Vital Trivia

On Thursday 29th December I went for a drive. I drove from Monmonth to North Somercotes following the route below. When I departed at 10:40am it was -4C, by noon near Birmingham it was -1C, just before Grimsby at around 3pm it was -6C and by 4pm in North Somercotes it was -8C.

I can’t remember the last time I experienced -8C certainly unusual for the Lincolnshire coast. It was so cold that large blocks of compressed snow had managed to build up under the car and the snow covered roads didn’t show any sign of melting so the last leg of the journey was very slow.

It wasn’t only a cold day but there had also been significant snowfall the previous day with around 15cm of laying snow in North Somercotes. Here are some photos of the snow taken on the 29th, click to enlarge.

Photos taken by Helen Drewett and Biff Vernon

Why are we talking about the weather today? Because the weather (more specifically the temperature) is key to whether we have a serious gas shortage or not this winter. This graph shows the forecast gas demand based on normal temperatures in green and the actual gas demand in pink. The saw tooth pattern is due to reduced demand at the weekend and the reduced demand over the Christmas week is clearly shown.

National Grid

The increase in demand due to the cold weather at the end of November can clearly be seen. This was accompanied by new record gas prices and gas supplies making the number one item on the BBC 10pm television news. See some of that news here: Mainstream Media Finally Recognise UK Gas Crisis

The cold weather on the 29th Dec also caused a demand spike and a new record price (although strangely this time it wasn’t reported on television news). Since gas demand is usually low over the Christmas week I didn’t expect this spike to have much effect but it did. The Times newspaper reported (link) on 31st December that: “HUNDREDS of thousands of homes across the UK came within hours of power cuts after the National Grid issued an emergency call for electricity companies to reduce demand on one of the coldest days of the year.”

Going on to say:

The companies were preparing to cut power or dim the lights on Thursday by lowering the voltage, after the grid issued a warning of a possible problem between 4.30pm and 6.30pm. Power generators were told to make more power available on the system, while distribution companies were informed that if no more power were made available they might have to cut some customers off temporarily. The highly unusual shortage comes as fears mount over the security of Britain’s energy supplies. There was also concern that there was insufficient capacity, even though most industry was still on a Christmas break.

This is the key point:

The amount of electricity available this week has been lower than usual after some power generators temporarily shut down their gas-fired power stations because of the high price of gas. Wholesale gas prices have been 50 per cent higher than last winter.

This is exactly what I suggested could happen this winter, gas shortages and high prices would remove gas fired electricity generation. So whilst domestic gas supplies are secure domestic electricity supplies are not so. The incredible thing about the tightness of the 29th was that it occurred during the Christmas week. Notice from the demand graph how much demand was increased above the green curve due to cold temperatures.

What would happen if similarly cold weather occurred not over Christmas but in a regular working week? We may not have to wait long to find out. This is the 6am (06Z) Sunday 1st forecast for maximum and minimum temperatures on Friday 6th January 2006. It suggests a nation wide sub-zero average over the peak demand part of the day.

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/

If it does turn out as cold as forecast (and being almost a week out that is a big if) then demand will be the highest we’ve seen this year and going by the experience of the 29th, shortages will result. I would go as far to suggest that UK gas supply can’t easily meet demand during a weekday with an average temperature below zero. The synoptic situation is also suggesting a significant snowfall event starting Friday, we’ll have to wait and see.

Supply during cold weather is highly reliant on the continental interconnect, it’s performance being subject to relative price and demand in the UK and on the continent. An additional complication is the continuing problems between Russia and Ukraine: Ukraine gas crisis ‘could hit EU’ Some 30% of Europe’s gas supply is from Russia and flows through Ukraine and whilst president Putin has said that this supply won’t be affected at the end of the day this is more under the control of the Ukrainians than the Kremlin. The upshot of this might be to raise concern with Europeans reducing their propensity to sell gas to the UK even if normal supplies were available.

Thu 05/01/2006 Update
The weather reports for Friday and into next week don’t now look as cold as they did from the start of the week with predicted daytime temperatures in the -1 to 3C range instead of those in the graphic above. With some two months of winter to still to run we’re not out of the woods yet though.

This post was written by Chris Vernon

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 1st, 2006 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Economy, Electricity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.