How did the UK grid respond to losing a few nuclear reactors?

[GliderGuider]

How did the UK grid respond to losing a few nuclear reactors?

In the second week of August power company EDF decided to shutdown their reactors in Heysham and Hartlepool. This was a precautionary measure after finding a defect in the boiler of Heysham unit 1. In total 4 reactors that can produce up to 2.6 GigaWatts (GW) of electricity were turned off. On the week they were turned off, the UK used an average of 30 GW.

Some were quick to declare that wind power came to the rescue when nuclear power was proven unreliable (for example Ari Phillips in Thinkprogress, Greenpeace, Giles Parkinson in reneweconomy.com.au...). More recently Justin McKeating from Greenpeace repeated the claim: "...we see a reversal of the view that renewables need to be supported by nuclear power. Although nuclear and wind power do not have the same generation characteristics, nuclear reactors now needing to lean on renewables means the nuclear industry has a big problem." Given that the claim appears unlikely on meteorological grounds and no evidence for it was provided, I felt a more careful scrutiny was called for.

So, did wind power replace missing nuclear capacity? Short answer is, no it did not. Missing nuclear generation was mostly replaced by increasing use of coal.

In Figure 1 I show the output of relevant power sources in the UK between Saturday 8th August and Thursday 14th August. EDF reactors were ramped down during this period and this can be clearly seen in the figure. Equally clear is that when nuclear output was declining, wind power output was declining even more steeply. So rather than coming to the rescue, wind power was unfortunately galloping away when the action started. The reduction in the amount of wind and nuclear power was mirrored by a clear increase in gas and coal power. Contrary to earlier claims, low carbon sources were replaced by fossil fuels.

UK production and demand data suggest common sense relationships. Wind power acts mainly together with gas while missing nuclear reactors were (sadly) mostly replaced by burning more coal. In the long run it might be technically possible to do without coal. This could be done by using electricity storage like batteries or trading between countries, so that times or places where it's windy can export electricity to times or places when it's not. Changing power demand to match supply, so that power-hungry appliances and industries turn on when it's windy could also help. However, it will be some considerable time before wind power has the capacity to take the place of fossil fuels to meet our power needs.

[madokie]

1. The only way I can see out of all this

is efficiency. We have to start using less energy on a personal basis. Our power hungry live style has to change or we continue on this path of destruction we've been on for a long time now. I'm scared to death of Nuclear but yet I see the writing on the wall about our continued use of fossil fuels to the point its becoming clearer to me that maybe one is more rational than the others are due to the CO2 factor. Maybe we do need to ramp up research on, Oo I hate to say this but I must, Nuclear. I don't think its the holy grail by any measure but I am beginning to think maybe it is needed in the mix with solar and wind.
I find it hard to believe that we can't use the difference in temperatures between the surface and thousands of feet under our feet to create more of our energy needs. Pretty much reverse the air conditioner cycle and use the expanding gases to turn turbines directly rather than a using a phase change with water and all the related machinery of accomplishing that. I don't know the answers but I do know that we have to do something different than the way we're doing it now.
Cleaning up our act will go a long ways to buying us time to do this research on alternates but changing habits is hard to do as we all know.

I've often thought of going out in my shop and trying to figure something out using the energy thats in the temperature differences of surface and below surface. I have a well that is not used for anything and most times there is a temperature gradient between that environment and the air outside. Trouble is I really don't have the expertise nor the equipment to do this so I'm left with what the fuck like most of us are. There are those who do have this knowledge and available equipment. Why aren't they working on that, maybe they are and I just don't know where to get that information to assure me that they are, I just dont'know.

We have to do something besides sitting on our hands or throwing them up and screaming oh shit the world is getting warmer and its causing all kinds of havoc and it will continue as long as we continue as we are now

We need to do something about population growth and need to be doing that RIGHT FUCKING NOW. Who knows that may be the answer to these questions I keep seeing. On its own the number of people will continue as long as fucking is more popular than dying so maybe we need to put limits on how many new humans we can make on an individual level as China does. In the whole scheme of things the population of the planet earth is probably a lot more stable than it appears. We're adding people but at the same time we're subtracting all other life forms.

On a personal level I've decreased my carbon foot print considerably in the last 25 years or so but I'm just one of billions

[The2ndWheel]

2. "We have to start using less energy on a personal basis."

There's really only one way to do that, and that's for the energy we use to be expensive. Not taxed, and then use that extra money for various social programs. I mean just flat out expensive.

All energy use is expensive, no matter how cheap it is, we just hide the cost. That cost is the changing climate, fucking up the landscape, decreasing the amount of other forms of life, etc. We don't see it, because that energy use is everything we do. It's civilization. It's our job. It's our kids future.

Oil, coal, etc, these things are concentrated in the ground for a reason. Wind, solar, these things are diffuse in the atmosphere for a reason. We diffuse the energy in oil and coal by using it, and want to concentrate as much as we can of the wind and solar to use it. We'll pay a price either way.

[Nihil]

3. +1 (n/t)

[madokie]

4. As they say even old dogs can learn new tricks

One has to believe in something, right or wrong. Whats wrong is when one can't even entertain an opposing view. Whats right is having the intestinal fortitude to change our way of thinking as we become more aware, more educated or whatever. I like to think I'm in this latter group.

[Nihil]

6. I agree.

My previous "+1 n/t" wasn't sarcastic or anything, I just appreciated what you'd
written and the way that you'd written it.

> Whats right is having the intestinal fortitude to change our way of thinking as
> we become more aware, more educated or whatever.

You & me both.

[madokie]

7. I didn't think you were being sarcastic or anything

We go back a long ways and in that I appreciated that you appreciated what I had typed

Have a good day

DU has been a good educational tool for me and that's why I like hanging around here so much

[FBaggins]

5. How did they expect to sell that nonsense?

Wind can't "come to the rescue" of other generation that's unexpectedly shut down. You can't order extra kWhs from wind generation unless you have a direct line to Mother Nature.

The UK grid responded the way that it should... by having surplus capacity and a diversity of generation types.

If the same thing had happened in France and they had to shut down all reactors of a certain type... they would have been up a creek.

You could say that wind "came to the rescue" because the additional backup generation that they've had to install to support the variability of wind at high penetration levels could have come in handy... but then the "100% wind/solar by Friday!" crowd would have to accept the cost of those generators as part of the cost of a renewables transition... and they like to pretend that isn't the case.