MONDAY’S blackouts in Spain have shown just how reliant our societies are on electricity. Nobody yet knows exactly what went wrong.
What we do know is that at 12.30pm the Spanish Peninsular Grid was producing 32GW, of which 60 per cent was solar power and another 10 per cent came from wind. Gas generation was only 2GW. Fifteen minutes later, the grid collapsed to just 10GW, as loss of frequency triggered mass shutdowns of generators and grid networks.
Only two weeks ago, they were bragging that renewables met 100 per cent of demand for a few short minutes for the first time ever.
Whatever triggered this event, the real problem was the inherent instability of the grid, due to the lack of inertia usually provided by the spinning reserves of thermal generators, something which wind and solar power cannot provide. Energy expert Kathryn Porter explained: ‘In a low-inertia environment the frequency can change much faster. If you have had a significant grid fault in one area, or a cyber-attack, or whatever it may be, the grid operators therefore have less time to react. That can lead to cascading failures if you cannot get it under control quickly’.
In layman’s terms, a failure in one part of the grid leads to a loss of frequency. Normally the inertia provided by the large flywheels spinning in power stations prevents that loss of frequency dropping too much until operators have had a chance to react. With only 2GW of gas power running at that moment, the inertia simply was not there.
So, as frequency dropped below safety margins, other parts of the grid automatically began to drop out to prevent overloads. These triggered more loss of frequency, leading to a chain reaction.
According to the Telegraph, the Spanish grid operator is now admitting that failures at two solar farms in the south west of the country are the likely trigger which caused instability in the electric system and led to a breakdown of its interconnection with France.
The UK government has been warned by energy experts for years that over-reliance on wind and solar power will inevitably lead to just the same risk of instability. There is no sign that Ed Miliband even understands the problem.
Mad Ed trots out the same old lies
IN RECENT days there has been a clearly co-ordinated attempt to fool the public into believing that high electricity prices are the fault of gas prices.
The BBC’s The World at One, for instance, wheeled out Adam Berman from the renewable lobby group Energy UK. When asked why electricity prices are so high, he replied that the market price is usually based on the price of gas power generation, which, he falsely claimed, is more expensive than renewables.
He omitted to tell listeners that subsidies for renewables are forecast to cost £13.3billion this year, in addition to that market price they receive. These subsidies make up nearly a quarter of your electricity bill. Needless to say, interviewer Sarah Montague failed to challenge this blatant misinformation from the industry lobbyist.
A few days later, Ed Miliband did the rounds with an Observer article, TV studios and a speech at last week’s Energy Summit. He told the same old lies:
- ‘The critics need to know that if they want to fight about this, this government says “bring it on”.’
- Clean power provides ‘energy security, lower bills [and] the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century’.
- Whereas ‘insecure’ fossil fuels are to blame for ‘the cost of living crisis, which ruined family finances, which ruined public finances, which ruined business finances’.
- Renewable electricity in the UK is cheaper than gas, but the benefits don’t reach households very easily because prices are still closely linked with the cost of gas – something the government wants to fix.
Most renewables generators receive subsidies via the Renewables Obligation scheme. Last year the cost totalled £7.1billion, effectively doubling the price they receive from electricity sales.
Newer schemes get their subsidies from Contracts for Difference, which guarantee them a fixed index-linked price. Last year these prices were well above the market price, and as a consequence subsidies amounting to £2.2billion were paid out. Since the scheme began operations in 2016, guaranteed prices have been consistently higher, except for a few months in 2021/22 when gas prices spiked.
Smaller schemes are subsidised via Feed-in Tariffs, which last year cost a further £1.8billion. In addition to these costs, billpayers will have to fork out £1.8billion this year to pay reliable generators to keep their plant ticking over on standby for the wind stops blowing.
As with most big lies, this one contains a grain of truth. Yes, when gas prices rise, so do electricity prices. And when they fall, as they did last year, the latter come down too.
It is also true that wholesale market prices are based on the highest bid price; in deregulated electricity markets, the price is typically determined by the cost of the last (most expensive) unit of electricity needed to meet demand, known as the marginal cost, which is usually gas power.
But this does not mean that electricity generated in gas-fired power stations actually costs more than a wind or solar farm. The latter receive their subsidies only for electricity they sell, so they can afford to undercut gas power, knowing that they will make their profit from subsidies. In total terms, we pay more for their electricity than we do for the gas power station’s.
