Electricity News

Thursday 10 September 2009

Electicity supply in 2020 will depend on successfully integrating wind power into the grid, Chris Train said

Generating increasing amounts of electricity from renewables such as wind could pose problems for the National Grid if demand as well as supply is not carefully managed, the organisation has claimed.

Network operations director Chris Train yesterday (September 10) outlined the National Grid's vision for electricity supply in 2020 in order to meet government targets of 20% of electricity generated from renewable sources.

He said that by 2020 he expected a large contribution from wind energy of 32 gigawatts (GW), 21GW offshore and 11 GW onshore, compared to just 3GW from nuclear, another 3GW from low carbon coal and 11GW from natural gas.

However, he identified several challenges for the future of the grid to enable it to manage the 2020 system, one of which was the intermittency of wind energy.

Without a steady supply, he said that peaks in demand would cause problems to the Grid in the future. Unlike wind farms, gas and coal power stations could react to variations in demand by varying their own output and are therefore more flexible, he claimed.

As a result of this inflexibility, Mr. Train said that in the future the Grid would have to be able to balance both the demand and the supply sides.

He said: "Like all networks, we are strongest in the centre. In the future we will have large scale offshore wind and nuclear at the edge of the network, meaning less flexibility. This inflexibility will have to be counterbalanced somehow. We currently flex generation to meet demand; we now need to also flex demand to meet generation."

Mr. Train told attendees that the introduction of smart meters would make some progress into controlling demand, while on the supply side, grid interconnectivity with Europe could mitigate wind intermittency.

Energy efficient smart grids, which are able to store surplus energy from wind turbines to use during periods of peak demand, could also go some way to levelling out generation.

He added that the Grid itself was incorporating more and more new technology and smarter management to meet these new challenges.

However, he insisted that these technologies must to be supported by further innovations, and challenged manufacturers to come up with solutions.

He described the present circumstances as "halcyon days" for the energy industry, as "the coincidence of lifecycles coming together at the same time", i.e. a situation where nuclear power was coming off, alongside plant closures and open cycle gas turbines reaching the end of the line, provided "an opportunity for a lot of innovation as we go forward.".

Upgraded

Also speaking at the event, Alicia Carrasco of international analysts Standard & Poor's, said that investment in the Grid was needed in order to meet the government's 2020 targets for carbon emissions.

She said that the grid needed to be upgraded to connect more power from renewables to the grid, and that generation sites should be closer to consumers to improve the grid's efficiency.

Ms. Carrasco said that renewables had a large role in future energy supply, most particularly wind, solar and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

"Utilities need to adopt a diversified portfolio with renewables", she said.

Planning

All the speakers on the day agreed that the UK's planning system was hampering the development of renewables projects.

Johnathan Malsbury of industry researchers New Energy Finance said the prevailing attitude towards renewable energy plans was that "wind is great as long as it's not within five miles of the house".

He said the government had to make the planning regime "slicker" and give local planners fewer opportunities to object to developments.

He added that an educational process outlining that the way we live now is unsustainable and we "have to accept renewables and change our lifestyle".