United Kingdom: ready to use dirty coal if electricity fails
As temperatures in the UK plummet, National Grid, the transmission system operator, asked two coal-fired power stations to stand by to generate more electricity to the grid on Monday if needed for an emergency situation.
“ We have issued a notification to heat two winter contingency units on coal. This measure should give the public confidence in Monday's energy supply, ” National Grid said today, as temperatures dropped and snow fell in London, creating traffic chaos.
“ This notification is not a confirmation that these units will be used on Monday, but that they will be available to ESO if needed ,” the network operator added. Later on Monday, National Grid's ESO said it "can confirm that it has shut down the coal-fired units as there is enough quota available for this evening ". This time it went well, but the units can be turned on at any time.
With cold temperatures and low wind speeds, wind power generated just 7.6 per cent of Britain's electricity on Saturday, National Grid ESO said on Sunday. Natural gas generated 62.0% of electricity, more than nuclear 14.4%, wind and biomass, which generated only 4.9%. Coal supplied 3.9% of Britain's electricity on Saturday.
Although the two coal-fired buffer stations were not used today, this was the first time the grid operator has asked these coal-fired units to be on standby since the UK postponed its shutdown earlier in the summer. schedule of several coal-fired power plants or units.
In September, Uniper said it would keep a unit of a UK coal-fired plant available until the end of March 2023, six months after the unit's original planned shutdown date this month. This extension is motivated by the need to boost the UK's energy supply in what promises to be a difficult winter.
German-based Uniper, which operates the Ratcliffe on Soar coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire, had initially planned to accelerate UK coal phase-out and shut down one of Ratcliffe's four 500MW units as early as the end of September 2022, two years ahead of the UK government's announced date for coal phase-out. However, in order to definitively shut down coal-fired plants in March, other sources of energy must be present which, for now, are not there. Indeed the cold coincided with a decrease in the wind which restricted the supply of renewable energies.
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The article UK: ready to use dirty coal if electricity fails comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/regno-unito-carbone/ on Tue, 13 Dec 2022 11:54:04 +0000.