[AngusH]

This appears to be a contingency plan 'in the "unlikely" event supplies of gas fall short of demand.'

The report showed, under a base case scenario, that margins between peak demand and power supply were expected to be sufficient and similar to recent years thanks to secure North Sea gas supplies, imports via Norway and by ship.

Any operator that didn't have such contingency plans would be negligent.

Is it going to happen in reality: hopefully not

Edit: I have a feeling that the article may be referring to the 3 hour Loss of Load Expectation (LOLE) service level target for the year.

This isn't quite the same as a three hour blackout.

I'm not sure though because the sky article doesn't reference its sources.

Which may be this:

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/264521/download

or it might not?

edit2:

actually I think it's this:

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/268346/download

edit3:

Found it, its not the LOLE target, but the response to scenario 2 on page 10 of the second link:

scenario 1: "In this scenario we assume that we have no electricity interconnector imports from France, Belgium and the Netherlands (these are assumed to provide a de-rated capacity of 3.9GW in the Base Case). It is assumed that we import 1.2GW from Norway and export 0.4GW to Northern Ireland and Ireland."

scenario 2: "In this scenario we assume the same assumptions as Scenario 1, but with an additional 10GW CCGTs unavailable for a two-week period in January1. These assumptions have been chosen to illustrate the potential impact on the electricity system if there was insufficient gas supply in Great Britain."

"Should this scenario happen, it may be necessary to initiate the planned, controlled and temporary rota load shedding scheme under the Electricity Supply Emergency Code (ESEC). In the unlikely event we were in this situation, it would mean that some customers could be without power for pre-defined periods during a day – generally this is assumed to be for 3 hour blocks. This would be necessary to ensure the overall security and integrity of the electricity system across Great Britain. All possible mitigating strategies would be deployed to minimise the disruption."

Which I think would then follow this set of rules:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

final: I think my information here is mostly right. But you should not base your electricity operational decisions on it!

[okasaki]

From what I can recall, the UK government's plans and predictions have consistently been... over-optimistic.

Time to go to the local charity shop and buy some wool sweaters.

[AngusH]

Unfortunately the government (of all stripes) tends to reject predictions it doesn't like:

try this one from 20 years ago:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3034088.stm

(it's on this topic of energy)

[sefrost]

Under Designated Services:

> Sites with a continuous manufacturing process, not sustainable through BEIS standby generation, where regular shutdown for 3-hour periods is not possible and would cause significant financial damage

I wonder if this includes Agile offices, it seems like a broad definition!

[AngusH]

:-)

Very broad indeed, though I think it's just qualification for asking, not grounds for acceptance, (thankfully)

One thing I'm curious to know is what it's like on the distribution side though, getting these requests and then approving them (or not)

I wonder if they only get serious requests (say steel mills and hospitals) or if they also get requests from non-essential businesses who shouldn't be on the list?

Most data centers should have back up power, so the question of whether Facebook, Twitter and Amazon get cut off probably doesn't need to be asked.

[tomxor]

That is not a manufacturing process. Pretty sure they are referring to time sensitive operations where halting a manufacturing process causes substantial losses due to the overhead of starting and stopping that process and probably losses due to waste that cut much deeper than mere losses in profits... maybe also to do with the affect on supply consistency to their customers.

(Regularly) shutting down such operations could quite realistically bankrupt them.

[tialaramex]

Some of this is going to end up depending on the wind. The chart on page 13 of your second link shows 16.1% wind of every single day for the period. So that's about 4GW, day after day. That's a placeholder, because we have no sufficiently accurate long range forecast. The reality, hour by hour could be 15GW and it could be 1GW.

[AngusH]

Yes definitely agree.

Overall the UK grid is probably too dependent on wind energy, with all the variability that involves.

Right now gridwatch.org.uk is showing about 13.5GW from wind (40% of demand), but I've seen some days when there has been well under 1GW.