5 ms·
> "At the turn of the century a couple of power plants a year might be connected ... new plants often using the same connections as old ones." It's still gener
by Reason077 4y ago
> "At the turn of the century a couple of power plants a year might be connected ... new plants often using the same connections as old ones."
It's still generally true that the old grid infrastructure is re-used.
The UK has many closed coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power plants on or near the coast. When those plants are decommissioned or demolished, the grid infrastructure that was built for them (substations, transmission lines) is usually left intact.
New off-shore wind farms can now use those access points, which greatly reduces the cost of connection compared to having to build everything from scratch.
- nindalf 4y agoIn theory yes, but the locations in the UK don’t coincide. The old coal plants were built nearer to consumption, most of which is in the South East of England. The planned wind farms are mostly in the North Sea, far from South East of England. It will cost billions to build the infra to connect the north with the south. It’s not a simple matter of reusing what exists.
- robin_reala 4y agoOK, but you left out the existing large wind farms, most of which were built right next to the south east of England, and presumably used the connections that OP was talking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in_the_United_Kingdom#Map_of_the_UK_offshore_wind_farms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in...
- sokoloff 4y ago£50 per UK resident provides several billion. If it’s important enough, a few billion over the next 5 years to secure electricity needs isn’t actually a hurdle.
- simonh 4y agoYou can't address every problem like that. Those £50 a time would quickly add up. Also that's several hundred pounds per household right out of discretionary income.
- sokoloff 4y agoAgreed, which is why the notion of important-enough comes in. I think that stable and sustainable utility supply would fall quite high on the priority list for most households.
- pjc50 4y agoAs with everything, if it's actually important to the right people the money can be found. Businesses operating in Britain need reliable, affordable power as well. Putting the cost burden on retail customers is a political choice. (and small businesses; the recent price hikes have been far higher than a mere £50 and have been putting restaurants out of business)
- matthewdgreen 4y agoBuilding proper interconnect between the north and south isn’t “one of many competing interests.” It needs to happen to stabilize the UK grid, everyone accepts that it needs to happen, it has a multi-decade payoff time. So just figure out how to get it done now and accept that it’s not going to get cheaper. Then move on to things that are less critical and start pinching pennies there.
- pjc50 4y ago> everyone accepts that it needs to happen This is the UK. Just because something is obvious doesn't mean that conservatives and NIMBYs are going to accept it until they, personally, are sitting in the dark.
- Reason077 4y agoAlmost all the UK nuclear plants and oil-fired plants were built on the coast. (The only nuclear plant ever built inland in the UK was Trawsfynydd in Snowdonia) In the case of nuclear, this was to ensure reliable supply of cooling water. In the case of oil, it was to make it easy to unload crude directly off ships. The oil-fired plants were often co-located with oil refineries, many of which have now also closed.
- gppk 4y agoThere's a good 3 part series from Guy Martin on Channel4 recently. Would watch far more hours and depth of this content though. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/guy-martins-great-british-power-trip https://www.channel4.com/programmes/guy-martins-great-britis...
- warrenmiller 4y agoanything by Guy Martin is great. He just seems an all-round wonderful person
- scrlk 4y agoA large proportion of the UK's coal power stations were clustered in the Trent Valley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawatt_Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawatt_Valley Over the last few years, lots of renewable generation and storage projects have taken advantage of the grid capacity in this area, but all the low hanging fruit is gone now. These days, it is not usual for projects to be given a connection date in the 2030s due to the requirement to reinforce the transmission network.
- jacquesm 4y agoWhich is a bit curious given how fast electrification originally happened.
- simonh 4y agoI suppose the capacity of that infrastructure was much lower than the requirements nowadays, and labour was dramatically cheaper back then.
- jacquesm 4y agoNo, there was simply much less red tape.
- bombcar 4y agoAnd early in electrification the whole local grid going down for awhile because who knows why wasn't a major issue, it was almost expected. Some towns didn't even have power until near nightfall as a planned runtime; why bother with power during the day? Now we're used to 100% always-available power at all times, and the demands on it are growing. Things like power walls may become nearly free as the grid maintainers try to flatten demand so they can run the grid closer to capacity for longer each day.
- scrlk 4y agoMainly due to NIMBYism and planning/environment laws becoming more complex. E.g. to get a 132+ kV circuit constructed you need to go through the DCO/NSIP process which takes many years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationally_significant_infrastructure_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationally_significant_infrast... The CEGB constructed the 400 kV supergrid in the space of 15 years during the 60s and 70s. A project of such magnitude today would most likely be tied up in the planning consent process for 10+ years.