|
National Grid Reserve Service
To balance the supply and demand of electricity on short timescales, the UK National Grid has contracts in place with generators and large energy users to provide temporary extra power, or reduction in demand. These reserve services are needed if a power station fails for example, or if forecast demand differs from actual demand. National Grid has several classes of reserve services, which in descending order of response time are: Balancing Mechanism (BM) Start-Up, Short-Term Operating Reserve, Demand Management and Fast Reserve. National Grid Frequency Response This is a service that large power users such as steel works, cold stores, large water pumping stations, can offer to the UK National Grid. These contractors have frequency sensitive relays fitted to the incoming breakers, and these disconnect the load if the system frequency falls beyond a pre-set figure (49.7 Hz). These loads are shed for a contracted period of at least 30 minutes. Within this period Standing Res ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Grid (Great Britain)
In the electricity sector in the United Kingdom, the National Grid is the high-voltage electric power transmission network serving Great Britain, connecting power stations and major substations and ensuring that electricity generated anywhere on it can be used to satisfy demand elsewhere. The network covers the great majority of Great Britain and several of the surrounding islands. It does not cover Northern Ireland, which is part of a single electricity market with the Republic of Ireland. The GB grid is connected as a wide area synchronous grid nominally running at 50 hertz. There are also undersea interconnections to other grids in the Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway. On the breakup of the Central Electricity Generating Board in 1990, the ownership and operation of the National Grid in England and Wales passed to National Grid Company plc, later to become National Grid Transco, and now National Grid plc. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intermittent Energy Source
Variable renewable energy (VRE) or intermittent renewable energy sources (IRES) are renewable energy sources that are not dispatchable due to their fluctuating nature, such as wind power and solar power, as opposed to controllable renewable energy sources, such as dammed hydroelectricity or biomass, or relatively constant sources, such as geothermal power. The use of small amounts of intermittent power has little effect on grid operations. Using larger amounts of intermittent power may require upgrades or even a redesign of the grid infrastructure. Options to absorb large shares of variable energy into the grid include using storage, improved interconnection between different variable sources to smooth out supply, using dispatchable energy sources such as hydroelectricity and having overcapacity, so that sufficient energy is produced even when weather is less favourable. More connections between the energy sector and the building, transport and industrial sectors may also help. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Load Management
Load management, also known as demand-side management (DSM), is the process of balancing the supply of electricity on the network with the electrical load by adjusting or controlling the load rather than the power station output. This can be achieved by direct intervention of the utility in real time, by the use of frequency sensitive relays triggering the circuit breakers (ripple control), by time clocks, or by using special tariffs to influence consumer behavior. Load management allows utilities to reduce demand for electricity during peak usage times (peak shaving), which can, in turn, reduce costs by eliminating the need for peaking power plants. In addition, some peaking power plants can take more than an hour to bring on-line which makes load management even more critical should a plant go off-line unexpectedly for example. Load management can also help reduce harmful emissions, since peaking plants or backup generators are often dirtier and less efficient than base load pow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spark Spread
The spark spread is the theoretical gross margin of a gas-fired power plant from selling a unit of electricity, having bought the fuel required to produce this unit of electricity. All other costs (operation and maintenance, capital and other financial costs) must be covered from the spark spread. The term was first coined by Tony West's trading team on the trading floor of National Power Ltd in Swindon, UK during the late 1990s and quickly came into common usage as other traders realised the trading and hedging opportunities. The term dark spread, quark spread and bark spread refers to the similarly defined difference between cash streams (spread) for coal-fired power plants, nuclear power plants and bio-mass power plants respectively. These indicators of power plant economics are useful for trading energy markets. For operating or investment decisions published "spread" data are not applicable. Local market conditions, actual plant efficiencies and other plant costs have to be cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Grid (UK)
In the electricity sector in the United Kingdom, the National Grid is the high-voltage electric power transmission network serving Great Britain, connecting power stations and major substations and ensuring that electricity generated anywhere on it can be used to satisfy demand elsewhere. The network covers the great majority of Great Britain and several of the surrounding islands. It does not cover Northern Ireland, which is part of a single electricity market with the Republic of Ireland. The GB grid is connected as a wide area synchronous grid nominally running at 50 hertz. There are also undersea interconnections to other grids in the Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway. On the breakup of the Central Electricity Generating Board in 1990, the ownership and operation of the National Grid in England and Wales passed to National Grid Company plc, later to become National Grid Transco, and now National Grid pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Power Outages
This is a list of notable wide-scale power outages. To be included, the power outage must conform to of the following criteria: * The outage must not be planned by the service provider. * The outage must affect at least 1k people. * The outage must last at least one hour. * There must be at least 1,000,000 person-hours of disruption. For example: * 1,000 people affected for 1,000 hours (42 days) or more would be included; fewer than 1,000 people would not be, regardless of duration. * One million people affected for a minimum of one hour would be included; if the duration were less than one hour, it would not, regardless of number of people. * 10,000 people affected for 100 hours, or 100,000 for 10 hours would be included. Largest Longest This method is a formula that multiplies the number of hours by the population affected and doesn't reflect the nominal time in hours that the outages lasted. 1960–1969 1965 On the evening of November 9, the Northeast blackout o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Energy Storage Projects
This is a list of energy storage power plants worldwide, other than pumped hydro storage. Many individual energy storage plants augment electrical grids by capturing excess electrical energy during periods of low demand and storing it in other forms until needed on an electrical grid. The energy is later converted back to its electrical form and returned to the grid as needed. Most of the world's grid energy storage by capacity is in the form of pumped-storage hydroelectricity, which is covered in List of pumped-storage hydroelectric power stations. This article list plants using all other forms of energy storage. Another energy storage method is the consumption of surplus or low-cost energy (typically during night time) for conversion into resources such as hot water, cool water or ice, which is then used for heating or cooling at other times when electricity is in higher demand and at greater cost per kilowatt hour (kWh). Such thermal energy storage is often employed a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northeast Blackout Of 2003
The Northeast blackout of 2003 was a widespread power outage throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and most parts of the Canadian province of Ontario on Thursday, August 14, 2003, beginning just after 4:10 p.m. EDT. Most places restored power by midnight (within 7 hours), some as early as 6 p.m. on August 14 (within 2 hours), while the New York City Subway resumed limited services around 8 p.m. Full power was restored to New York City and Toronto on August 16. At the time, it was the world's second most widespread blackout in history, after the 1999 Southern Brazil blackout. The outage, which was much more widespread than the Northeast blackout of 1965, affected an estimated 10 million people in southern and central Ontario, and 45 million people in eight U.S. states. The blackout's proximate cause was a software bug in the alarm system at the control room of FirstEnergy, an Akron, Ohio–based company, which rendered operators u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Energy Security And Renewable Technology
The environmental benefits of renewable energy technologies are widely recognised, but the contribution that they can make to energy security is less well known. Renewable technologies can enhance energy security in electricity generation, heat supply, and transportation. Energy security Access to cheap energy has become essential to the functioning of modern economies. However, the uneven distribution of fossil fuel supplies among countries, and the critical need to widely access energy resources, has led to significant vulnerabilities. Threats to global energy security include political instability of energy producing countries, manipulation of energy supplies, competition over energy sources, attacks on supply infrastructure, as well as accidents and natural disasters. Energy security, therefore, has become fundamental from many perspectives, and is being therefore increasingly at the centre of legal and policy issues linked to social, economic, and development matters. The Fukus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancillary Services (electric Power)
Ancillary services are the services necessary to support the transmission of electric power from generators to consumers given the obligations of control areas and transmission utilities within those control areas to maintain reliable operations of the interconnected transmission system. Ancillary services are specialty services and functions provided by actors within the electric grid that facilitate and support the continuous flow of electricity, so that the demand for electrical energy is met in real time. The term ancillary services is used to refer to a variety of operations beyond generation and transmission that are required to maintain grid stability and security. These services generally include active power control or frequency control and reactive power control or voltage control, on various timescales. Traditionally, ancillary services have been provided by large production units such as generators. With the integration of more intermittent generation and the developme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economics Of New Nuclear Power Plants
Nuclear power construction costs have varied significantly across the world and in time. Large and rapid increases in cost occurred during the 1970s, especially in the United States. Recent cost trends in countries such as Japan and Korea have been very different, including periods of stability and decline in costs. New nuclear power plants typically have high capital expenditure for building plants. Fuel, operational, and maintenance costs are relatively small components of the total cost. The long service life and high capacity factor of nuclear power plants allow sufficient funds for ultimate plant decommissioning and waste storage and management to be accumulated, with little impact on the price per unit of electricity generated. Additionally, measures to mitigate climate change such as a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading, favor the economics of nuclear power over fossil fuel power. Nuclear power is cost competitive with renewable generation when capital cost is in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Relative Cost Of Electricity Generated By Different Sources
Different methods of electricity generation can incur a variety of different costs, which can be divided into three general categories: 1) wholesale costs, or all costs paid by utilities associated with acquiring and distributing electricity to consumers, 2) retail costs paid by consumers, and 3) external costs, or externalities, imposed on society. Wholesale costs include initial capital, operations & maintenance (O&M), transmission, and costs of decommissioning. Depending on the local regulatory environment, some or all wholesale costs may be passed through to consumers. These are costs per unit of energy, typically represented as dollars/megawatt hour (wholesale). The calculations also assist governments in making decisions regarding energy policy. On average the levelized cost of electricity from utility scale solar power and onshore wind power is less than from coal and gas-fired power stations, but this varies a lot depending on location. Cost metrics Levelized cost o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
