[HN Gopher] UK Plans for Three-Hour Power Blackouts in Event of ...
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UK Plans for Three-Hour Power Blackouts in Event of Gas Shortages
Author : belter
Score : 138 points
Date : 2022-10-06 16:05 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.sky.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.sky.com)
| jeffalyanak wrote:
| I recently built a small home solar battery system with the goal
| of keeping my low-power DC devices charged and running during
| outages like this. I've only been running it for a few months
| now, but I've been using it to keep all of my USB devices charged
| during that time.
|
| In an actual power outage, I can even plug in my modem, router,
| and AP--using DC barrel jacks for the modem and router and a DIY
| PoE injector for the AP--so as long as the upstream
| infrastructure is still powered I'll be able to keep working.
|
| Since I rent, I can't do a roof-mount or grid-tie system, so I
| opted instead to build a 12V DC system. I purchased a used solar
| panel and I've assembled a ~0.5kWh battery from used packs.
|
| I'm using insulated nickel strips to pass the solar panel cables
| through a closed closed window in a way that doesn't require
| drilling holes and has a minimum impact on the insulation seal of
| the window (although insulation in the UK really sucks anyway).
|
| Most of the fittings and wiring have been used and come mostly
| from automotive scrap (an advantage of using common 12/24V
| standard fittings), so the financial cost has been very low. That
| said collecting use battery packs, testing cells, and assembling
| them into new battery packs certainly takes time.
| tomcam wrote:
| Not great for people hooked up to home medical equipment
| thomasmg wrote:
| Power outages can happen for various reasons (storm,
| accident,...). I would expect the equipment has batteries, no?
| ben_w wrote:
| Perhaps, but I can only remember personally experiencing a
| total of three power failures in the UK before I moved out in
| my mid 30s (and that includes the one time in the converted
| stables in the middle of nowhere, Wales).
| tomcam wrote:
| Certainly not by default. And try getting insurance coverage
| for it.
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| PSA: If you really are unusually vulnerable to power outages,
| for example due to using medical equipment or needing to keep
| medicines in the fridge, see if you qualify for the Priority
| Services Register:
|
| https://www.ukpowernetworks.co.uk/power-cut/priority-service...
|
| Sometimes there are things the utility companies can do to help
| those who legitimately need to be prioritised, but only if they
| know who those people are.
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| Won't medical equipment have back up batteries? (I'm not saying
| it's a good thing, just not a crisis moment.)
| IvyMike wrote:
| Not in my experience dealing with an oxygen concentrator. The
| backup was a couple of tanks of O2, which can be used up
| pretty quick. And the O2 cannister supply chain isn't geared
| to meet widespread need, as we saw during the first wave of
| Covid.
| tomcam wrote:
| No
| Lio wrote:
| You would hope that they have uninteruptable power supplies for
| anything like that.
| sebazzz wrote:
| Yes, but the grid in Europe is generally so reliable
| (especially when not living in a rural area), that such
| stability might be taken for granted.
| tomcam wrote:
| Luxury. I grew up in a banana republic (California) where
| one simply cannot expect that kind of reliability.
| [deleted]
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I remember when I used a CPAP, I _didn 't_ have a UPS. Where
| I lived, the power was so reliable I just didn't think of it.
|
| After a blackout, I went looking for a UPS. The problem was
| the alarm. For all the models in the store, I wasn't sure if
| I could keep the alarm silent, or if the model had an alarm
| at all.
|
| I never bought a UPS. (I had surgery about 18 months later,
| and turned in my CPAP.)
| baybal2 wrote:
| booboofixer wrote:
| If you have lived in a country with load-shedding and have
| experienced this before, as far as your average household goes, 3
| hours without power is barely an inconvenience. If the winters
| are harsh though, probably not as easy.
| RichardCNormos wrote:
| Or, if you live in California. 3 hours is nothing! A while ago,
| we went for a week without power in the northern part of the
| state.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| That's nothing.
|
| You want to learn what to do during winter power outages?
|
| Join us down in Houston! Or anywhere in Texas for that
| matter.
| booboofixer wrote:
| Why?
| tb_technical wrote:
| California's energy policy needs a little work. Their
| environmental laws made creating power plants impossible in
| their state, so they almost exclusively purchase power from
| other states at sub-optimal rates for any new power demand.
|
| Edit: phrasing and tone
| gsbraitberg wrote:
| In 2021, California produced about 200 TWh in-state and
| imported about 85 TWh, meaning they imported about 30% of
| total electricity. Not exactly "almost exclusively"
| imports.
|
| Also, California regulations certainly permit building
| new power plants (and many new plants have been built in
| the past decade), just not new coal fired plants.
|
| https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-
| almanac/califo...
| Alupis wrote:
| > just not new coal fired plants.
|
| Or hydro-electric, or nuclear, or anything that would
| have meaningful impact on the state's situation.
|
| More solar and wind are great, but they do not respond
| well to surges in demand, and there is no current way to
| store energy either.
|
| So some impressive total production number might sound
| great, but the reality does not follow unfortunately. For
| a non-trivial portion of the state, electricity isn't a
| guarantee throughout the year anymore.
| RichardCNormos wrote:
| PG&E, our regulated monopoly electrical utility, turns the
| power off during hot, windy days during the summer so that
| they can avoid liability for starting wildfires. They never
| maintained their equipment, so it fails and starts massive
| fires.
| booboofixer wrote:
| Fascinating
| standardUser wrote:
| I lived in California for 30 years and the only time I
| remember any serious issues with power was back in 2000-2001
| during the famous electricity crisis. But for some reason
| this idea endures that California has problems with their
| grid. Do they really? Because other than that one acute
| crisis I didn't have a problem with blackouts (that I can
| remember) for 20 freaking years. That's a pretty good record.
| It's a big state, so maybe the Bay Area has just fared better
| than other regions?
| Alupis wrote:
| PG&E started voluntarily turning off power to entire towns
| to avoid fire hazards... fire hazards that were self-made
| and exist only because of other failures that have piled up
| for the past few decades.
|
| So the current situation is something along the lines of
| when the wind blows too much, they shut off the grid. When
| it blows too little, they shut off the grid. When it gets
| too hot, they shut off the grid.
|
| It's crazy that this is happening in California of all
| places, but decades of poor policy decisions led to this
| and it'll take quite a bit of time to undo.
| eddsh wrote:
| Stanford had a big power outage recently (this summer) that
| took out student accommodation, server rooms, etc... due to
| wild fires.
| bumbledraven wrote:
| It's been getting worse lately. The average amount of time
| each residential PG&E customer was without power due to a
| sustained outage has increased from 1.9 hours/year in 2016
| to 3.6 hours/year in 2021.
|
| https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/outages/planning-
| and-p...
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I used to live half a mile from a power plant in another
| state and I had far more outages there than I've had in
| California. That said, there are constant incentives to
| reduce peak energy usage, and there were a couple weeks
| this year where they almost did rolling blackouts. So, they
| still struggle with meeting demand sometimes.
| lkbm wrote:
| > If you have lived in a country with load-shedding and have
| experienced this before, as far as your average household goes,
| 3 hours without power is barely an inconvenience.
|
| I live in the US (TX) where load shedding is rare, but I did
| lose power from roughly 11:30a yesterday until ~11:30 today due
| to a snafu with the power company. Discovered this just prior
| to my 12pm Zoom meeting.
|
| Three hours while I sleep matters not. Three hours when I need
| my wifi for work is quite annoying.
|
| A more robust energy supply should be the goal, but better
| failure modes would also be of value.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| A more robust grid is the solution. But, in the meantime, you
| can do what I did and put all of my network gear on a battery
| so it continues to function for about an hour after a power
| failure. That gives me enough time to wrap up most meetings
| and start up the generator or head to a cafe, etc if I need
| more than that.
|
| Bonus, I use Power over Ethernet access points and security
| cameras in my house, so even my cameras and the wifi access
| point at the other side of my house still functions perfectly
| during a power failure. I plan to add an additional battery
| which should help the system work for up to 4 hours without
| grid power.
| themitigating wrote:
| Texas is disconnected from the national power grid even
| though it would help.
|
| "According to an analysis by the American Council on
| Renewable Energy, each additional gigawatt of transmission
| capacity connecting the Texas power grid with neighboring
| states could have saved nearly $1 billion and prevented
| blackouts in around 200,000 Texas homes during Winter Storm
| Uri last year."
|
| "House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that the state's
| denizens would prefer a prolonged blackout over federal
| regulators requiring changes to the system.
| https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/14/texas-national-
| power...
|
| It seems like Texas having a robust power supply is second to
| ideological virtue signaling by republicans
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| AFAIK there isn't a national power grid in America- there
| are at least 5 or so State+ size grids, with loads of
| smaller ones and a whole bunch of interconnects. I'm fairly
| sure Texas (ERCOT) has interconnects to other grids.
| themitigating wrote:
| I saw the term used to describe the various
| interconnected states but I think it's used because
| federal regulations can apply if one states connects with
| at least another, hence national
| Izkata wrote:
| 5 grids (of which Texas is one), and they're not even
| just US ones - we share with Canada: https://i.cbc.ca/1.5
| 921020.1613772812!/fileImage/httpImage/i...
|
| They're then further subdivided into operators: https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss...
| pharrington wrote:
| In February of last year, a winter storm led to Texas
| having multi-day power outages, exasperated by the fact
| that ERCOT does not connect to any other grids.
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| According to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection#Ties,
| the Texas grid has DC ties to the Eastern grid, and
| similar ties into Mexico.
| pharrington wrote:
| Strictly speaking - 3 DC ties (from some cursory
| searching, they seem to only be used for power export)
| and 1 AC tie, that has only ever been used once. Texas is
| technically, but not meaningfully, connected to
| neighboring power grids.
| bombcar wrote:
| > A well-insulated wall, being necessary for the warmth of a
| free House, the right of the people to keep and bear R15, shall
| not be infringed.
|
| We lost our furnace during the winter and it took us about a
| week to realize it, because the house lost heat so slowly. 3
| hours should be nothing unless you've no insulation at all, in
| which case you have other problems.
| jstanley wrote:
| Sadly no amount of insulation can keep your internet working.
| skybrian wrote:
| Depending where you live, a cell phone might work as a
| reasonable backup, along with a USB battery.
| klyrs wrote:
| And yet, nobody makes bare-copper ethernet cables...
| bombcar wrote:
| I'm really disappointed we didn't go for telco-like quality
| for internet communications.
|
| It would be really nice if all the POPs and DSLAMS and
| stuff ran on -40v so all you had to do was put your modem
| and router on a UPS and keep your internet up when the
| power dropped.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Here's a funny story: the Uk has the worst insulated homes in
| Europe and we stopped most of the incentives to improve them
| in 2010 because "we couldn't afford it" and now we're on the
| hook for billions.
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| It is basically never cold enough to die of cold in the UK.
| Winter death "surges" are just death by NHS. Anyway
| insulation is only worth bothering with if you give up on
| ventilation (excepting expensive heat-recovery mechanical
| ventilation very few people have in any country) which is
| far more important - being a bit chilly is easily fixed
| with tweed but lack of fresh air really fucks you up. Turn
| off the heat, open a bloody window and put a jacket on!
|
| I for one am grateful the UK managed to keep loads of nice
| Victorian townhouses because the Luftwaffe weren't that
| great at their jobs. They're nice, proper high ceilings and
| woodwork.
|
| I agree with you that the government energy subsidy we have
| now is appalling. Should be dumped immediately. I'm paying
| PS15/mo less than I did before - this is the most stupid
| use of national debt ever devised, I would rather pay what
| energy actually costs than be forced to be complicit in
| this.
| skybrian wrote:
| Wow, this sounds like some exaggerated British
| stereotype. "You don't die from it, it's fine."
| Arrath wrote:
| I am jealous of the build quality of your house. And/or your
| mild winter weather.
| bombcar wrote:
| It really had neither - winter was ending so it wasn't -40
| out, but thermal mass is HUUUUGE.
|
| Or at least there are much better built and insulated
| houses around here now.
| _morgs_ wrote:
| In South Africa we've been having load shedding for a record
| amount of time this year. Worst it's been so far is 2 2hr slots
| and one 4hr slot every 24 hours (so 8 off per day)
|
| It's not winter though, and we tend not to heat our homes like
| Europe.
|
| WiFi and fibre boxes are on DC UPSs so working online is OK.
| Hard to do laundry and run the dishwasher though when power's
| only on for 4 hours at a time.
| booboofixer wrote:
| Had DC UPSs where I'm from as well, they're great for wifi
| and simple lighting.
| mmastrac wrote:
| The UK is speedrunning 1970-1990 here (different underlying
| causes, obviously)
| makomk wrote:
| Things happening in the UK seems to get a lot of attention
| abroad, probably because we're an English-speaking country, but
| realistically speaking the more mild of the two scenarios here
| would likely involve severe power shortages on the European
| mainland and the more severe of the two a serious global energy
| crisis. Both of those things are at serious risk of happening
| this winter, which is why these contingency plans exist.
| gizajob wrote:
| If you want to know the result of successive Tory governments and
| forty years of deregulation and mismanagement, then power
| blackouts and people not being able to heat their homes is it.
| The Tory agenda now seems fixed upon ensuring the very rich have
| everything and everyone else has absolutely nothing.
| seibelj wrote:
| The US is the most deregulated, pro-market, capitalist
| developed nation of size and we are doing much better than the
| UK. Jobs are plentiful and our corporate titans continue to
| dominate global equities.
|
| Maybe the issue in the UK isn't as simple as tax rates. But you
| can always try to pivot hard left, maybe it will work this
| time. Capital does tend to flee when serious attempts to
| expropriate it occur...
| kansface wrote:
| Both Texas and California struggle to keep the power on. They
| both make memes about it, too.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Correct. The UK doesn't have a large domestic market or much
| in the way of resources. The US has both.
| sgt101 wrote:
| There are lots of jobs in the UK right now - in fact there is
| a labor shortage.
|
| What we don't have is large domestic natural resources, or
| access to the global market guaranteed by force of arms. We
| used to have that, but we had to give it up due to the Second
| World War and also morality (admittedly that part came with
| hindsight and without prerequisite contrition and apologies).
| Mizza wrote:
| Sacrificing public health systems and educational programs in
| order to enforce the largest military empire in human history
| might also have something to do with it.
| nickpp wrote:
| Europe on the other hand spent their money on populist
| programs that kept their leftist politicians elected - and
| now it's once again counting on good old USA's help to keep
| the invading hordes at bay.
| adrianba wrote:
| > The US is the most deregulated, pro-market, capitalist
| developed nation of size
|
| Well, here in the US, I still buy electricity from the
| government. Consumer energy deregulation in the UK started in
| the late 80s and electricity has been sold through private
| companies for years.
| gizajob wrote:
| It's not so much energy deregulation that's the problem,
| more the fact that we gave away the resources of oil and
| gas for peanuts and now pay through the nose for them,
| compared to say Norway or Saudi Arabia where they oil and
| gas stayed as a semi-state-owned resource.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Are you sure that this has nothing to do with the war in
| Ukraine?
|
| If it is down to the Tories then they have really screwed up
| the EU as well!
|
| https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/energy-...
| gizajob wrote:
| The thing is that Britain has an independent oil and gas
| sector though. We're not reliant on imports, so yeah, the
| blame can be levelled at the Tories for this one.
| tremon wrote:
| That oil and gas sector is still reliant on international
| gas prices, since it's a global market. I'm not sure if
| it's even possible for a single country to commandeer its
| fossil fuel production for own use without sparking a few
| international conflicts.
| shagie wrote:
| https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-118
|
| > With U.S. crude oil production nearly doubling from
| 2009 to 2015, Congress repealed the crude oil export ban
| in December 2015--allowing the free export of U.S. crude
| oil worldwide.
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/Crude_oil_export_ban
|
| Yep, a country can do it and has done it.
| vel0city wrote:
| You're not _reliant_ on imports, but unless you outlaw the
| export of energy you 're still subject to the global price
| of energy. If they can export it cheap enough, energy
| producers would rather sell it to mainland Europe or around
| the world rather than sell it for less domestically.
| acheron wrote:
| How convenient that every problem is the fault of your
| political opponents.
| 7952 wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment but its a bit misplaced here. The
| energy industry in the UK is still heavily regulated and the
| government do intervene a lot. The main thrust of this has been
| to push renewables and nuclear to combat climate change. And
| the response of National Grid has been to plan for that. For
| example in planning connections for offshore wind, building
| interconnectors and incentivising backup capacity. They have a
| good record in maintaining supply and are well funded.
|
| The trouble is that much of our backup depended on gas and
| interconnectors. Gas has been effected by the war. The
| interconnector capacity by French nuclear problems. Those
| nuclear problems have exasperated gas supply problems.
|
| There are steps the government could have taken. In hindsight
| maybe we should have kept more coal stations available. And gas
| storage should have been maintained. And we definitely should
| have built out more onshore wind. But I don't think the system
| is mismanaged. And we are probably better placed than much of
| mainland Europe for this winter. We did build some massive
| offshore windfarms.
| gizajob wrote:
| We (the Tories) also privatised North sea oil and gas, giving
| it away for peanuts, and that chicken has now come home to
| roost.
| 7952 wrote:
| Our biggest problem is that we are not rich enough and I
| absolutely agree that the Tory party hold a lot of
| responsibility for that. Poor choices on oil and gas are a
| part of that.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > then power blackouts and people not being able to heat their
| homes is it
|
| You forgot food banks, people having to choose in between
| heating and food, and poverty suicides. Also, clowns -
| psychopathic clowns. Lots of them...
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Maybe just maybe the UK as learnt the lesson?
| was_a_dev wrote:
| I highly doubt it. Any lessons will be shortlived, and
| probably will be forgotten by the electorate before the next
| election
| brnt wrote:
| > The Tory agenda now seems fixed upon ensuring the very rich
| have everything and everyone else has absolutely nothing.
|
| It has always been thus.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Before the riches of globalisation somewhat masked the
| damage.
| marsven_422 wrote:
| exabrial wrote:
| For me, I could care less whether or not my apt has power for
| most of the day or night. It's pretty well insulated; even with
| our wide temp swings (104f peak in the summer, -32f in the
| winter) it takes a while before it moves either direction. The
| big conveniences are hot water, washer, dryer, dishwasher of
| course but if push came to shove, I'd be ok, especially knowing I
| was given the finger to the Russians.
|
| This certainly isn't an option for every structure, especially
| free standing older homes built before 2000.
| joenathanone wrote:
| What about your food?
| adammarples wrote:
| "plans for" is a funny way of saying blunders into
| AngusH wrote:
| This appears to be a contingency plan _' in the "unlikely" event
| supplies of gas fall short of demand.'_
|
| _The report showed, under a base case scenario, that margins
| between peak demand and power supply were expected to be
| sufficient and similar to recent years thanks to secure North Sea
| gas supplies, imports via Norway and by ship._
|
| Any operator that didn't have such contingency plans would be
| negligent.
|
| Is it going to happen in reality: hopefully not
|
| Edit: I have a feeling that the article may be referring to the 3
| hour Loss of Load Expectation (LOLE) service level target for the
| year.
|
| This isn't quite the same as a three hour blackout.
|
| I'm not sure though because the sky article doesn't reference its
| sources.
|
| Which may be this:
|
| https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/264521/download
|
| or it might not?
|
| edit2:
|
| actually I think it's this:
|
| https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/268346/download
|
| edit3:
|
| Found it, its not the LOLE target, but the response to scenario 2
| on page 10 of the second link:
|
| scenario 1: "In this scenario we assume that we have no
| electricity interconnector imports from France, Belgium and the
| Netherlands (these are assumed to provide a de-rated capacity of
| 3.9GW in the Base Case). It is assumed that we import 1.2GW from
| Norway and export 0.4GW to Northern Ireland and Ireland."
|
| scenario 2: "In this scenario we assume the same assumptions as
| Scenario 1, but with an additional 10GW CCGTs unavailable for a
| two-week period in January1. These assumptions have been chosen
| to illustrate the potential impact on the electricity system if
| there was insufficient gas supply in Great Britain."
|
| "Should this scenario happen, it may be necessary to initiate the
| planned, controlled and temporary rota load shedding scheme under
| the Electricity Supply Emergency Code (ESEC). In the unlikely
| event we were in this situation, it would mean that some
| customers could be without power for pre-defined periods during a
| day - generally this is assumed to be for 3 hour blocks. This
| would be necessary to ensure the overall security and integrity
| of the electricity system across Great Britain. All possible
| mitigating strategies would be deployed to minimise the
| disruption."
|
| Which I think would then follow this set of rules:
|
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
|
| final: I think my information here is mostly right. But you
| should not base your electricity operational decisions on it!
| sefrost wrote:
| Under Designated Services:
|
| > Sites with a continuous manufacturing process, not
| sustainable through BEIS standby generation, where regular
| shutdown for 3-hour periods is not possible and would cause
| significant financial damage
|
| I wonder if this includes Agile offices, it seems like a broad
| definition!
| AngusH wrote:
| :-)
|
| Very broad indeed, though I think it's just qualification for
| asking, not grounds for acceptance, (thankfully)
|
| One thing I'm curious to know is what it's like on the
| distribution side though, getting these requests and then
| approving them (or not)
|
| I wonder if they only get serious requests (say steel mills
| and hospitals) or if they also get requests from non-
| essential businesses who shouldn't be on the list?
|
| Most data centers should have back up power, so the question
| of whether Facebook, Twitter and Amazon get cut off probably
| doesn't need to be asked.
| bombcar wrote:
| Datacenters often have agreements to shed load in
| emergencies - I was working on a machine inside a
| datacenter in San Diego when they announced that SDGE had
| asked them to throw to generator as the load was too high.
| This was back in the Enron days.
|
| If you've never been in a secure datacenter when they
| throw, it's fun.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > If you've never been in a secure datacenter when they
| throw, it's fun.
|
| I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe
| to your newsletter.
|
| Seriously, though, do tell us more.
| bombcar wrote:
| So the one I was in had these massive rooms full of lead-
| acid batteries, and 3 or 4 multi-megawatt "generators"
| outside (located at various sides of the building, not
| all in one place).
|
| They announced it over the PA because it was a planned
| transfer - and then all the "normal" lighting went off
| (think overhead fluorescents) at the same time the
| emergency lighting came on - the power to the servers and
| anything plugged into the racks didn't even flicker, of
| course.
|
| There was a huge thunking sound from somewhere (I assume
| something disconnecting from grid power) and the muted
| roar of the generators starting. A few moments later, the
| main lights came back on.
|
| It was an entirely different experience than a normal
| power failure, where everything goes quiet - you knew
| something happened, but other than that it all worked
| smoothly.
| chasd00 wrote:
| if you're into datacenter drama you may find this
| interesting. It's a livejournal of a datacenter in
| downtown New Orleans riding out Hurricane Katrina and all
| the crazyness they went through to keep things online in
| the aftermath. Comes complete with snipers, rolling
| barrels of fuel up parking garages, raiding snack
| machines, the whole enchilada.
|
| https://interdictor.livejournal.com/2005/08/29/
| selimthegrim wrote:
| (In)famously, they were SomethingAwful's hosts (you can
| see a reference to this on one of the Sep 1 posts)
| tomxor wrote:
| That is not a manufacturing process. Pretty sure they are
| referring to time sensitive operations where halting a
| manufacturing process causes substantial losses due to the
| overhead of starting and stopping that process and probably
| losses due to waste that cut much deeper than mere losses in
| profits... maybe also to do with the affect on supply
| consistency to their customers.
|
| (Regularly) shutting down such operations could quite
| realistically bankrupt them.
| okasaki wrote:
| From what I can recall, the UK government's plans and
| predictions have consistently been... over-optimistic.
|
| Time to go to the local charity shop and buy some wool
| sweaters.
| AngusH wrote:
| Unfortunately the government (of all stripes) tends to reject
| predictions it doesn't like:
|
| try this one from 20 years ago:
|
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3034088.stm
|
| (it's on this topic of energy)
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| It's interesting sometimes to see how far we've come,
| despite all the immediate doom and gloom. The mix of UK
| energy supplies from that 2003 article was reportedly:
| Gas 38% Coal 32% Nuclear 23%
| Oil 4% Others 3%
|
| Compare that to the use of renewables and the reduced
| dependency on fossil fuels today and at least we've taken
| some big steps in the right direction since then.
|
| There isn't much to like about the current situation, but
| it does mean the danger of relying on supplies of non-
| renewable fuels has been shown beyond any doubt. If we do
| experience one of the bad scenarios with rolling power cuts
| this winter, it must be near-certain that whoever forms the
| government for the rest of the 2020s will get elected on a
| very green platform. If important steps towards making us
| both more resilient and more environmentally friendly then
| get taken sooner, that's one small victory at least.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Some of this is going to end up depending on the wind. The
| chart on page 13 of your second link shows 16.1% wind of every
| single day for the period. So that's about 4GW, day after day.
| That's a placeholder, because we have no sufficiently accurate
| long range forecast. The reality, hour by hour could be 15GW
| and it could be 1GW.
| AngusH wrote:
| Yes definitely agree.
|
| Overall the UK grid is probably too dependent on wind energy,
| with all the variability that involves.
|
| Right now gridwatch.org.uk is showing about 13.5GW from wind
| (40% of demand), but I've seen some days when there has been
| well under 1GW.
| tialaramex wrote:
| We're not yet in a place where we routinely make so much
| wind power that we need less rather than more.
|
| We need a lot more storage, even battery storage plus wind
| is way cheaper than current gas shortage induced prices,
| and both wind turbines and batteries are getting cheaper
| makomk wrote:
| Probably. The trouble is that we're committed to net zero,
| and there isn't much of an alternative to relying on wind
| energy this far north unless you have better sites for
| hydroelectric than the UK or can make nuclear work somehow.
| The UK does at least have a decent amount of offshore wind
| which is a little less intermittent than the onshore
| variety.
| O__________O wrote:
| Anyone have a link to the actual report?
|
| Only report I found appears to say that 3-hours downtime a year
| is an acceptable downtime -- unable to find anything about
| intentional blackouts as a power management strategy.
| jandrese wrote:
| Might be a good time to look into home battery systems. Regular 3
| hour blackouts are exactly the sort of situation where they
| shine. It's even possible to build DIY systems out of rack
| batteries and generic charge controllers, although you will need
| permits and probably professional install to hook it to your home
| electrical panel.
| tnjm wrote:
| I installed a backup system (in the greenhouse rather than the
| house... priorities) to cope with these kinds of problems.
|
| Using a Victron Multiplus 1.6kVA system with 2x 110Ah 12V Gel
| batteries was remarkably cheap and simple. The whole lot came
| to just over EUR1k and took ~1h to set up, mostly setting
| jumper switches.
|
| It keeps the pellet boiler, circulation pumps, backup gas
| heaters and control gear going all night when necessary. The
| automatic switchover from mains (<20ms) is so fast that none of
| the PLCs, Arduinos, Raspberry Pis or heating equipment notices.
| Upgrading its capacity simply involves plugging in another 2x
| batteries (it's a 24v unit) in parallel.
|
| The only thing I wasn't thrilled about was that it doesn't
| protect against power surges, and a storm fried the boiler
| logic board AND the gas valve in the backup heater
| simultaneously in midwinter. (Victron unit was fine though!)
| Lesson learned.
|
| A similar installation in the house could easily power our
| (non-electric) central heating system, LED lighting and wifi
| for plenty long enough to stay civilized, and we're being
| prepared for 2 hour rolling blackouts here this winter.
| sebazzz wrote:
| Word of warning: Just like solar inverters, not every home
| battery system is made to be grid independent. For instance,
| the Tesla Powerwall does, but the Sessy home battery does not
| and needs an active AC sinus on the grid.
|
| Even if you do have a home battery system that can generate its
| own sinusoidal AC wave, you still need an (automatic) transfer
| switch to disconnect your home from the failed grid, otherwise
| your home battery might be attempting to power the entire
| (local) grid which of course doesn't work.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > otherwise your home battery might be attempting to power
| the entire (local) grid which of course doesn't work.
|
| and some random line worker may think there's no electricity
| flowing when there is.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _and some random line worker may think there 's no
| electricity flowing when there is._
|
| If you have lines in an unknown state, step 1 is to put
| them in a known state. For power line work, this involves
| grounding all the phases and neutral together at both ends
| of the section you intend to work on. Good luck ringing a
| dead short with your home inverter/generator/etc.
| bityard wrote:
| Line workers are trained to never assume a line is de-
| energized, those that forget don't live very long.
|
| (But yes, backfeeding the grid during an outage is
| dangerous and highly against code.)
| brnt wrote:
| > not every home battery system is made to be grid
| independent.
|
| In Europe you should check if grid-independence is even
| legal. In some places it is not.
| kiratp wrote:
| I've always wondered, what if you were to wire up a panel
| and one light to the grid, but the then rest of the house
| is on a separate independent circuit? Technically the house
| is on-grid...
| cryptonector wrote:
| You could get caught if ever there's a fire, or you need
| an electrician and you forget to undo that before the
| electrician gets there, or if there's some sort of code
| inspection.
| LtWorf wrote:
| It's legal, they just won't pay you subsidies for solar
| panels.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| What's the point of a home battery system that doesn't work
| when the grid is down? What else would you use the battery
| for?
| ok_dad wrote:
| For homes, you store solar in it and discharge at night to
| reduce bills. For commercial, you do peak shaving and load
| shifting to reduce bills. Also, you can sell your battery
| capacity to some companies and they can aggregate it with
| other homes in your area to sell the capacity to the grid
| during peaks, to eek out a bit more value.
| calsy wrote:
| A home battery system stores the excess solar energy
| generated during the day so you can use it at night. It's
| about long term savings on electricity bills.
| shagie wrote:
| Arbitrage - especially given that it is a value that is
| guaranteed to have differences on a day cycle.
|
| https://www.utilitydive.com/news/utility-scale-battery-
| stora...
|
| https://www.ny-engineers.com/blog/two-ways-to-use-grid-
| tied-...
|
| Things like https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/products-and-
| services/custo... note the
| https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/products-and-
| services/custo... - the CGS Plus and Smart Export involve
| use of a battery that isn't necessarily home power
| sufficient.
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| _What else would you use the battery for?_
|
| Efficiency.
|
| You can store excess energy from local microgeneration,
| particularly solar, that can be used later. With our
| current pricing model in the UK, that is several times
| cheaper than selling the excess power to the grid for a
| token return and then paying full price to have the same
| amount back from your mains supply later.
|
| Some systems can even be configured to charge their battery
| from the mains at quiet times (when, again in a typical UK
| pricing model, the cost-per-unit can be much lower) if
| there isn't enough local generation to fully charge it, for
| example in the middle of winter.
| jandrese wrote:
| It can be useful in cases where you have Time of Use
| metering. You can charge your battery in the middle of the
| day when energy is cheap due to solar overproduction and
| then draw down the battery in the evening when power is
| expensive. If you have it tied to solar panels you can even
| charge the battery with solar and then sell it back to the
| grid in the evening. In a few places you can even do "peak
| shaving" where the power company will give you a pretty
| nice bonus for switching your battery into grid-feed mode
| when the demand is so high that they are considering
| turning on expensive peaker plants.
|
| Most people unfortunately can't take advantage of this, but
| most battery packs are also suitable for off-grid use.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| Not even just time-of-use metering. If you lack net
| metering (e.g. you can't use the grid as a battery) then
| using a battery when your solar is not producing (enough)
| reduces your overall consumption.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Imagine the size of the opportunity here for green energy
| companies. Everybody whose ever wanted to pitch high efficiency
| building supplies or solar panels is finally going to get
| peoples attention. This could be huge over the next 10 years
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| My family live in a rural area. For a while, we had an
| unusually high frequency of power cuts around here. If I
| understood correctly, it was something to do with recurring
| problems with the overhead lines supplying local substation(s).
| Mostly it was just a few seconds or maybe a few minutes, enough
| to reset equipment and cause some irritating disruption but not
| catastrophic. Occasionally, though, the supply did cut out for
| a much longer time and you had to start thinking about whether
| you really needed to open the fridge/freezer right now.
|
| Between that experience and the environmental benefits, we were
| already discussing installing a big solar panel and battery
| system at our home with local suppliers, even before the recent
| dramatic price rises and the bizarre news that in the 21st
| century there's a credible threat of rolling blackouts here.
|
| I can tell you from first-hand experience that getting such a
| system professionally installed and commissioned is likely to
| be a long wait and then cost a small fortune. Systems that can
| keep the household power on when the mains supply cuts out can
| require jumping through extra regulatory and consent hoops
| before anyone installs the new gear alongside a mains supply.
| You'll also have fewer and often much more expensive options
| for the hardware than systems designed for
| efficiency/environmental benefits but not resilience to
| outages.
|
| Of course it might still be a very good idea to do this, if
| you're lucky enough to meet the practical requirements and have
| the money to do it. But it's definitely not going to be some
| DIY system you can build for PS1,000. More like PS10,000-20,000
| and several months of waiting for an installation date, at
| least in this area.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| As fridges increasingly become inverter-drive (ie: continuous
| drive), it's my dream that one day they'll have a 48VDC port
| and anyone can setup a PV on them, no permit required. Or
| bypass their inverter from their battery bank (before the
| fridge rectifies it and inverts it _again_ ).
|
| It'll use solar when available and grid for the rest.
|
| Since it's inverter drive, it can use whatever amperage comes
| in, even if it means running a 5% duty cycle and do at least
| something. The contents are the battery!
| [deleted]
| tnjm wrote:
| Very true. An alternative is to install a lower-spec off-the-
| shelf charger/inverter for closer to PS1k though, and instead
| have a handful of sockets with backup power. Being able to
| charge your phone and laptop, keep the fridge/freezer running
| and have at least some light is still magical.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I used to trigger my fuses in my apartment a lot, so I got
| a UPS power strip. I connected it to my router so the
| internet would stay on in case I was on a work call or
| something.
|
| Maybe that's the simplest solution. Every important
| appliance has its own UPS. Small UPS's like that require no
| setup or permits and just kinda work.
|
| I wonder if you could use one to power a fridge..
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| Anything like that is better than nothing, for sure.
| Personally, we already have various critical equipment on
| UPS.
|
| Having to work out what is protected and for how long gets
| old pretty quickly, though. So do alarms going off in one
| room or another if the mains supply cuts out in the middle
| of the night, when everyone is (was) probably sleeping
| anyway. Or occasionally annoyances like waking up to find a
| big job scheduled to run overnight hasn't actually run
| because the system that should have run it executed a
| controlled power-down after an earlier power outage
| instead.
|
| In contrast, a relatively large but domestic-scale battery
| system can easily store 10kWh or more of usable energy
| these days and provide it to anywhere in the building.
| That's enough to run most of our house for 24h, as long as
| we avoid using very high consumption devices for extended
| periods or running too many of them at once with peak
| consumption levels higher than the equipment supports -- a
| huge upgrade compared to the small-scale alternatives.
| sgt101 wrote:
| One thing that this will do is accelerate the move to domestic
| solar in the UK. With a battery it's pretty viable already, throw
| in the possibility of 0 power it becomes pretty compelling - if
| you have the cash.
| belter wrote:
| Two months ago:
|
| https://youtu.be/q-88_6K3KAQ?t=55
|
| https://youtu.be/h2RbupviJMM?t=59
| hulitu wrote:
| UK dependent on russian gas ? Who could have thought /s
| Lio wrote:
| From the UK Government website:
|
| _Unlike other countries in Europe, the UK is in no way
| dependent on Russian gas supply. Our single largest source of
| gas is from the UK Continental Shelf and the vast majority of
| imports come from reliable suppliers such as Norway._
|
| _There are no gas pipelines directly linking the UK with
| Russia and imports from Russia made up less than 4% of total UK
| gas supply in 2021._
|
| IMHO giving up the 4% of supply that came from Russia is more
| than worth it to help Ukraine. We should move to increasing the
| share of renewables we use, from the current 37%, and get rid
| of foreign energy dependencies once and for all.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/news/russia-ukraine-and-uk-ene...
| justnotworthit wrote:
| From the article itself:
|
| > It blamed the international scramble for supplies because
| of the war, which has starved continental Europe of its main
| source of natural gas.
|
| Which is political-ese for "sanctions".
| rvieira wrote:
| It is true that it is not dependent _directly_ on Russian
| gas, but that is a bit naive.
|
| The UK is highly dependent on Norwegian gas which now has to
| bid against Germany for, as an example.
| f1shy wrote:
| I'm totally ignorant of the energy production share by
| method in the UK, but I was convinced they are pretty much
| autonomous (to a 95%). Aren't they (you)?
| sct202 wrote:
| "The UK imports around 50% of its gas from the
| international market and most homes in England and Wales
| are heated by mains gas supply. Gas is also used to fuel
| around a third of the UK's electricity generation, so
| rising gas prices will usually lead to rising electricity
| prices.
|
| Norway is typically the UK's largest gas supplier. In
| 2021, the UK imported PS14.5 billion of gas from Norway,
| which accounted for 77% of all gas imports (Figure 3).
| Other countries the UK imports gas from include Qatar,
| the United States and Russia. Almost half of the UK's gas
| exports in 2021 were to Ireland (47.2%), and the
| Netherlands was also a large export partner (28.2%)."
|
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceof
| pay...
| halffaday wrote:
| Just have your mates bring you a few gallons of wind turbine.
| bayareabadboy wrote:
| ...Anarchy in the UK
| LatteLazy wrote:
| The UK does not plan for anything. This is just someone pointing
| out what will happen, there is no program to get extra supply
| online or shed some load or make sure people with medical
| equipment can still get power. Quite the opposite, we're spending
| more than we spend on education to discourage people from using
| less...
| connordoner wrote:
| To be honest, that isn't the case. I run a start-up in crisis
| management and there's a lot of planning being done across the
| public and private sectors -- it's just that those most senior
| in Government won't listen.
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