Member Info for TuftedDuck

With you all the way on this Cobalt. I've picked up a few dead ducks over the years, but this is the deadest of them all.

Ah but! the 400 ZONE is defined as 50 to 750 so tecknickly it hasn't actually gone through it yet. So, the daft twit (other vowels are available) is quite within his writes to stay.

Lots of work going on around the world on SMRs, many well ahead of RR - https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx

A pertinent line from RNS:
" Biomass is the only large-scale source of dispatchable, renewable electricity and Drax power station in Yorkshire is the largest provider of secure supply in the UK's electricity system. Its renewable biomass generation provides 2.6GW of electricity, representing 4% of the UK's dispatchable capacity and supplies millions of homes and businesses with dispatchable, reliable power."
When converting to Biomass, Drax put in a lot of work to ensure it maintained the ability to change reliably change load at a reasonable rate and provide frequency response and other ancillary services. As the remaining coal plants, and eventually CCGTs shut down, these services become more and more important. Even now, it is rare that the ESO allows all units at Drax to shutdown.

Both coal units on load this morning.

.... and, for the record, the coal mines Drax was built next to were closed well before Drax stopped burning coal due to geology. The Canadian biomass imports have replaced US coal imports.

Not sure what the other 3 units get on ROCs, but Drax 1 CfD strike price is currently £118.54/MWhr. Winter Baseload reference price announced today, £405.26/MWhr.

bottom feeder - watch the programme, I think you will find that the forests being felled are of trees that cannot be coppiced. It's a matter of clear fell and plant new saplings.
The programme was very tunnel visioned tho'. No questions about why the Canadian / British Columbian government are selling licences to log "primary forest"

Drax 3 & 4 PNd off yesterday evening and remain available not running. Ratcliffe had 3 units run thru' the night ( 1 PNd, 2 BOAd) all 3 PNd to full load thru' the morning.
Interesting that Uniper see fit to run 3 coal units and Drax leave 2 biomass units off the bars.

Another important dynamic, especially on plant which rarely runs, is NDZ - notice to deviate from zero. Physically, the time it takes to fill the boiler with water, fire it up to temperature and pressure then run up the turbine. Dx5 & 6 currently showing 720 mins, when clap cold it's pushed out to 999mins. NDZ needs to be <90mins for the SO to instruct a sync. This gap is bridged by a warming or BM Start-up instruction. This is not a firm instruction to start, merely to come to a state of readiness. It can be cancelled at any time. Drax 5 received such an instruction for Tuesday, it was stood down after about 4 hours at 85mins notice. These instructions are also in the public domain, so the whole industry new on Sunday that Drax 5&6 might run on Monday. Info here: https://extranet.nationalgrid.com/sonar

As ted says: MEL is sent out capability; FPN is what they intend to send out in a half hour period. BOA is Bid Offer Accept. Alongside FPNs (which must be submitted by gate close, 1 hour before the beginning of settlement period) a Generator must submit bid prices and volumes (to buy back power, ie reduce load), and offer prices and volumes (to sell more power ie increase load). The System Operator uses these bid and offer acceptances to fine balance the system. So, the yellow BOA lines on the graphs are deviations from FPN instructed by the SO. Because Drax (almost) never PN Units 5 and 6 on, they only run under BOAs. There are many other parameters involved in such runs - run-up rates, Stable Export Limit, minimum non zero time. Not sure how much more to say. I'm happy to tell you all that I know, but I'd be typing 'til the end of next year.

Can't promise, but I'll try. It tends to be when there is very little wind around teatime / darkness (highest demand of the day). On Monday, there was only about 700MW of wind. Today and the next couple of days it's forecast over 10,000MW.
The main interest on the system now, is what will happen next winter. Drax 5 & 6, Ratcliffe 1, and the remaining 2 units at West Burton A are all due to decommission this summer. I think there is a good chance that owners may be incentivised to keep some of these units available.

Idad, sorry you find it too complex. I accept that the amount of info provided can be daunting, I have the advantage of having worked with it for many years. But, it's no good looking at simplified info presentation and making assumptions -
"Coal, much of it powered by Drax continuing to feed into grid at 5% of total output at 0500hrs this morning!"
There are currently 4 coal units on the bars (3 at 05:00hrs) They are all at Ratcliffe, owned by Uniper. Ratcliffe still self dispatches much of the time - selling power in the market. Drax 5 & 6 only run when called for by the System Operator.

This is a website created by a friend of mine. It pulls in all the data from Elexon and displays it very well.
http://bmrsdata.ddns.net/?fbclid=IwAR0a7Z5bY05ayvNuxzJtOEnzhTRXQHnOLOluzLsAhAs8X4zm6QT2RSskY68

aarya - It's all freely available data from elexon, called BMRA data.

Not quite NR. When the System Operator buys units on, he buys them to minimum stable load (300MW for Drax Units) unless the **** really hits the fan. Currently grossing £2.36M/hr.

for Drax today. With very low wind, both the coal units have been bought on in the balancing mechanism at £4,000 and £4,050 per MWhr.

"The Group's financial expectations do not include any Balancing Mechanism activity in December for the coal units."
Reasonable not to include Units 5 & 6 in any predictions, but in the current tight margin system, every time there is low wind, at least one of these units runs in the BM @ circa £4k/MWhr, grossing over £5M per event.

Yes, Glitch. Just dummied a buy in ii, 0.5245.

The sizing of these inverters is interesting. You would need 8 of the largest ones running in parallel to boil a standard kettle.