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Electrical outages. cyber attacks ?

aligarjon
What's the chances of the power outages and airport problems being cyber attacks.     Is that possible.   I would think so  ?


Gary

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    Regarding the Times article, I'm surprised an interconnector is the largest supplier. Torness and Heysham Bhave twin 660MW generating units so 1.2GW. The interconnectors can easily be run at less than this.

    However it is a balancing act and yesterday wind and solar (with no overload capacity) were supplying over half the load so the remaining stations would have been struggling to provide backup if they were running at anything like full load.

    The interconnectors were built on the premise that load can flow either way but I have yet to see gridwatch reporting that we were exporting any power. Is the wholesale price in the UK always higher than France, Belgium and The Netherlands?

    However, the main thrust of the article is that National Grid were profiteering. Isn't this what they are supposed to do - always pick the cheapest way of supplying the demand with adequate resilience?
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    There's a distinct difference between making a profit to 'wash your face', and blatant p**s-taking, especially with a vital resource upon which we are all dependent to some extent or other. If ever there was a case for the re-nationalization of a strategic resource such as energy, this is it. (I can't believe I just said that!)

    I'm no Corbynista, but I get fed up of having my chain yanked when private companies screw up, and the only answer to correct their shortcomings is always raise prices.

    Strip out the costs of the interconnector shennanegens and we could have cheaper energy prices domestically.

    The point the item makes is that the money spent on cozy deals compensating suppliers for non-availability of interconnectors could be better spent on improving the resillience' as you put it.
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    whjohnson:

    An article in today's Times suggests that National Grid have been investing in marine interconnectors instead of building more robustness into our own network.




    Wow, that must be the longest posting since I joined this forum!


    IFA2 = "Interconnexion France-Angleterre 2". It is a joint venture between the national grid and RTE, which is the equivalent in France and a subsidiary of EdF. So in fact, it is as much a way of France selling excess capacity (nuclear baseload?) as UK importing a scarce resource.


    Locally it met with quite a lot of opposition. What's wrong with a big shed at the corner of a former Naval air station?


    I had wondered whether Brexit would scupper it on the basis that tariffs might make it uneconomical, but evidently not.


    At least it gives me something to look at when I go out for a run - not only the shed, but the marine and coastal work. ?

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    All that Times article seems to imply is that the interconnects aren't used much in times of low demand, such as overnight. Which is kind of what I'd expect anyway.
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    Chris Pearson:

    . . . Wow, that must be the longest posting since I joined this forum! . . . 




    Albeit a “copy and paste” from The Times. 


    Regards,


    Alan. 

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    wallywombat:

    All that Times article seems to imply is that the interconnects aren't used much in times of low demand, such as overnight. Which is kind of what I'd expect anyway.




    Correct. All the Interconnectirs are DC and therefore have no inertia. 


    Regards,


    Alan. 

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    Forgive me for highlighting my ignorance on all things higher than 400V 3 phase here, but I am trying to comprehend exactly what this interconnector thing is all about and how it is utilized.

    We have cables connecting us with the continent, through  which energy can flow in both directions.

    The Times article says that these interconnectors are of no use during periods of heavy demand and are switched out of use to prevent damage, so what is the point of having them if we cannot pull more energy from continental sources when our own generating capacity/demand is at full stretch? Surely that would have been the original idea of having them? To provide extra headroom during peak demand in the UK?

    If I have this correct, then why are they seemingly not fit for purpose? And more to the point, why is NG building more of them?

    I'm thinking of the analogy  whereby if you are pulling a load in excess of that being capable of being provided by your existing set-up, then you just switch in another 'generator'.

    Yet, it appears that this is not what the interconnectors are really there for because they do not appear to be up to the job of carrying any extra capacity to help us prevent 'black-out's.

    It would appear to the layman like myself, that they only serve as a vehicle by which electricity is traded, rather than serving to provide any useful backup in an emergency situation.
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    I agree with you, Alan, but I think that the reporter is reporting something he doesn't understand.

    If you look at yesterday on gridwatch, you can see that the main UK France interconnector was switched on at 6:30am and stayed on until midnight - right through the peak and beyond. And most of the other interconnectors were importing as well.

    I suspect that what he was trying to report is that the amount they can import is limited to a set fraction of the gas turbine generation. I notice that the French interconnector stayed at 1.6GW while CCGT was about 7GW then, when the sun set and the CCGT went up to 11GW the French imports went to 2GW.

    I'll be interested to see the full report and what the grid can do is the amount of wind and solar keeps growing.
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    As I understand it,
    We the tax payers are being fleeced by financial/psuedo markets. The National Grid are selling capacity to the distribution companies. They get bids from the generators to supply that capacity. The surplus supply through the inter-connectors will be cheaper (note the word surplus) than coal fired power stations with lots of inertia. So that's one column in the accountant's spreadsheet. Lots of cheap electricity we can sell and maximise profits. Also it probably ticks the low carbon box as well because electricity from France will be nuclear and from Norway it will be hydro.


    All fine and dandy so far. Lot's of cheap electricity at knock down prices, a competitive market and happy end customers. In normal conditions with no dastardly mishaps, great! But hang on a minute, those awkward techies who know about these things, shout out what about contingency supplies and backups?


    Ha! Ha! say the accountants, we move on to that as separate issue now that we have got our bonuses sorted flogging cheap electricity. We now need monies from another pot to pay for the contingency that the techies are insisting on.

    They keep going on about rates of change of frequency and inertia, but we only understand pound notes and division lobbies. So we will put a green levy on the clean, low inertia energy to pay for the contingency supply that the grumbling techies are insisting on. That should keep everyone happy :-):-). That all fine and dandy until the lights go out, the trains stop and folk start listening to the techies as to why it all happened. It is because it's done exactly as it was designed to do.

    You have been paying for cheap energy through the inter-connectors that you can't use at times of low demand because there wouldn't be enough inertia in the grid as a whole to maintain a stable 50hz. There you go again banging on about Hz again, say the Money Men!


    The general public are hypocrites as usual. On the one hand they will squeal about the lights going out for a few minutes and how polluting coal is, and how nasty nuke energy is, but ask them to pay for the backup supplies and they will vote for the other party which says it's not needed.


    This is what happens when you get ideological politicians, economists and accountants to design a psuedo-market using technology that they don't understand.


    Am I somewhere near with this?

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    National Grid have released their interim report. I've attached it but you can also download from National Grid's website The magnitudes are exceedingly similar to the event in 2008 I mentioned before. The frequency plot does suggest rapid swings in frequency at the time of the event but while some local generation was lost due to the HV earth fault, most of the connected embedded generation stayed connected, suggesting that the ROCOF was within acceptable limits; most of the generation that was lost was as a result of issues within the plants themselves (some which have yet to be explained). The load shedding occurred 85 seconds after the event, while frequency response services (including batteries contracted for this very purpose) went from 0 to 650MW in less than 10 seconds... The story is not so much about inertia as it is an imbalance in supply and demand due to the sudden loss of supply.


    It is worth remembering that this is the first time it's happened in 11 years (and required two generators and a transmission line to fall over at the same time) and the system recoved in less than half an hour.  We could pay for the extra spinning reserve to cover this event. But we have to draw a line somewhere, surely?

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