Just days before the transmission system operator was due to release its much anticipated supply-demand outlook for the coming winter, RWE’s 1.4GW Didcot B gas-fired power plant dramatically took itself out of the game (see news, p4).
And what a game it has become.
The fire is expected to put one of Didcot’s two units out of action for a long time, and it comes after winter capacity margins have already been reduced by a summer of unprecedented outages. And all this at a time when supply was predicted to dwindle anyway as old plant was taken offline.
National Grid has no doubt been checking and double checking its sums during what has proved to be a summer of very bad luck: first Heysham and Hartlepool plants were taken offline, then their return to service was delayed, and we learn that when they do it will be at reduced capacity for two years (see p28). The fact that the Didcot fire is the third at a UK power plant this year can really only add salt to the wound.
Politicians have been quick to assure us that National Grid is equipped with the tools needed to balance the system and keep us all from stockpiling candles. But while this might be true, the way that National Grid has opted to use these tools shows just how this winter’s capacity crunch has caught us offguard.
For years, analysts have pinpointed the winter of 2015/16 as the looming crunch point. But as fate and fire would have it, margins this winter may be just as meagre.
National Grid’s demand-side measures, for example, were designed to be tested this winter at a modest 330MW as a prelude to next winter’s crunch when 1,800MW of grid demand could be held back through contracts with major energy users (p28).
Although the winter outlook will no doubt show that National Grid’s supply-side measures will bring forward the necessary capacity, once again the UK’s grid will rely more heavily on securing supply than balancing demand.
Surely after the summer we’ve had we can agree that this is a paradigm that needs changing?