The National Grid is becoming ever more fragile, and net zero is to blame
At a time when operational standards should be made more rigorous, there are worrying signs that the opposite is happening
KATHRYN PORTER
There are few jobs in Britain where failure can bring the country to a halt in seconds, with lives at risk and huge economic damage done. Operating the electricity grid is one of them, which is why the growing list of problems at the National Energy System Operator (Neso) should worry all of us.
In recent weeks we have seen the grid operating outside safe limits, exports to Europe cut without warning or agreement, dramatic claims from whistleblowers that blackouts are inevitable, evidence that meters are being installed backwards as new equipment is connected to the grid, and total failures of Neso systems forcing engineers to use spreadsheets and telephoned instructions.
At the same time, Neso has been granted permission to reduce its safety margins and been given enhanced powers to impose rolling blackouts.
The maths, as they say, are not mathing.
This is happening at a time when Neso’s job is becoming harder. Huge amounts of solar and batteries are connecting to low-voltage parts of the grid which Neso can neither see nor control – as in the case of solar panels and batteries in home installations.
These appear to Neso as variations in demand, so it’s no wonder that Neso’s demand forecasts are becoming progressively worse. This means the grid could fail, not due to a fault or outage of a major source of generation or imports, but because demand was so badly forecast that it did not fall within the possible range of supply arranged by Neso.
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In April, the Government quietly revised the Electricity Supply Emergency Code, creating a new Demand Control Rotation Protocol. This allows rotating electricity disconnections (otherwise known as rolling blackouts) to be initiated without obtaining the emergency powers required for rationing of electricity.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with having such a contingency plan – controlled local blackouts are obviously preferable to an uncontrolled system collapse. But the timing is pretty interesting: Britain is making it easier to implement blackouts at almost the exact same time that Neso has been allowed to cut its safety margins. Serious questions are being asked about its management of the grid during June’s heatwave.
The safety margin that Neso plans to reduce is the level of inertia it must have on the grid … Inertia is provided naturally and more or less for free by conventional gas, nuclear and hydro generators because they are big, heavy spinning machines directly connected to the grid whose speed of rotation is hard to change. Wind and solar do not naturally provide inertia and can only provide synthetic inertia by reducing the amount of electricity they generate.
As the proportion of conventional generation has declined, maintaining inertia has become more expensive. Wind and solar plant operators must be compensated for the reduction in their generating capacity when providing synthetic inertia. Neso believes it can safely operate at lower inertia levels by relying on fast frequency response provided by batteries and other technologies.
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