Interesting to look at depending upon the weather.

GB live grid data

Intresting stuff. I was camped by a large hydro loch last week – the water was really low so not much hydro to come out of that without a lot of rain

Done slightly more in depth here

Very interesting. I shall read more.

Great stuff, thanks for posting

Done slightly more in depth here

do bear in mind that that website is run by a frothing at the mouth anti-renewables ubernimby

So if “France” is providing 2GW, does that really mean that Nuclear is at 9.5?

Nice to see wind kicking out so much

Nice to see wind kicking out so much

Windy day innit. Not sure where that figure comes from though – raw data says about 6.7 rather than 9.

So if “France” is providing 2GW, does that really mean that Nuclear is at 9.5?

France has a lot of hydro, wind and PV so no

do bear in mind that that website is run by a frothing at the mouth anti-renewables ubernimby

I’m only there for the fancy speedometers.

Does he (or she) fiddle the numbers to make it look like wood burners aren’t contributing as much as they really do?

Interesting that France is maxed out, but a lot of stuff is only at 50%.

Presumably that’s cheap but inflexible nuclear (and unpredictable) renewable driving down their price?

Pretty surprised by all of the renewable figures.
Wind and Solar are the most suprising. I know it’s windy, but it’s still providing almost a third! Equally, solar- it’s a pretty grim day.

What’s OCGT compared to CCGT gas?

What’s OCGT compared to CCGT gas?

OCGT – open cycle gas turbine

CCGT – Combined cycle gas turbine

The latter takes the hot exhaust from the gas turbine and uses it to boil water, to make steam and drive another turbine.

You need both as OCGT is less efficient but can be switched on/off quickly and throttled. CCGT are best left at a constant load.

solar- it’s a pretty grim day.

26C and wall to wall sunshine here in the SE. Remember those figures are of the historical maximum, so ~50% of the country being under as bright a sun as it ever gets is probably about right, especially is the capacity is mostly in SE England.

Also interesting to see how little coal is being used right now.

Also interesting to see how little coal is being used right now.

It’s been zero quite a lot recently with plants offline for maintenance. I guess the small amount is just the plant being kept warm so they can be used if needed.

wind & solar about 25% right now?

There’s always lots of free electricity right when we don’t need it unfortunately. Although on the plus side it does seem to mean that naff all coal is being burnt at present.

We need some kind of summer storage mechanism, to turn it into a fuel we can burn during winter.

Some sort of sun energy harvesting type thing.

Tip of my tongue.

cheap but inflexible nuclear

nuclear, cheap? controversial

The http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ site, as linked above had provided that info in a better format for years.

You need both as OCGT is less efficient but can be switched on/off quickly and throttled. CCGT are best left at a constant load.

It’s true that CCGT are best, (and originally were designed and run) at constant, or base load, but you’d be surprised how fast they can get online these days.

There’s been years of running flexibly to balance out the volume of renewables, so control systems and hardware has been developed to exploit that market. Our 340MW units can be up to full load in under half an hour under the right circumstances, (still hot from the previous run and properly pre-purged mainly). It kicks the shit out of the exhaust and boiler casings with the rapid expansion, but if the market price is right, it’s worth the increased maintenance cost.

y surprised by all of the renewable figures.
Wind and Solar are the most suprising. I know it’s windy, but it’s still providing almost a third! Equally, solar- it’s a pretty grim day.

There’s a lot of solar farms all over the south-west, particularly Cornwall, and loads of turbines down there, ‘cos it’s nearly always windy!

Generation/transmission.

We should all put the kettle on at 19:30. See how much we can get it to move by.

I i,time the figure for solar don’t take into account the panels on house/business rooftops?

I guess not PP as domestic PV isn’t metered unlike the solar farms. So it will be supplying more than the figures show in reality.

The PV is an estimate from Sheffield University who use a sample of PV sites and an estimate of the total deployed PV in the country so it should represent all PV.

The wind number is just from metered sites though, but there are lots of smaller inland sites with just a turbine or two that don’t appear in these figures; the Gridwatch site says it could be an extra third, but as the guy is (as previously mentioned) not exactly impartial I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more.

mrmonkfinger – Member

nuclear, cheap? controversial

It’ll happen.

It’s happening.

(Simplifying massively) more or less every reactor we’ve built has been a new design, that’s expensive. It means it’s also a unique decommissioning challenge for every reactor, and that’s expensive too.

The industry is now moving towards a small, modular, design. Imagine a reactor that’ll fit on the back of a lorry / rail carriage, the kind of thing that’s already used in nuclear subs – just bolt lots of them together to make a power station.

The production can now be done in a factory, that’s cheap.

Importantly, in the combined station, they’ll be removing/replacing/decommissioning one ‘module’ per year, that’s cheap.

The idea is to productionise the process, at all stages, rather than the bespoke solutions we’ve previously relied on…

(Google: small modular reactor)

Makes you wonder why such heartache over Sizewell C and the proposed new Hinkley Point doesn’t it ahwiles, when modular nukes could have been done with easier planning, development cost, energy security, waste management, decommissioning etc. etc. etc.

Intresting stuff. I was camped by a large hydro loch last week – the water was really low so not much hydro to come out of that without a lot of rain

Just a lake or one of those clever hydro storage schemes where it pumps water up to the lake during offpeak/cheap periods, and lets it all out during high demand after Eastenders?

Very interesting.

I did not know we had power connections to Ireland, France or Holland. I always thought we made all our own power and just exported/imported gas/oil. I wonder if our ministers for Brexit know about this…

spooky – not pump storage but just plain hydro. Loch Monar. I estimate it was only about 1/4 or less of its capacity – it must have been about 30m below its fill level

cornholio – and there are plans for a north sea interconnect as well to NOrway

The PV is an estimate from Sheffield University who use a sample of PV sites and an estimate of the total deployed PV in the country so it should represent all PV.

Ah right. They really should know exactly how many PV installations there are in the country through the FITs records, but where it would fall down is how much of the domestic PV is actually exported.

We have two installations and pretty much all the production goes into either hot water production or heat generation, so we don’t really export anything. I’m sure there will be a lot more similar installations.

I wonder how much of the total solar figure is made up of domestic installations?

The graphs for pumped hydro should go negative during the pumping but the axis cuts off at zero.

Re the earlier query about nuclear being cheap – it’s cheap to the distribution company, because of the way the ‘auction’ buying works. Every generator quotes a price, and they take the cheapest. Nuclear stations can’t shut down and start up quickly, so they have to price very low to be sure of selling. Originally, they were paid the lowest price that was being bought from other sources at that time, but now they have to bid significantly lower. That change was the final nail in the coffin of the last Magnox stations.

ahwiles – Member

The industry is now moving towards a small, modular, design. Imagine a reactor that’ll fit on the back of a lorry / rail carriage, the kind of thing that’s already used in nuclear subs – just bolt lots of them together to make a power station.

Except for us of course, we’re still thrusting forward into our glorious future with the most expensive building int he world, that might or might not work

I did not know we had power connections to Ireland, France or Holland. I always thought we made all our own power and just exported/imported gas/oil. I wonder if our ministers for Brexit know about this…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects#/media/File:HVDC_Europe_annotated.svg

I’ve worked on the IceLink and NorthConnect (Scotland-Norway) ones but the other UK-Norway one is currently going ahead. I think BritNed has worked very well and I imagine the future will certainly involve some kind of supergrid, which will be upsetting for all those who like to argue about renewables being rubbish on the internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid

Every generator quotes a price, and they take the cheapest.

It does not have to be this way though… I know that in Texas where I am now they have a closed grid (no import or export).

Everyone bids for the power delivery but they all get paid the same. For example

A user wants 100kwh
provider 1 says they can sell 70 at 1.7c
provider 2 says they can sell 20 at 2.0c
provider 3 says they can sell 10 at 2.7c

The city accepts this and everyone gets paid 2.7c per kwh.

Obviously the users are cities and energy companies but you get the idea. I am not sure if it is good or bad but the electricity ends up being cheap.

I do like that European super grid. Sharing resources properly to maximise the efficiencies 🙂

Just looking at it now and pretty much all power coming from Gas.

Although the generation might be happening in the UK, what proportion of the raw material (gas) comes from overseas? I assume its more than 50%?

Scary if we loose our imports….

Scary if we loose our imports….

Which may link back to the why do we have an army, trident, stay on the Falklands threads 🙂

It was an interesting day for Grid today – little wind or solar and some big units tripped. More than £1000 a MWh for some stations.