Mothballed Coal

[dan_b]

National Grid has instructed two mothballed coal plants, Drax 5 and 6, to fire up and be available for electricity generation today.
Looks like the "what do we do when there's no wind or sun and it's cold" question is about to be answered...

[nowty]

And peak time saving sessions too today, although its another test event rather than a live event.

And we are importing heavily, lose that import and its going to be squeaky bum time.

[dan_b]

Squeaky bum time alert. Europe wants its electricity back this afternoon.

[smegal]

Squeaky bum time alert. Europe wants its electricity back this afternoon.

Looks like they'll be standing these back up.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63940390

National Grid has stood down two coal plants that it had put on standby to generate electricity in case supplies were disrupted because of cold weather.

The company had asked Drax, which owns Britain's biggest power station, to prepare two coal-fired units on Monday.

It is still planning to run a test of its scheme that offers discounts on bills for households who cut peak-time electricity use on Monday evening.

The move comes as the UK experiences a snap of freezing temperatures.

It means demand for energy rises as more people heat their homes, and a lack of wind has reduced the amount of renewable energy available.

It is understood because of the cold temperatures, Monday will be the highest demand day for electricity so far this winter.

National Grid said earlier on Monday that while it had asked Drax to warm up its two coal-fired units at its site near Selby, North Yorkshire, the plants might not be used. It confirmed at lunchtime the power station had been told to stand down.

[nowty]

Looks like there firing up DRAX 6 coal unit again for connection tomorrow morning although it sounds like a test run for now.

2022-12-15 06:10
From : Power System Manager - National Grid Electricity Control Centre NATIONAL GRID NOTIFICATION Nature of Notification COAL CONTRACT TEST RUN ACTIVE Unit: DRAXX-6 Estimated Capacity: Max 300 MW / 5 hours Earliest Sync time / date: 07:55 16/12/2022 Actions will be system flagged Notification Issued at 06:10 hrs on 15/12/2022 Issued by Antony Wicks National Grid Electricity Control Centre.

[Oldgreybeard]

Makes sense, much as I absolutely hate the idea of burning coal, we do need to keep our energy options open.

Came back from a village gathering about an hour ago now, trying to help some of those really struggling with bills and staying warm. We've set up a "warm space" in the village hall every day, with shifts of volunteers providing hot food and drinks and with the heating turned right up (thankfully the village hall committee invested in an ASHP last year that seems to work really well).

We live in a reasonably affluent area, compared to some inner city regions, yet there are a staggeringly large number of people that are having to make some really difficult choices, like whether to heat their homes or eat, as they can't afford both. The very worst are those in the housing association homes at the end of the village. They are appallingly bad in terms of insulation, and were all converted to storage heaters a few years ago to reduce the fire risk from having open fireplaces (all the fireplaces and chimneys have been ripped out and blocked off). Hard to know which way to turn in order to best provide proper help. The local authority is about as much use as a chocolate teapot and the housing association just say it's not their problem. It's enough to make you weep, it really is.

[dan_b]

Drax of course still burns a lot of stuff - just most of it is trees. Which some how classifies as "renewable".

[Oldgreybeard]

Drax of course still burns a lot of stuff - just most of it is trees. Which some how classifies as "renewable".

The Drax burning woodland issue is just another bit of greenwash, I'm sure. They initially promised that it would be 100% renewable, but there are two major flaws with that argument. The first is that the growth cycle of trees is slower than the rate at which Drax chucks out CO2, so it will take decades for the CO2 Drax shoves out into the atmosphere to be sequestered by new tree growth (i.e. it will accelerate the rise in atmospheric CO2 for maybe 20 to 30 years) the second is they lied about the trees being grown to fuel Drax all coming from sustainable plantations, it's not, they've been harvesting some old growth woodland to feed the thing, which is no better than burning coal.

Add in that they import the timber from the USA by sea and the whole thing has really just been a smoke and mirrors exercise to try and justify not burning so much coal. A surprisingly large number of people believe Drax to be carbon neutral though, so the BS has worked as far as their PR goes.

The problem with burning trees is that it takes between 10 and 20 acres of managed woodland to provide enough energy to heat a single home through winter here. There are around 30 million homes in the UK, so that means we'd need around 300 million to 600 million acres of managed woodland just to heat them using trees as biomass (and ignoring all non-heating energy requirements. The UK has, in total, about 8 million acres of managed woodland, a massive shortfall, hence the need to import wood from North America.

[Moxi]

OGB

Are those figures based on Softwood, Hardwood or a mixture? I ask because way way back when Drax was switching to biomass there was talk of all the surrounding arable land being used to cultivate fast growing willow to supplement the boiler feed - sounded nuts at the time given that the fields in that area are comprised of excellent prime market garden soils with a good tilth and nutrient mix allowing a profusion of veg and salad growing business to thrive both in the open and under glass in that area.

I like burning willow when I can obtain it as its a nice clean wood, splits easy, burns warm and clean and dry's really fast, yet despite all these good aspects and the claims in the 90's that willow crops would be part of the energy mix answer you still seldom see willow available or being cultivated on mass? What happened to it ?

Moxi

[Oldgreybeard]

OGB

Are those figures based on Softwood, Hardwood or a mixture? I ask because way way back when Drax was switching to biomass there was talk of all the surrounding arable land being used to cultivate fast growing willow to supplement the boiler feed - sounded nuts at the time given that the fields in that area are comprised of excellent prime market garden soils with a good tilth and nutrient mix allowing a profusion of veg and salad growing business to thrive both in the open and under glass in that area.

I like burning willow when I can obtain it as its a nice clean wood, splits easy, burns warm and clean and dry's really fast, yet despite all these good aspects and the claims in the 90's that willow crops would be part of the energy mix answer you still seldom see willow available or being cultivated on mass? What happened to it ?

Moxi

They are based on commercial forestry, so fairly fast growing softwoods, I believe. If you want the best conversion ratio (sunlight to usable biomass) then the very best crops are the grasses, particularly miscanthus (elephant grass). They grow very quickly, have low nutrient requirements usually and dry out quickly, so the cycle time between growing and burning is short.