UK Blackout story

[starquake]

I thought I'd put this on a new thread to stop getting off topic.

But I think I posted on here just how close UK grid came to a total Blackout on Jan 8th.

This explains it

Along with https://watt-logic.com/2025/01/17/nesos-approach-to-transparency/

In effect the grid stayed up but only saved from disaster as we didn't have a single generator fail (in effect the grid is alledged to not have had enough reserve avaialbkel to cope with a SINGLE power plant failing).

Be interested as this developes (many reputable media following this) as to when the NESO respond adequately, as the data should be published if such reserve did in fact exist.

 

[Googlebot]

Black starts are part of the emergency preparedness procedures the grid has in place.

It isn’t a scenario so unlikely it hasn’t been planned for, hopefully we will cope with short term cuts.

Many organisations undertake exercises to ensure they are ready for mass outages.

 

[dunnah01]

Jeez do people believe this nonsense

 

[Googlebot]

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64ca1dfe19f5622669f3c1b1/2023_NATIONAL_RISK_REGISTER_NRR.pdf

If you ever feel bored, the document above sets out the different risks to the UK and their resolution. It’s used to plan for everything and is usually very accurate. It’s not classified and freely available so businesses can utilise it to plan their continuity arrangements.

If you are a geek like me, it’s actually very interesting and does steer what the public and private sector prepare for.

 

[LostInSpace]

Our lights, fridges and freezers fail onto (LiFePO4) batteries if the power goes off.

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[meanders]

I agree. Any business that relies on power to run needs a well thought through, documented and tested emergency plan including a section on disaster recovery.

I remember DR planning and testing in the mid 80's.

I am surprised how many organisations don't seem to, and wonder what their insurers would do in the event of?

 

[meanders]

Jeez do people believe this nonsense

You might regret it if people, like your bank do not believe it.

Power cuts and 3 day week were bad enough to deal with in the 1970's when cash was king, and we could easily fall back to pen and paper and lighting from candles to trade. Now most businesses would stop, and if prolonged, would die.

Edit. Spelling, and making sense!

 

[DerryW]

I was involved in the design and build of a large DR suite for large company back in the early 2000's very impressive if I say so myself. Pat on the back for me and the contractors.

 

[starquake]

An Insurer who I worked for for 15 years had a fuel tank capable of running the entire site for a month. It also had a cold standby site in annother country (as well as the onsite backup within the UK). Most large orgs do take this seriously. Should add it was last refreshed just before I left their employment around 9 years ago to latest standards too (ie, new servers, power supplies, ups, and a new set of gensets with higher power as the newer servers needed more power).

The building dated from the 70-80's and they rejected external datacentres which could not meet this level of autonomy.
A little hidden flaw from negotiations on dqtacentres, is many of the big ones (which your bank won't use, but your Internet will) is that many only actually carry a days fuel with fuel-supply-agreements. I know most in the city have this fuel-supply-arrangement setup without sufficient bunkering (storage of fuel) rather than relying on their own tanks.

The issue being in major blackouts these agreements haev not been tested, and may fail -> even that was too high risk for the orgnisation I worked for for 15 years as they were well aware with the growth of the amazon etc datacentres that there may not be enough fuel tankers available to keep them online when they needed fuel every 2 days.

Should also say (as you would expect) the insurer also lit their own fibres, and did not rely on telco's for anything they could avoid as they realised gensets in exchanges were another point of failure. (in a large scale power outage BT exchanges have gensets, also relying on fuel supply agreements). They did go in BT/Virgin/NTL ducts but they were not lit by the telco's to avoid their reliance even on their exchanges. When you really start to dig into what would happen on a several day outage you would be surprised how vulnerable this country is.

500MW of spinning reseve as the article alledges with storage from the ESO is certainally the lowest level of spinning reseve this country has had in the last 5 years on the UK grid, and February is traditionally colder, and the highest peak in the grid. Equally 500MW isn't a huge amount of generation.

 

[starquake]

To update some of the actual press have now put in FOIA requests to NESO -> so it'll be interesting for sure to see if they are willing to name the reserve they had thair their own datasets did not show. I have a sense they'll reject it because it'll show they were not meeting the minimum safety levels mandated by their own terms as documented in the article above, but some serious journalists are now on the case here. Really wouldn't be surprised to see this in Private Eye in a few weeks.

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[Gromett]

It was a non story.

The grid saw that it's safety margin was falling below the minimum required. Note this was not a negative number, ie we were not running short of energy. Just that we had cut into the reserves more than they were legally allowed to.
So the grid operator issued a CMN (Capacity Market Notice) at 12.01 to come into effect at 16:00. The capacity market immediately responded and the CMN was withdrawn at 12.32.
So it took 31 minutes for the generators to bid and win contracts to supply at the 16:00 period. This was well ahead of the time when it was needed.

This is perfectly normal and happens most winters and quite often during the year. It is how the system is designed to operate. There was in my opinion zero risk of blackouts.
You can view all CMN notices here.

GB Electricity Capacity Market Notices - National Grid

gbcmn.nationalenergyso.com

As you can see they are regular with the only exception being 2019 and 2023 when I couldn't find any.

HOWEVER. With Milliband shutting down the North Sea, and Norway now hitting peak production. We are now heading into a high risk situation.
We will become more and more reliant on foreign supplies of Gas and Norway cannot maintain it's main supplier status.

Milliband should be making it easier for North Sea investment to ensure we are self sufficient during the net zero process.
Instead he is killing our self sufficiency so we are importing more and this may come from countries with lower environmental standards. There is no upside to his plans.

Until Milliband came to power I was reasonably confident we were ok for the predictable future. Now I can foresee problems happening within this governments lifespan.

 

[starquake]

Until Milliband came to power I was reasonably confident we were ok for the predictable future. Now I can foresee problems happening within this governments lifespan.

The fact milliband is in charge of the people saying everything was fine on Jan 8th may be part of the problem. Under the old regime when National Grid operated it, it had never claimed commercial confidentiality on it's power surplus agreement previously (remember everything is legally required to publish on the elexon portal, generator availbility, generator use etc).

Thats the point here, if they could name the generators providing the 1400MW of margin they allege I'd be a lot more confident, but the only ones I'm aware of are some diesel units at under 10MW that wouldn't be on the portal. This smells of coverup to me, and I'm quite used to reading the elexon actual data myself. At moment I believe it's likely the grid failed to maintin the minimum safety margin (as it failed to in 2019).

Remember the CEO and person responsible for the data here is Milliband as of I think it was last November...

Should add these types of low-margin situations are common as you say in winter, but I've never seeon one as tight as 8th Jan. Usually tight is 2GW, and I've equally never seen the 1 hour LOLP above 20% ever before. It's common for the LOLP to be high 24 hours prior to bids coming in for generation..., but NOT 1 hour.

 

[gus-lopez]

I have a sense they'll reject it because it'll show they were not meeting the minimum safety levels mandated by their own terms as documented in the article above,

Therefore, if they did that, then the next question has to be
" By refusing to disclose this information can we then take it that you were failing to meet the reserves specified in your own terms?"

 

[Gromett]

The fact milliband is in charge of the people saying everything was fine on Jan 8th may be part of the problem. Under the old regime when National Grid operated it, it had never claimed commercial confidentiality on it's power surplus agreement previously (remember everything is legally required to publish on the elexon portal, generator availbility, generator use etc).

Thats the point here, if they could name the generators providing the 1400MW of margin they allege I'd be a lot more confident, but the only ones I'm aware of are some diesel units at under 10MW that wouldn't be on the portal. This smells of coverup to me, and I'm quite used to reading the elexon actual data myself. At moment I believe it's likely the grid failed to maintin the minimum safety margin (as it failed to in 2019).

Remember the CEO and person responsible for the data here is Milliband as of I think it was last November...

Should add these types of low-margin situations are common as you say in winter, but I've never seeon one as tight as 8th Jan. Usually tight is 2GW, and I've equally never seen the 1 hour LOLP above 20% ever before. It's common for the LOLP to be high 24 hours prior to bids coming in for generation..., but NOT 1 hour.

It is an automated system. There is no way that I can think of Milliband putting his finger on the scale and at this point in time there would be no need. This was a very normal event in my opinion.

 

[swemmy666]

It was a non story.

The grid saw that it's safety margin was falling below the minimum required. Note this was not a negative number, ie we were not running short of energy. Just that we had cut into the reserves more than they were legally allowed to.
So the grid operator issued a CMN (Capacity Market Notice) at 12.01 to come into effect at 16:00. The capacity market immediately responded and the CMN was withdrawn at 12.32.
So it took 31 minutes for the generators to bid and win contracts to supply at the 16:00 period. This was well ahead of the time when it was needed.

This is perfectly normal and happens most winters and quite often during the year. It is how the system is designed to operate. There was in my opinion zero risk of blackouts.
You can view all CMN notices here.

GB Electricity Capacity Market Notices - National Grid

gbcmn.nationalenergyso.com

As you can see they are regular with the only exception being 2019 and 2023 when I couldn't find any.

HOWEVER. With Milliband shutting down the North Sea, and Norway now hitting peak production. We are now heading into a high risk situation.
We will become more and more reliant on foreign supplies of Gas and Norway cannot maintain it's main supplier status.

Milliband should be making it easier for North Sea investment to ensure we are self sufficient during the net zero process.
Instead he is killing our self sufficiency so we are importing more and this may come from countries with lower environmental standards. There is no upside to his plans.

Until Milliband came to power I was reasonably confident we were ok for the predictable future. Now I can foresee problems happening within this governments lifespan.

14 years of tory mismanagement, yet somehow its all Ed Miliband's fault

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[starquake]

14 years of tory mismanagement, yet somehow its all Ed Miliband's fault

He's literally the head of the orgnanisation refusing to tell the media what units (power plants) they had in reserve as legally mandated they must.

He wasn't the head of it prior to November, and he did make the (political) decision to head that unit. He is the chairman and ceo and literally created the company for it on behalf of the country, taking over from National grid, who have operated the sytstem for the last 30 years without poltical involvemnet.

ie, in this case he is in fact personally accountable on this one. I suspect it'll result in direct questions in house of parliament from the other parties if the FOIA request isn't answered as to the power plants held in reserve.

And yes, the mismanagement that lead to this point (shutting the coal plants) is all Tory stuff ... you'd have thought they would have built a few gas units to replace the 2GW of coal capacity that exited the market last 2 years, but they didn't.

And if we get a no-wind, solar day combined with cold weather in Feb, I'd expect a higher peak than 8th January.

 

[starquake]

Therefore, if they did that, then the next question has to be
" By refusing to disclose this information can we then take it that you were failing to meet the reserves specified in your own terms?"

Thankfully I linked the original source, but theres some rather good energy industry journalists in 2 of the big papers, and I understand they are running with the FOIA requests now on this.

I can't disagree with the analysis in the above blog.

When you check REMIT (the part of elexon) that covers the power plants tripping daily, you will see how common it is in reality that a generator set trips out and kills 2-500MW of generation. THe last one was Jan 17th 5:55am and was 700MW as of now. If the analysis in the blog is found to be correct had that happened in Jan 8th, that would have been localised demand control (ie, brownout).

This to me is highly concerning, of course it was no issue for such a trip at 5:55am as there was plenty of generationa vailable to cope (we have a 25GW margin overnight)

 

[Gromett]

14 years of tory mismanagement, yet somehow its all Ed Miliband's fault

Nope. I said there is no fault for the January 8th thing. I said that was part of the normal operation.

I then said that what Milliband is doing now is heading us down a disasterous route.

The Tories weren't brilliant at this either but at least they sometimes changed direction when they saw things weren't working.

Milliband is doing things without thought for the consequences and is being really boneheaded about it. It will end in disaster within 5-10 years.

 

[Googlebot]

Pre Civil Contingencies Act there wasn’t even a legal obligation for anyone to prepare for emergencies.

Labour did do us all a favour with its introduction in 2004 and the UK is now much more resilient than we were. I can’t comment on current policy as I don’t know enough about it, I do know a reliance on overseas isn’t the best as the rise in gas prices has shown.

We absolutely need to de carbonise our energy consumption, that goes without saying despite what some people may say. To do that as quickly as the politicians and environmentalists want is risky, but then so is global warming.

Resilience costs, a lot!

 

[Gromett]

14 years of tory mismanagement, yet somehow its all Ed Miliband's fault

This may help you understand part of why I am criticising Milliband. It is not the Wind farms, or solar panels I have issues with. It is him not considering this when he made decisions that has effectively killed the North sea production.

‘Dusk for Norway is dawn for Russia’: Alarm as gas fields supplying the UK begin to run out​

Dwindling supplies of fossil fuels threaten to play straight into the hands of Vladimir Putin

For decades, Norway has been Britain’s leading source of imported energy.

However, that relationship may be set to come under strain after the Scandinavian nation warned that its vast oil and gas fields are in decline.

The threat of dwindling production would herald a potential energy crisis for the UK, which last year relied on Norway for half its gas and a quarter of its oil.

Worse still, a drop in Norwegian output would strengthen Russia’s grip on the global gas market, posing a geopolitical nightmare for governments across Europe.

According to a new report from the Norwegian Offshore Directorate (NOD), the country’s oil and gas supplies peaked last year and are expected to dwindle from now on.

Its findings revealed Norway produced about 230m standard cubic metres of oil and gas in 2024, although that could fall to as low as 110m cubic metres by 2035.

Experts claim extra investment could help slow the decline, although there is no escaping from the fact that Norway’s best oil and gas fields are becoming increasingly depleted.

“We expect overall production to decline in the later 2020s,” the report from the Norwegian Offshore Directorate said.

“In order to slow this decline, exploration will need to take place close to infrastructure and in more frontier areas, in addition to making more investments in fields, discoveries and infrastructure.

“Failure to invest will lead to rapid dismantling of petroleum activities.”

While an obvious concern for Norwegian households, the latest warning from the NOD will also send a chill through Ed Miliband’s Energy Department.

Last year, Norway became Britain’s primary source of gas after supplying 29bn cubic metres, whereas the UK’s North Sea output shrank to 26bn cubic metres.

Over the next decade, UK production is expected to decline by a further 70pc, meaning reliance on costly imported gas will increase in the coming years.

Norway has long been expected to be the primary source of that gas.

However, the UK and the rest of Europe now face the prospect of being forced into the arms of countries like Russia if Norway starts to turn off the taps.

“Dusk for Norway is dawn for Russia,” says Andreas Schroeder, head of energy analytics at the Independent Commodity Intelligence Service (ICIS).

“Russia is unlikely to dominate Europe again as in the past when it had nearly 40pc market share.

“But the call to open the pipes and gates for cheap Russian gas will get louder over time as gas prices increase with dwindling Norwegian output.

“It creates a case for more cooperation with Russia and will encourage Russia-friendly politicians in countries like Slovakia and Hungary.”

Since production started in 1971, oil and gas have been produced from a total of 123 fields on the Norwegian shelf.

At the end of 2023, 92 fields were in production, including 67 in the North Sea, 23 in the Norwegian Sea and two in the Barents Sea.

In total, Norway’s fields contain 251m barrels of recoverable oil, which is roughly 10 times what is known to remain in UK waters.

That will have declined by 2050, though experts predict there could still be more than 100m barrels worth of oil remaining.

However, that is only if Norway chooses to increase investment sharply, analysts say. A failure to do so will mean recoverable levels will fall close to zero.

That choice now rests not only with oil companies but also with voters and politicians.

The Green Party of Norway, which has pledged to “shut down the use of fossil fuels as quickly as possible”, won just three of Norway’s 169 parliamentary seats in the 2021 election.

But the Greens’ apparent failure was not because the electorate rejected their ideas.

Instead, the winning coalition parties, comprising the social-democratic Labour Party (48 seats) and the agrarian Centre Party (28 seats), both latched on to the anti-fossil fuels bandwagon and committed to a “managed transition” away from fossil fuels.

They are supported, albeit unofficially, by the Socialist Left Party (13 seats) – which wants an immediate halt to all oil exploration.

It means Norway is now ruled by political parties committed to halting oil and gas production, albeit disagreeing over how long it will take to achieve it.

The next elections are due in September this year – and British politicians will be watching closely.

Professor Gunnar Eskeland, of the Norwegian School of Economics, thinks a total ban on drilling is unlikely.

“I doubt it would happen. Money wins!” he says, referring to Norway’s renowned sovereign wealth fund, which takes a percentage of all the taxes paid on Norway’s oil and gas wealth.

“As of November 2024, it had over $1.74 trillion (£1.4 trillion) in assets, and held on average 1.5pc of all of the world’s listed companies.

“That makes it the world’s largest single sovereign wealth fund in terms of total assets under management. It translates to over $325,000 [savings] per Norwegian citizen.”

Much of that money has come directly from British consumers.

Over the 12 months leading up to October, the UK imported £10.2bn worth of oil and £10.5bn worth of gas from Norway.

This equates to £740 for every UK household, although even that is only a fraction of what we paid in 2022.

Back then, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent prices to an all-time high, the UK spent more than £40bn on Norwegian oil and gas.

Much of that money went straight into the Norwegian savings bank – its sovereign wealth fund – where it will continue supporting Norwegians long after their oil and gas has run out or been shut down.

Why did Britain, which also once enjoyed huge oil and gas wealth from the North Sea, not do the same as the Norwegians?

Or, as one infamous piece of graffiti scrawled on a wall in Aberdeen once put it: “Dear God, give us another oil boom. Next time we won’t p--- it up against the wall.”

Michael Bradshaw, professor of Global Energy at Warwick Business School, says Britain had farmed out most of its oil and gas exploration to foreign companies, leading to profits being funnelled offshore.

“Unlike the UK, Norway benefits from having a high level of state ownership of its oil and gas industry and now has a very substantial sovereign wealth fund,” he says. “We just spent the money. So now we are paying the Norwegian state handsomely for their gas and they are providing security of supply to the UK in return.”

The Vikings would have been proud.

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[68c]

Black starts are part of the emergency preparedness procedures the grid has in place.

It isn’t a scenario so unlikely it hasn’t been planned for, hopefully we will cope with short term cuts.

Many organisations undertake exercises to ensure they are ready for mass outages.