January 11, 2025 - 8:00am
At 5.30pm on Wednesday, as Britain shivered in the ongoing, windless cold snap, the country came alarmingly close to regional electricity blackouts, closer, says the leading energy consultant Kathryn Porter, than it has at any time in the past 15 years. Official data analysed by Porter shows that the margin between electricity demand and available supply became so narrow that if a fault had caused a single, relatively small power station to “trip” out of the system, as two quite big ones did at other times that day, there would have been a shortfall.
This is worrying enough. Yet when I asked the National Electricity System Operator (NESO), the company controlled by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband that runs the national grid, to comment, it insisted that its reserves were bigger than Porter had claimed. Neso, however, flatly refused to tell me the basis for this reassuring claim. Where might the extra power have come from? It would not say.
And the cause? This near-miss, Porter writes in her blog, Watt-Logic, “should be a real wake-up call about the dangers of relying on weather-based generation”, that is to say, wind turbines and solar panels. Needless to say, there was no electricity being generated by the latter on a dark January evening. As for wind, earlier on Wednesday, Neso proudly announced that in 2024, wind overtook natural gas as the UK’s biggest single source of electricity, accounting for 30% of the total consumed. On its best days, it was generating more than 22 gigawatts (GW).
But during Wednesday evening’s peak, the data show that wind’s output was just 2.5GW. At that time, the total consumed across the UK was almost 19 times as much at 46.825GW.
And this, it should be remembered, is now, when Britain still has a large fleet of gas-fired power plants it can rely on. However, Miliband and Neso have pledged that by 2030, Britain will be a “clean energy superpower” having almost eliminated fossil fuels from its grid. Even if this goal is not met, it is certain to be far more dependent on “weather based” renewables.
The cliff edge over which we almost tipped was not unforeseen. Aware of the weather, specialist electricity market forecasters had been predicting a pinch for some time, and on Tuesday and Wednesday Neso issued a series of Electricity Margin Notices (EMNs), warning that the gap between supply and demand was going to be tight.
The reality shown by Porter’s analysis is less reassuring. EMNs, she points out, are only issued when Neso control room staff fear the margin of available extra generating capacity will not be big enough to keep the power flowing in the event of a serious fault developing somewhere in the system.
They were right to be worried, for according to Porter, at 5.30pm on Wednesday, when demand was running at 46.825GW, the total available supply from all UK sources and the undersea “interconnectors” that can supply Britain with electricity generated in Europe was just 47.405GW, leaving a spare margin of just 580 megawatts (MW). Yet this was despite the fact that reserve gas plants were being fired up at enormous cost – two were paid a total of £12 million for supplying power for just three hours.
This, says Porter, was far too close for comfort: “Even a relatively small power station trip would have caused an actual shortage and triggered blackouts.” One of the interconnectors, Viking, which links Britain to the grid in Denmark, had been due to be closed on Wednesday for maintenance. It has a capacity of 700MW. Fortunately, it turned out to be available. If there had been a sudden, unexpected trip, or had Viking been offline, Neso would have been forced to impose “demand control”, meaning power cuts.
Even more concerning is the fact that, unreported until now, in the course of Wednesday — not, thankfully, during the period of peak demand — two big gas-fired power plants, Langage and Peterhead, did trip out. Their combined output is 2GW, and had they gone off at 5.30, blackouts would have been a certainty.
Had power cuts been needed, they might have been limited in scope. But in the event of a “prolonged shortfall” — not unimaginable when the government is committed to building a net zero, renewables-dependent grid — Neso says there would be “rota disconnections” affecting every region in turn to ensure “fair distribution” of the pain these would cause.
Porter says that if there had been a sudden blackout at 5.30pm, it is likely that people would have died. Traffic lights and street lamps would have ceased to function, and the only lighting from shop windows would have come from candles or lamps powered by batteries. Without electricity for their thermostats and pumps, gas-fuelled central heating systems would also have stopped working, just as the night’s frost began to bite.
Most worryingly of all, Neso did not expect this crisis until shortly before it happened. Its Winter Outlook, published in October, claimed the system’s spare capacity would be bigger than it was last year, largely because it underestimated peak winter demand by 2.4GW, which Porter describes as a “huge error”. It also overestimated how much power could be supplied through the interconnectors.
The UK power market, she concludes, came “close to disaster” on Wednesday. Neso told me the following day it disputed her findings, claiming it had merely “used our standard operational tools to manage the electricity network and ensure that we maintained enough electricity,” and that its margin had at all times been greater than 580MW. However, in the course of a dialogue that lasted for the following 24 hours, I asked its spokesperson to tell me why he thought her analysis was wrong, and what would have been the source of the additional electricity. He simply refused to answer, saying: “As an operator for the whole of Britain, we don’t talk about individual units, because we have lots of customers and technologies and we don’t set out a list of assets that could cover a particular loss.”
Either way, we may not always be lucky. Meanwhile, Centrica, which owns half of Britain’s gas storage, reported on Friday that reserve stocks are 26% lower than in January 2024, and if needed would last less than a week. The rest of the winter could be long and difficult.
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SubscribeLess than a week of gas? And that is a worry, because we need more than a week’s backup?
Presumably when we go to wind power fully, there will be more than a week’s worth of battery supply.
So that’s at least 7 TWH of battery supply.
Astonishingly expensive, and nobody has ever constructed batteries on such a scale.
Friday was also close. Wind power was only about 3.8 GW.
We were actually getting power from Ireland. Normally we transfer power to Ireland. We get power from France and transfer it to Ireland, because there is no direct connector.
If we needed to get power from Ireland, the situation must have been very dodgy indeed.
Today (Saturday), we are back to supplying power to Ireland, as normally happens. Of course, demand is less on Saturday mornings than Friday evenings.
“we don’t set out a list of assets that could cover a particular loss” is a flat out lie by NESO, and irrelevant. When all available assets are online, by definition there are no other assets to cover a loss.
A full list of public grid generating assets is set out by NESO and reported to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) who in turn produce the accredited national statistics series “Energy Trends: UK electricity”, which includes all public grid generating sources.
NESO’s statement implies the statutory information they have supplied to DESNZ is incorrect, and the accredited national statistic is wrong. Either NESO is lying about the margin on Wednesday or it has provided incorrect statutory reports to DESNZ or DESNZ is knowingly publishing incorrect national statistics. Something very wrong has happened.
The total available generating capacity is market sensitive. It is used by traders to hedge and fix prices. If NESO are saying this publicly provided market sensitive information is wrong it has enormous consequences for the fair and transparent setting of prices in the market. It would cause excessive prices paid by consumers.
Less than a week of gas? And that is a worry, because we need more than a week’s backup?
Presumably when we go to wind power fully, there will be more than a week’s worth of battery supply.
So that’s at least 7 TWH of battery supply.
Astonishingly expensive, and nobody has ever constructed batteries on such a scale.
Friday was also close. Wind power was only about 3.8 GW.
We were actually getting power from Ireland. Normally we transfer power to Ireland. We get power from France and transfer it to Ireland, because there is no direct connector.
If we needed to get power from Ireland, the situation must have been very dodgy indeed.
Today (Saturday), we are back to supplying power to Ireland, as normally happens. Of course, demand is less on Saturday mornings than Friday evenings.
We had very close to 20% dependency on interconnectors last night when I looked. If you follow the interconnector use you’ll see we never give, always take, except for an occasional tiny bit to Ireland. How is that going to work long term?
Who was actually mad enough to start banning one system before its replacement was available?
We depend on French nuclear and the Drax wood chip burning power station- which is an excellent satirical joke but not a very efficient power station.
Indeed, we balk at “expensive” nuclear and mock the cost overruns of the French Flamanville reactor, but all last week and today the UK is utterly dependent on French nuclear – now including Flamanville – to keep the UK’s industries working, its food distribution systems flowing, and its people from freezing to death. When a nation’s social and economic systems fail because of a lack of wind, nuclear will in hindsight look *very* cheap.
Nick Clegg’s reason for rejecting new nuclear in 2010 because it wouldn’t be online until 2022 onwards looks like one of the most serious failings in government in the last 50 years. No words can describe such folly.
No words can describe such folly.
Not if you think of it as “folly” as most people define the term. I’d say it’s something far worse, more sinister, full of ill intent for the common folk.
I didn’t realise the French had finally got Flamanville 3 on line ! Apparently turned on 21-Dec-24, but only 100MW so far. Only took 17 years. Good to know we ordered one of these for Hinckley Point. Let’s do nuclear seriously – and is serious volume – rather than clowning around on one off projects like this.
Small nuclear power stations are the best way forward.
Madness. You have idiots in positions of power where they haven’t even begun to figure out optimal process. We have the same in South Africa, but we are 3rd world!
We are becoming 3rd World under our levelling down equity driven loon masters. It sounds as if I shall be driven to live abroad not simply to escape high tax but to ensure I don’t die of hypothermia.
The lekker Loadshedding !
The idiocy that got us here defies explanation
Not idiocy, it’s hubris. Technology, much like scissors you don’t want to run with it like a three year old either.
If millions of us weren’t afraid of running up vast gas bills and so heating homes at the barest minimum – some not even daring to put the heating on at all – I believe that blackouts would have been unavoidable.
Could that have been a reason for removing the heating allowance for the elderly? Awful to even think that but I wouldn’t put anything past those in charge of this sad nation.
Looks like Britain’s dark age of grooming gangs, “non-crime offenses,” juvenile gender distortion, religious violence in which naming the religion involved is itself defined as violence, NHS collapse and military impotence will be actually and quite literally, um, dark. And cold. And quite likely irreversible.
The cliff edge over which we almost tipped was not unforeseen.
Like all other foreseeable consequences, it was intentional. These people want to tip you over the cliff’s edge. They are neither stupid nor incompetent; they are far worse.
Well my English friends I’d suggest making your way across the pond as quickly as you can, because based on what I’m seeing the only solution the British governing class has for their problems is to put more taxes on the rich.
Look forward to seeing you soon.
20% of our gas this week was LNG mainly supplied by the USA ..probably shale gas…so that’s alright then isn’t it.
Interesting reference to Centrica at the end of that given they closed Rough, their huge North sea storage capacity with the agreement of the Tories under Bojo. Nice cost saving for them but strategic good sense for the UK?
The debate here though is silent on what we can do to need less. How many homes in the UK are well insulated for a start? More often the debate about Net Zero or fossil fuels seems to assume it doesn’t matter how much we waste.
I know that the insulate protesters aren’t very popular on here. But at least insulation is reliable. Even if the sun doesn’t shine, and the wind doesn’t blow, insulation carries on working.
A warning from The Energy Realists of Australia
Around the Western world, subsidised and mandated wind and solar power have been displacing conventional power in the electricity supply. Consequently, most of the grids in the west are moving towards a point where the lights will flicker at nights when the wind is low. This is a “frog in the saucepan” effect and it only starts to worry people when it is too late. Too late for Britain and Germany it seems.
https://newcatallaxy.blog/2023/07/11/approaching-the-tipping-point/
Consider the ABC of intermittent energy generation.
A. Input to the grid must continuously match the demand.
B. The continuity of RE is broken on nights with little or no wind.
C. There is no feasible or affordable large-scale storage to bridge the gaps.
Therefore, the green transition is impossible with current storage technology.
The rate of progress towards the tipping point will accelerate as demand is swelled by AI and electrification at large.
In Australia, the transition to unreliable wind and solar power has just hit the wall, while Britain and Germany have passed the tipping point and entered a “red zone,” keeping the lights on precariously with imports and deindustrialization to reduce demand.
The meteorologists never issued wind drought warnings and the irresponsible authorities never checked the wind supply! They even missed the Dunkelflautes that must have been known to mariners and millers for centuries!
https://www.flickerpower.com/images/The_endless_wind_drought_crippling_renewables___The_Spectator_Australia.pdf
There is an urgent need to find out why the meteorologists failed to warn us about wind droughts and why energy planners didn’t check. Imagine embarking on a major irrigation project without forensic investigation of the water supply including historical rainfall figures.
Most meteorologists are too busy selling climate fear to bother with weather forecasts.
NZ is about reducing Humanity to 0. Extinction Rebellion is about inducing Human Extinction. The climate/green extremists are incompetent and nihilistic, as the fires in California illustrate so clearly. Britain is blessed with vast amounts of clean accessible energy. The same leadership that still covers up organized child rape is telling Britain they cannot have affordable clean energy.