 hours, however at peak demand this will make a big difference:

Former Lanarkshire coal mine to be turned into giant battery park

Developers confirms £800m investment across two sites in Scotland to support the growth in renewables

www.bbc.co.uk

Work is under way to create what has been described as Europe's largest battery storage project at Coalburn in South Lanarkshire.
Developers say the two huge neighbouring battery farms - one at the site of a former opencast coal mine - will store enough electricity to power three million homes.
Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) are being built across the UK to help balance the electricity grid, which is becoming increasingly powered by renewables.
Almost 90% of the electricity generated in Scotland last year was from low carbon sources like wind, solar or nuclear, according to figures from the Scottish government.
To help balance the peaks and troughs of renewables, the National Grid estimates that the UK would need to see BESS provision grow almost six times over by the end of the decade.
The one gigawatt facility at Coalburn is being constructed in two phases.
It will be charged using excess power from wind farms with the electricity being discharged when demand is high or renewable generation is low.
The giant batteries will operate for two hours at a time before being depleted.
Work on the first phase started in November 2023 and is due to be operational later this year.
The developers - Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) - have confirmed that construction will begin shortly on stage two.

We also seem to be pursuing a super-long and powerful energy cable with Morocco to tap into their wind and solar power (which are very reliable sources there), although I have doubts about how feasible that is, both regarding construction and maintenance costs along with security.

 

[Trainbike46]

Although the overall numbers are positive with more renewables being used, there seems not to be as much attention being paid to security of supply.
https://x.com/KathrynPorter26/status/1877232061347438985 is an interesting thread on how close we're getting to the margins.

Especially with the drive to switch heating from gas to electric, where is the power going to come from on the infamous cold still winter's night?

I don't know who this Katherine Porter person is, but she does seem to have decided this is Labour's fault, when that is clearly untrue because both work on the grid and the introduction of new power generation have a lead time sufficiently long that decisions taken by the labour government haven't taken effect yet.

There is a lot of work around security of supply happening, including various storage projects (both pumped hydro and battery), as well as the increase in interconnectors, hinkley point C construction, etc.

There have also been trials of increases in demand management, which is another promising avenue.

Security of supply is very clearly something various bodies are working on

 

[HSTEd]

Although the overall numbers are positive with more renewables being used, there seems not to be as much attention being paid to security of supply.
https://x.com/KathrynPorter26/status/1877232061347438985 is an interesting thread on how close we're getting to the margins.

Especially with the drive to switch heating from gas to electric, where is the power going to come from on the infamous cold still winter's night?

This issue is primarily a result of the slide from the CEGB's reliability-first outlook to a more financial outlook that is willing to risk outages to save money.

I'm not sure it's meaningfully related to decarbonisation. It's simply a result of the CEGBs overbuilt inheritance vanishing over the last several decades.

If you want to blame anyone, blame Thatcher for selling the CEGB and setting us on this road in 1990.

 

[Bald Rick]

Although the overall numbers are positive with more renewables being used, there seems not to be as much attention being paid to security of supply.
https://x.com/KathrynPorter26/status/1877232061347438985 is an interesting thread on how close we're getting to the margins.

Especially with the drive to switch heating from gas to electric, where is the power going to come from on the infamous cold still winter's night?

Yes the marginal wholesale price touched almost £3000 per MWh, equivalent to a unit price of £3 per kWh.

The good news is that it was an infamous cold still winter’s night, and we had enough.

The answer is that with a combination of a significant increase in battery capacity, pumped storage, much more adoption of incentive pricing*, more interconnectors, and more wind power (even on a still night, we generate 1GW+; double wind power doubles that), we will be fine.

*When the price peaked, I had a discussion with Mrs BR to the effect of “when we switch to Octopus Agile, and there are peak prices like this (the Octopus Agile price cap is £1/kWh), we won’t be having the dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer, etc on like we have right now - we’ll delay it to overnight when it’s much cheaper”.

I can‘t claim the message sank in, I suspect we’ll be having the same chat several times over the next few months, but if a million households do the same, thats 3GW of demand shifted from high peak to off peak.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 Jan 2025 ==

We also seem to be pursuing a super-long and powerful energy cable with Morocco to tap into their wind and solar power (which are very reliable sources there), although I have doubts about how feasible that is, both regarding construction and maintenance costs along with security.

It’s very feasible, the factory that is to make the cable has planning consent (Hunterston on the Ayrshire coast), and the ship that will lay the cables is being built.

 

[RichardAsh1981]

In part, schemes like the Moroccan one (and similar to Iceland geothermal) are feasible precisely because of the high unit prices on days like today - that is when they pay off their capital costs.

CEGB was debt-free, with extra peak capacity engineered. The position was to always supply (at fixed cost) whatever the customer wanted to use. The consequence of that was to raise the cost all the time by a little.

Privatisation changed the position to encourage users to use less when there is a shortage, so less peak capacity is needed. The encouragement is price, so most of the time prices come down a little, and sometimes they go up a lot.

Dieter Helm has written extensively about this trade-off, and the fact that the most profitable way to run a power grid is with a lot more blackouts than most people would accept. The peak generating capacity needed to meet worst case demand is expensive, but very rarely used, which makes it commercially unviable (rather like a lot of the railway). The question is how then to pay for it, which no Government has really confronted since 1990.

It takes a long time for change to happen in an industry full of long lasting assets, and now it has, any further change could take just as long.

 

[telstarbox]

I always run our dishwasher overnight - it pops opens the door when it's finished to aid drying through the early hours. (It also texts me to say "I'm done" )

 

[HSTEd]

In part, schemes like the Moroccan one (and similar to Iceland geothermal) are feasible precisely because of the high unit prices on days like today - that is when they pay off their capital costs.

CEGB was debt-free, with extra peak capacity engineered. The position was to always supply (at fixed cost) whatever the customer wanted to use. The consequence of that was to raise the cost all the time by a little.

Privatisation changed the position to encourage users to use less when there is a shortage, so less peak capacity is needed. The encouragement is price, so most of the time prices come down a little, and sometimes they go up a lot.

Economy 7 far predates privatisation though.
The CEGB and other utilities have been grasping at this problem for decades.

The British electricity industry even built a system in the 1980s to allow meters to switch to a low-rate at whatever time was most convenient rather than on a fixed schedule.
Utilities in New Zealand have been using a power line signalling ("ripple control") system to achieve functionally the same thing since the 1950s.

It might be fashionable to talk about sophisticated algorithms and smart meters, but this sort of thing is very very old.

Dieter Helm has written extensively about this trade-off, and the fact that the most profitable way to run a power grid is with a lot more blackouts than most people would accept. The peak generating capacity needed to meet worst case demand is expensive, but very rarely used, which makes it commercially unviable (rather like a lot of the railway). The question is how then to pay for it, which no Government has really confronted since 1990.

Personally, I am of the view that we just need to accept the last 35 years as a failed experiment.

Unfortunately the politics of today doesn't really like that answer - it keeps grasping for ever more intricate and complex solutions that keep failing to deliver.

EDIT:

I have dug out a report on electricity prices in Europe from 1980-1987.
Apparently in London in 1986, the unit price on the single rate tariff was 5.45p, versus 5.75p/1.9p for Economy 7.

Economy 7 price splits were far greater than what we see today - which is why night storage heaters exist. They were actually competitive with gas.

 

[RichardAsh1981]

I agree Economy 7 was introduced precisely to reduce the costs of the peaking plant capacity. But it was only introduced in 1978, by which time all of the UK coal plant had opened as far I can tell (Drax opened 1974), along with the first generation of nuclear stations. Changes in direction take a very long time to come through!
Also, the industry lost interest in most of this stuff after privatisation - a lot of technically feasible stuff which relied upon time of use tarriffs fell by the wayside.

 

[HSTEd]

I agree Economy 7 was introduced precisely to reduce the costs of the peaking plant capacity. But it was only introduced in 1978, by which time all of the UK coal plant had opened as far I can tell (Drax opened 1974), along with the first generation of nuclear stations. Changes in direction take a very long time to come through!

The first three units at Drax opened in 1974, but the second three didn't commence construction until 1978.
They hadn't been scheduled for construction until the early 1980s, but the government instructed (and paid) the board to proceed with construction earlier than planned for industrial and employment reasons.
The plant didn't reach full operation until 1986.

Also, the industry lost interest in most of this stuff after privatisation - a lot of technically feasible stuff which relied upon time of use tarriffs fell by the wayside.

Yes, the industry became enamoured with cheap gas turbines burning natural gas.

We are now rebuilding infrastructure that has been allowed to atrophy by privatisation - a lot of effort and time has been wasted.

EDIT:

At the current time, major power producers are buying natural gas for ~2.74p/kWh.
That implies that on a CEGB pricing schedule, off peak generation with a CCGT is going to be competitive with domestic natural gas. As the traditional pricing scheme would exclude infrastructural costs from Economy 7 pricing.

Kind of funny that - I wonder how a modern CCGT (~63%) compares to a gas boiler in climate terms, considering that sometimes off peak electricity would be produced by renewables, and how much gas leaks out of the distribution system.

 

[Harpo]

with the drive to switch heating from gas to electric

Ground-source heat pumps? Giving us only three times more heat per unit of energy from a power source that costs five times as much?

In round numbers thats roughly 25p for 1 unit of electricity to do what 15p worth of gas does now - at speed.

 

[jon0844]

There was a proposal a couple of years ago to use trackside solar in third rail areas, which had some merit because it helped to remove some grid distribution issues. It's potentially possible to revisit that with more modern solar and battery tech, but I'm not convinced that wind would be a useful part of the mix.

There are now EV chargers coming that offer extremely fast power to charge, using batteries to store energy over a longer time. I wonder if lineside batteries could potentially fill any gap in power supply, quickly being topped back up between trains?

As for wind turbines, you want very big blades to generate the most power and become the most efficient so that rules out many urban environments. As most stations are sheltered, there's probably more scope for solar.. and if a station isn't covered well, perhaps installing solar panels on newly built roofs/shelters might be a good idea - if only to provide power for station lighting, CIS, CCTV, ticket machines etc. Accompanied with batteries, it has the added benefit of ensuring there's backup power in the event of a localised power failure - which keeps a station open when it might otherwise be skipped by trains until emergency lighting can be set up.