The Lights Have Stayed On: Realities Behind ‘Blackout Britain’
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Media Briefing 12 October 2015 The Lights Have Stayed On: Realities behind ‘Blackout Britain’ Headlines warning that “the lights will go out” because of power station closures and increasing use of renewable energy have been a familiar sight for at least a decade. Yet the lights seem stubbornly to be staying on. Because of what seems to be a divergence of rhetoric and daily reality, ECIU commissioned a short report summarising statistics and trends in power outages in the UK. We also briefly looked into the history of the “lights will go out” meme in the media, and took a glance at the experience of other European countries. by Matthew Aylott, Dave Jones & Richard Black Table of Contents Executive Summary ............................................................ 3 Generation X: Outages in the real world ............................. 5 Cuts in the network ............................................................. 5 How the lights stay on ......................................................... 7 New tools ............................................................................ 7 Outlook for this winter ......................................................... 8 The next few winters ........................................................... 9 Why is coal closing and what will replace it? .................... 10 Managing greater intermittency ........................................ 11 Media blackouts ................................................................ 13 Conclusions ...................................................................... 16 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Media headlines warning of imminent blackouts caused by the closure of older power stations and increasing reliance on intermittent sources of power such as wind and solar have become commonplace over the last couple of years. Yet the evidence paints a very different picture of our electricity system. It tells us that the system is highly successful at delivering a reliable supply of electricity; we were only able to identify one outage caused by generation issues in the past decade, when two thermal power stations simultaneously lost power. Otherwise, the Grid has kept the lights on even during sudden failures of power units such as the fire at Didcot B last year. Virtually all power cuts are due to faults in the local distribution network of wires and cables that transport electricity from the main transmission grid to customers. Faults are typically caused by weather conditions such as heavy rain and high winds, or by contractors accidentally cutting through underground cables. Such failures are responsible for some quarter of a million household disconnections each year. In the future, the electricity system in Britain will become increasingly reliant on renewables. But that will not necessarily mean greater risk of power cuts. Renewable deployment is higher in both Denmark and Germany than in the UK, yet they have among the most reliable electricity systems in the world. Three coal-fired stations, Eggborough, Ferrybridge and Longannet, are due to close at the end of this winter. This suggests a slim capacity margin during the 2016/7 winter. Thereafter, construction of new power stations and interconnectors, together with steadily falling demand, should ease the situation. The government could help further through policies that reduce and manage demand, and incentivise building of new power stations and interconnectors. But withdrawal of support for energy efficiency and renewable energy schemes and the pro-incumbent design of the Capacity Mechanism mean that opportunities to update the UK’s electricity system are being missed. 3 In summary: Power outages relating to generation are vanishingly infrequent. We were able to identify only one significant event over the last 10 years –affecting about half a million people for under an hour The vast majority of power cuts are due to problems with distribution of electricity, not with generation The National Grid and district networks have a good track record in keeping the lights on even when power stations shut off abruptly due to a sudden fault Even when a generator issue did put the lights did out, it was for minutes, and for a small proportion of the population – nothing like the “rolling blackouts” of the 1970s Denmark and Germany source higher proportions of their electricity from intermittent renewables than the UK, but citizens experience fewer outages The balance between supply and demand is likely to be tightest in the 2016/7 winter, but after that the situation should ease as new power stations and interconnectors come online Coherent policies to incentivise building of new power stations and interconnectors, or to manage peak demand, would enhance security of supply in the future. 4 GENERATION X: OUTAGES IN THE REAL WORLD Generators are contracted to deliver electricity to a supplier, and they pay a penalty for failing to deliver; so maintaining reliability is a top priority. Most generator shutdowns are planned well in advance, largely for maintenance so that failures become less likely. However, faults can and do occur. There were 900 instances of unplanned failures at coal and gas power plants for the first nine months of this year alone, according to REMIT data. But even major generator failures do not make blackouts a foregone conclusion. For example, on 19th Oct 2014 there was a major fire at Didcot B gas-fired power station,1 which resulted in the sudden and unexpected loss of 0.7 GW of capacity. At the time, the grid was already operating with lower than expected capacity following the temporary closure of 2.3 GW of nuclear power (Heysham 1 and Hartlepool)2 after cracks were found in a boiler spine at Heysham. Together, these incidents were expected to put strain on the electricity grid; but the lights stayed on. In fact, based on information from National Grid, conversations with expert academics and news archive, we were able to identify only one incidence in the last 10 years when a generation failure resulted in a loss of power to customers – on 27th May 2008.3 It was caused by unrelated outages at two thermal power stations (Longannet in Fife and Sizewell B in Suffolk), which occurred within five minutes of each other. In total this represented 1.5 GW of generation, approximately 5% of demand. The National Grid initially responded by dropping the voltage in the network. This would have had no noticeable effect on most consumers, but dropping the voltage inadvertently caused incorrect control settings at embedded generators to trip, resulting in the loss of a further 0.3 GW of generating capacity. With no remaining available fast-acting generation or demand-response reserve margins, the frequency fell further, and distribution network operators undertook a protective shutdown of parts of the network, under pre-arranged rules, disconnecting 0.6 GW of demand. The incident affected an estimated 580,000 homes, and the average duration of loss of supply to customers was 20 minutes. The rolling blackouts that have plagued the UK historically are no longer relevant, with much more diversified fuel supplies. Similarly, blackouts that have occurred in other countries are 1 BBC (2014), Major fire at gas-fired Didcot B power station: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29684205 2 BBC (2014), Nuclear reactors may stay offline until end of year, EDF says: www.bbc.co.uk/news/business- 2 BBC (2014), Nuclear reactors may stay offline until end of year, EDF says: www.bbc.co.uk/news/business- 29058644 3 National Grid (2008), Report of the investigation into the automatic demand disconnection following multiple generation losses and the demand control response that occurred on the 27th May 2008: http://www2.nationalgrid.com/assets/0/745/746/3464/3466/3488/3475/623fcdf6-31e3-416a-bfb7- c4edbfd763d2.pdf 5 the result of factors that are not relevant in the UK. For example, the “type faults” where a problem at a (normally nuclear) power station results in many power stations needing to be closed; or droughts in hydro-dependent countries. CUTS IN THE NETWORK Faults in local distribution networks are responsible for virtually all power cuts in the UK, with a much smaller proportion down to problems in national transmission (and, as we have seen, essentially none caused by generation issues). National Grid owns the high-voltage nationwide transmission network, and also operates it in England and Wales (other companies, Scottish Power Transmission and Scottish Hydro- electric Transmission, provide the service in Scotland). The transmission network operators in Britain have a good track record of ensuring the network is reliable. For example, National Grid has kept the reliability above 99.99999% in each of the last three years.4 Figures are similar north of the border. In 2013/4, there were 44 power cuts in Great Britain due to failures in the transmission network.5 Such incidents usually last no longer than 10 hours. Around half are caused by adverse weather conditions, such as lightning, high winds or ice.6 Low-voltage distribution is managed by 14 regional Distribution Network Operators (DNOs), and these systems are responsible for most of the blackouts that customers experience. These are smaller in scale than transmission faults. Altogether there are around 230,000 disconnections7 per year in the distribution networks, three quarters of which are unplanned outages. These can affect anything from a single household to a network of several thousand homes. In 2013/14, there were 55 “customer interruptions”