Britannia Radio

Energy: STOR – the birth of a rip-off   Wednesday 10 July 2013 For several days now, we have been putting most of our resources into researching the story of STOR, the National Grid's Short Term Operational Reserve, and the only thing that is stopping the increasing volume of wind-generated electricity destabilising the grid and bringing the whole system down. There has always been something like STOR, a system for balancing out the fluctuations in the grid supply – dealing with the sudden peaks that the big power stations cannot deal with. This used to be called the "standing reserve", the operation of which is exemplified in the 2008 BBC video extract above. Mainly, as can be seen from that video, balancing has been the job of "pumped storage", hydroelectric power that can be switched on at a moment's notice, with the reservoirs replenished by pumping the water back, using off-peak electricity. However, even with that, there was always a need for fine-tuning the system but, in the days of publicly-owned utilities, the electricity suppliers tended to run their own (small) fleet of generators to top up the system when needed, to save having to start up another big power station, just for a few megawatts over an hour or so. However, with the privatisation of the electricity industry also came restructring, following which much of the grid balancing farmed out to private suppliers. With the advent of reliable broadband internet connections and the wider availability of computer control technology, it became possible to buy up unused capacity from remote standby generators, switched on and off by a computer in the grid control centre. All it needed was the technology packages to be prepared, and the contract structure devised, and STOR was born, coming into force on 1 April 2007. Even after less than a full year of operation, though, it was clear that the system wasn't working and, in 2008, the National Grid undertook a comprehensive review, ten introducing 10 year-contracts to incentivise potential service providers to join the system. By October 2009, however, the National Grid was back in the review business, noting with alarm forecasts of a significant rise in the Short Term Operating Reserve Requirement (STORR) driven in the main, by "a greater penetration of intermittent generation and a higher infrequent loss risk of 1800MW (up from the current value of 1320MW) ". This was wind power beginning to exert its influence on the system. Amongst the changes proposed were even longer service periods, of up to 15 years, guaranteed utilisation volumes and in the pipeline were much higher prices. Also to come was a new system of "aggregators", firms which could assemble small packages of power and send them up to the Grid in useable lumps of more than 3MW. And so a new industry was born. So lucrative had become the business opportunity that it was now viable to buy and run equipment specifically to serve the balancing market. Entrepreneurs were not slow in recognising what was soon to be described as "Money for Nothing", but the first entrant into this new market was an American, David Walters, former governor of Oklahoma. In 1995, he had formed his own energy company, Walters Power International then in 2009 forming a UK subidiary, Walters Power UK, to capitalise on the "standing reserve" capacity being encouraged by the country's progressive energy policy. The company was completing the final arrangements to initiate a 10MW power plant in the UK and, as the UK transitioned from high-carbon generation plants (primarily coal), Walters Power UK planned to develop a number of power plants to address anticipated peak power shortages, the company PR said.. "Walters Power is exploring putting in renewable energy plants in the future, since one can get paid more than $200/MWH for such generation in the UK. In comparison, California gets $100/MWH, while Oklahoma renewable gets paid $30/MWH. So the UK is a prime market for us for renewable energy plants", said David Walters.  In fact, what turned out to be the very first purpose-built STOR plant in the UK was commissioned in April 2010, by Walters Power. It chose a remote site is surrounded by agricultural land between the villages of Thorpe in Balne and Trumfleet, about six miles north of Doncaster in South Yorkshire (pictured above). Originally, it had been developed in 1998 by Warwick Energy to exploit the tiny Trumfleet gas field. It was equipped with natural gas-powered generators, producing up to 8MW of electricity for the grid. Following depletion of the gas reserves, however, the site and associated infrastructure was sold to Walters in 2009, who has since transferred it to a Walters associate, UK Power Reserve (Trumfleet) Ltd, part of UK Power Reserve, formed in late 2010, "to provide niche services to the UK Power sector". The CEO and Chairman of the Board is David Walters. The gas sets were stripped out and replaced with four second-hand 12V200 Wartsila-Cummins diesel generators, each rated at 2.2MW, previously bought by Yorkshire Electricity in 2000 for peak shaving, until its plant was sold in 2005 and dismantled, the sets being acquired by Walters, now hidden behind a screen of trees, invisible to the passer-by (below).  In late October 2011, it was reported that the operator had requested has requested an upgrade in the capacity of their connector to the grid, to bring it up to 20MW – what seems now to be the industry standard for STOR blocks. Seeking planning permission for their 20 MW operation in Melton Mowbray, UK Power Reserveassured the Council in September 2012 of the low level of the utilisation of STOR plant. The Trumfleet operation, it said, had within the past year been called upon 73 times with the average running time of 83 minutes totalling to 100 hours per annum - less than the requested allowance of 300 hours per annum. Meanwhile, concerns that "phantom megawatts" are driving up the cost of National Grid contracts have gone unheeded. The £1 billion cost of STOR is set to add five percent to the average electricity bill, as it passed the cost to the consumer through Balancing Use of System Charges (BSUoS). And all because Mr Walters saw "a bright future for renewable energy plants in England", to the extent now that a renewable energy company OST Energy is looking to construct four STOR power stations, nominally two 16MW, one 12MW and one 8MW rated plants in South Yorkshire – where the industry first laid down its roots. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 10/07/2013

Energy: winter outlook   Tuesday 9 July 2013 I'm not doing a long piece, in order to leave the STOR post visible. However, this might be interesting – National Grid's winter outlook. Regarding electricity, it sees peak normal demand this winter at 55.1GW, while available generation capacity at the start of winter is seen at 77.1GW, two GW less than last winter. For serious students of the energy scene, there is the full report. It puts the contracted winter period STOR at 3.5GW, plus the system frequency response will be brought up to 1.9 GW. Add to that, Maximum Generation contracts in place for Winter 2013/14, which provides potential access to up to 1GW of extra generation in emergency situations – which is not recorded on the declared reserve – and we have a "hidden reserve" of over 6GW, on top of the 12GW capacity margin. That doesn't mean that things can't go wrong, but you have to have 18GW-worth of "wrong" before the lights start to go out this winter. Bank-balances self-destructing is a much more likely scenario. COMMENT: "STOR" THREAD Richard North 09/07/2013