National Grid to pay power plants to shut down this summer
Rebecca Markillie- Bourne
Marketing and Communications Specialist & Virtual PA #Energy #Hydrogen #Climate #Equine
National Grid may be forced to pay higher prices to power plants to stop generating electricity this summer as demand for power continues falling to set new record lows. The transmission system operator said power generators must be prepared to offer a fair price to turn down their electricity output if power flows threaten to flood the grid during periods of particularly low demand, such as weekend afternoons or overnight.
The expected glut of electricity flips the winter-time challenge of securing enough supply to meet demand. Instead, National Grid will face periods when demand falls and there is more wind and solar power than Britain needs due to record low demand for power through its network of transmission cables.
Grid demand has been steadily falling in recent years because more and more companies and households are able to generate their own on-site power through small-scale generators and solar panels.
The greater use of solar power in particular has a dramatic impact on the amount of power needed through National Grid’s major cables, which link power networks to large-scale power plants that are usually miles away from highly populated areas.
The use of more energy efficient appliances and machinery is also a factor in keeping demand lower in homes and companies.
The demand for grid power is expected to hit its lowest level on record, reaching highs of just 35.7GW compared to 36.3GW last year. The demand lows will slip to 18.1GW, inching further down from 18.4GW last year.
Through its ‘balancing mechanism’ National Grid will allow generators to submit a price at which they would be willing to turn down production so that the grid can opt for the most economic solution to the imbalance. It is a step which National Grid is able to use year round, but the record low demand forecasts could mean paying out more often than usual.
In recent years the FTSE 100 energy operator has been investigating more cost-effective ways to balance the grid to avoid piling pressure on energy costs that in turn hike consumer bills.
This summer the operator is increasing its use of the so-called ‘demand turn-up’ scheme, which pays companies to use more power to make use of any excess electricity in the system.
The scheme debuted last summer and was used 323 times to balance the system, particularly on balmy nights through July and August in response to high wind speeds. This year National Grid has offered contracts to 15 sites, selected through an auction, which have pledged to ramp up their power use during times of low system demand.
A National Grid spokesman said its figures show that the scheme will save consumers £500,000 over the summer compared to using other balancing tools.
The operator’s forecasts also expect demand for gas to fall as consumers forgo central gas-heating in homes and companies. The UK has more than enough gas supply to meet the lower demand, which should cause short-term market prices to fall.
The weaker market prices will be cheered by the owners of gas-fired power plants who will be able to increase the profit margin of each plant by paying less for the gas they use to generate the electricity they sell into the market. National Grid estimates that gas-fired power plants will be able to sell power even cheaper than the UK's remaining coal-fired generators due to their lower input costs.
The Solution: Power-to-Gas Energy Storage
Power-to-Gas is the process of converting surplus renewable energy into hydrogen gas by rapid response electrolysis and its subsequent injection into the gas distribution network.
Power-to-Gas allows for the storage of significant amounts of energy and the provision of CO2 neutral fuels in the form of the resulting renewable energy gas mix of hydrogen and methane.
The hydrogen produced is injected into the natural gas system to displace natural gas, so reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reliance upon fuel imports. If the power is derived mainly from renewable power sources, only low-carbon hydrogen will be produced. Thereby the Power-to-Gas (P2G) approach can facilitate a transition from natural gas to a ‘green’ mixed gas by making use of both of the existing energy grids on a global scale.
This is already happening in Germany with RWE and Thüga group
For more information on energy storage, please see www.itm-power.com
Full article is here
Seems to me I recall that hydrogen storage(mainly) and distribution is fraught with inability of most metals to keep the hydrogen atoms from "seeping" through its metal containment material. Has a solution been developed to mitigate that? Does Hydrogen enriching natural gas, as described in the above P2G scheme limit or eliminate that leaching?
Senior software and solutions architect, Apache Hop PMC
7yI couldn't disagree more Luc. Hydrogen fuel generation and distribution is so inefficient and costly it boggles the mind. Hydrogen is also corrosive, without oder, highly flameable, burning without flame... Numbers and hard data matter and trump your dreams in this case. Besides, hydrogen technology always seems to be 10 years away from being ready. In the mean time my solar panels generate more than what we consume with the Tesla. With solar and battery prices dropping really sharp (thanks to the large battery factories you mentioned) the future of renewable energy is very bright indeed. The biggest loser will be the entire oil and gas industry and that's a good thing I think.
Information Technology Program Manager
7yI Strongly believe this is the way to go, this is really renewable. “Power-to-Gas is the process of converting surplus renewable energy into hydrogen gas by rapid response electrolysis and its subsequent injection into the gas distribution network.” Switching to hydrogen will have the challenge of converting the existing distribution systems, but if we start with cars and if we start developing local projects (islands) with local production (and why not storage), I think we can go with hydrogen the same path as what we did with locally produced (solar) electricity today: we put it on the grid. Perhaps the current gas station where we fill-up our cars could be converted from LPG storage into a local hydrogen storage, also used by the surrounding community. And I understand this will be a challenge to … Some oil producing countries could consider to start producing and exporting hydrogen. Most of them have plenty of sun, to do so. We have plenty of (useless) dessert with much sun on our planet … Another partial solution could be compressing air at moments with an energy surplus. Most industrial plants use compressed air in their production processes. They “only” need to add a couple of tanks and additional compressor capacity for filling them up at electricity production peaks, and compressors can be started quite fast. In my humble opinion we will not find a future in large battery plants, in wall boxes or in reusing the electricity from our electric cars when there is an energy shortage.