[AngusH]

This appears to be a contingency plan 'in the "unlikely" event supplies of gas fall short of demand.'

The report showed, under a base case scenario, that margins between peak demand and power supply were expected to be sufficient and similar to recent years thanks to secure North Sea gas supplies, imports via Norway and by ship.

Any operator that didn't have such contingency plans would be negligent.

Is it going to happen in reality: hopefully not

Edit: I have a feeling that the article may be referring to the 3 hour Loss of Load Expectation (LOLE) service level target for the year.

This isn't quite the same as a three hour blackout.

I'm not sure though because the sky article doesn't reference its sources.

Which may be this:

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/264521/download

or it might not?

edit2:

actually I think it's this:

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/268346/download

edit3:

Found it, its not the LOLE target, but the response to scenario 2 on page 10 of the second link:

scenario 1: "In this scenario we assume that we have no electricity interconnector imports from France, Belgium and the Netherlands (these are assumed to provide a de-rated capacity of 3.9GW in the Base Case). It is assumed that we import 1.2GW from Norway and export 0.4GW to Northern Ireland and Ireland."

scenario 2: "In this scenario we assume the same assumptions as Scenario 1, but with an additional 10GW CCGTs unavailable for a two-week period in January1. These assumptions have been chosen to illustrate the potential impact on the electricity system if there was insufficient gas supply in Great Britain."

"Should this scenario happen, it may be necessary to initiate the planned, controlled and temporary rota load shedding scheme under the Electricity Supply Emergency Code (ESEC). In the unlikely event we were in this situation, it would mean that some customers could be without power for pre-defined periods during a day – generally this is assumed to be for 3 hour blocks. This would be necessary to ensure the overall security and integrity of the electricity system across Great Britain. All possible mitigating strategies would be deployed to minimise the disruption."

Which I think would then follow this set of rules:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

final: I think my information here is mostly right. But you should not base your electricity operational decisions on it!

[okasaki]

From what I can recall, the UK government's plans and predictions have consistently been... over-optimistic.

Time to go to the local charity shop and buy some wool sweaters.

[AngusH]

Unfortunately the government (of all stripes) tends to reject predictions it doesn't like:

try this one from 20 years ago:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3034088.stm

(it's on this topic of energy)

[Chris_Newton]

It’s interesting sometimes to see how far we’ve come, despite all the immediate doom and gloom. The mix of UK energy supplies from that 2003 article was reportedly:

    Gas     38%
    Coal    32%
    Nuclear 23%
    Oil      4%
    Others   3%

Compare that to the use of renewables and the reduced dependency on fossil fuels today and at least we’ve taken some big steps in the right direction since then.

There isn’t much to like about the current situation, but it does mean the danger of relying on supplies of non-renewable fuels has been shown beyond any doubt. If we do experience one of the bad scenarios with rolling power cuts this winter, it must be near-certain that whoever forms the government for the rest of the 2020s will get elected on a very green platform. If important steps towards making us both more resilient and more environmentally friendly then get taken sooner, that’s one small victory at least.

[sefrost]

Under Designated Services:

> Sites with a continuous manufacturing process, not sustainable through BEIS standby generation, where regular shutdown for 3-hour periods is not possible and would cause significant financial damage

I wonder if this includes Agile offices, it seems like a broad definition!

[AngusH]

:-)

Very broad indeed, though I think it's just qualification for asking, not grounds for acceptance, (thankfully)

One thing I'm curious to know is what it's like on the distribution side though, getting these requests and then approving them (or not)

I wonder if they only get serious requests (say steel mills and hospitals) or if they also get requests from non-essential businesses who shouldn't be on the list?

Most data centers should have back up power, so the question of whether Facebook, Twitter and Amazon get cut off probably doesn't need to be asked.

[bombcar]

Datacenters often have agreements to shed load in emergencies - I was working on a machine inside a datacenter in San Diego when they announced that SDGE had asked them to throw to generator as the load was too high. This was back in the Enron days.

If you've never been in a secure datacenter when they throw, it's fun.

[dotancohen]

  > If you've never been in a secure datacenter when they throw, it's fun.

I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Seriously, though, do tell us more.

[bombcar]

So the one I was in had these massive rooms full of lead-acid batteries, and 3 or 4 multi-megawatt "generators" outside (located at various sides of the building, not all in one place).

They announced it over the PA because it was a planned transfer - and then all the "normal" lighting went off (think overhead fluorescents) at the same time the emergency lighting came on - the power to the servers and anything plugged into the racks didn't even flicker, of course.

There was a huge thunking sound from somewhere (I assume something disconnecting from grid power) and the muted roar of the generators starting. A few moments later, the main lights came back on.

It was an entirely different experience than a normal power failure, where everything goes quiet - you knew something happened, but other than that it all worked smoothly.

[chasd00]

if you're into datacenter drama you may find this interesting. It's a livejournal of a datacenter in downtown New Orleans riding out Hurricane Katrina and all the crazyness they went through to keep things online in the aftermath. Comes complete with snipers, rolling barrels of fuel up parking garages, raiding snack machines, the whole enchilada.

https://interdictor.livejournal.com/2005/08/29/

[selimthegrim]

(In)famously, they were SomethingAwful's hosts (you can see a reference to this on one of the Sep 1 posts)

[tomxor]

That is not a manufacturing process. Pretty sure they are referring to time sensitive operations where halting a manufacturing process causes substantial losses due to the overhead of starting and stopping that process and probably losses due to waste that cut much deeper than mere losses in profits... maybe also to do with the affect on supply consistency to their customers.

(Regularly) shutting down such operations could quite realistically bankrupt them.

[tialaramex]

Some of this is going to end up depending on the wind. The chart on page 13 of your second link shows 16.1% wind of every single day for the period. So that's about 4GW, day after day. That's a placeholder, because we have no sufficiently accurate long range forecast. The reality, hour by hour could be 15GW and it could be 1GW.

[AngusH]

Yes definitely agree.

Overall the UK grid is probably too dependent on wind energy, with all the variability that involves.

Right now gridwatch.org.uk is showing about 13.5GW from wind (40% of demand), but I've seen some days when there has been well under 1GW.

[makomk]

Probably. The trouble is that we're committed to net zero, and there isn't much of an alternative to relying on wind energy this far north unless you have better sites for hydroelectric than the UK or can make nuclear work somehow. The UK does at least have a decent amount of offshore wind which is a little less intermittent than the onshore variety.

[tialaramex]

We're not yet in a place where we routinely make so much wind power that we need less rather than more.

We need a lot more storage, even battery storage plus wind is way cheaper than current gas shortage induced prices, and both wind turbines and batteries are getting cheaper