National Grid had evidence that the shift to renewable energy was putting Britain’s electricity supply at risk months before the biggest blackout in a decade, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The company, which is responsible for keeping the lights on, has downplayed the role of wind energy in the power cut that caused widespread chaos earlier this month.
John Pettigrew, chief executive of the FTSE 100 firm, described the outage as a ‘once-in-30-years’ event and said there was ‘nothing to indicate there is anything to do with the fact that we are moving to more wind or more solar’.
Yet in April, National Grid published research warning that using more renewable power sources posed a threat to the network’s ‘stability’.
In a report based on a £6.8 million research project, National Grid admitted that renewables increased the ‘unpredictability and volatility’ of the power supply which ‘could lead to faults on the electricity network’.
The revelations come as energy regulator Ofgem and the Government continue to investigate the causes of the blackout.
A report due out this week is expected to show the outage was caused by a series of failures, including a lightning strike which led to the almost simultaneous shutdown of two power stations.
A gas-fired power station at Little Barford, Bedfordshire, and the Hornsea offshore wind farm in the North Sea both went offline just before 5 pm on August 9.
That caused the electricity network’s frequency – the rate at which power is transmitted to users – to drop below 50 Hz. Equipment can be damaged if it is higher or lower than this level.
To maintain frequency, local distribution networks were forced to cut supply in some areas.
Figures from the National Grid show almost half the UK’s power was generated from wind at one point on the day the power failed.
National Grid has developed a frequency ‘monitoring and control system’ to deal with issues arising from the drive to renewables.
It should be operational by 2025 when it expects to have moved to a ‘zero carbon’ electricity system.
Experts have said giant batteries providing instant back-up energy could help.
Jeremy Nicholson, an expert at energy consultancy Alfa, said: ‘This is not about wind being unreliable. It’s about having the right system in place to accommodate it. It’s a question of doing it safely. Wind enthusiasts acknowledge this.
‘The costs are sizeable but if there’s a risk of this happening more frequently, I don’t think businesses or consumers will accept a lower standard of continuity of supply.’
A spokesman for National Grid said: ‘As we move to a more renewable system we are creating new markets and products to manage this effectively.
‘We are confident we will be able to operate Britain’s electricity at zero carbon by 2025 with a safe and resilient network, given the right regulatory framework and incentives.’
Read more at Daily Mail’s This Is Money
Relying upon renewable’s is total’y irresponsible but just typical of Eco-Stupidity that runs the modern enviromental movement
Hmm, I wonder what the “regulatory framework and incentives” will be?
– You can’t run your a/c during the hottest part of the day.
– You can’t run your heat during the coldest part of the day.
– You’ll receive X dollars to cover a very small portion of the cost for the required heating/cooling system you must install in your home.
– You’ll receive X dollars to cover a very small portion of the cost for the solar panels you are required to install on your roof.
etc, etc, etc…..
The spokesman for the National Grid was lying by saying that the grid will be reliable.
“We lose a little reliability with every windmill we add, but we will make it up in volume!”
I don’t know if this is a serious or cynical comment. I would like to point out that two wind mills in a windless environment do not produce any more power than one.
It’ll be like the good old days. A windy day was laundry day. The clothes would be dry in no time at all.
There is no way the UK or anyone else can transform from reliable fossil fuels that run 24/7 to renewables that are often off line without impacting grid reliability. This is especially true since there is no practical technology to store enough energy to run a grid. Remember that Australia’s $50 million dollar battery only had enough capacity to run their grid for a few minutes. What “regulatory framework and incentives” will boil down to is long and frequent power outages will be the new reality.