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100 comments on Will the UK Face a Natural Gas Crisis this Winter? (Part 1 of 2)
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100 comments on Will the UK Face a Natural Gas Crisis this Winter? (Part 1 of 2)
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There are around 12 million homes in the UK. Of those around half are in the two lowest bands for insulation, with 3 million of them being in the very lowest band.
Converting them to reasonable standards is a task for many years, and can't be done overnight.
Incentives in the UK work on the power companies such that they have little or no incentive to ensure security of supply, or to build storage.
We currently have around 12 days storage for natural gas, as opposed to over 90 days for Germany and France.
This means that it is nor possible to buy it in the summer when it is cheaper and store it for use in the winter, as we barely have enough for a cold snap.
The total of wind power built so far provides less power than one medium size power station, on average.
The nuclear fleet is ageing, and contracts have not yet been signed for building new.
This means that they are frequently closed for maintenance.
In addition, pollution laws mean many GW of stations are due to retire, with a lot of coal stations being retired by 2015.
Should one power station go off-line, we would have power cuts, as the margin we have is now down to about 800MW.
Effectively, what happens in the UK is rationing by price.
The poorest people pay the highest rates, using key meters which are far more expensive than direct debits.
The rates are also biased against low users, neatly hitting both the poor and anyone who saves energy, as it is likely to put you into a more expensive, low user band.
Some of the recent rises wee up to 70% for the poorest.
Should there be a cold winter and supplies be interrupted, perhaps by Russia having to divert some of it's natural gas supplies as they might have to do due to hiccups in the coal supply, then a lot of people in the UK will die of hypothermia.
Here are a few ideas I have started to throw together to provide heat in one room for people:
http://energy-futures.blogspot.com/2008/09/one-warm-room.html
It should be noted that it is 20 years since I have done any building, and some of the materials and techniques mentioned here were not even invented then, and anyway insulation at the time was hardly a priority.
Furthermore this is generic, and the precise climate of the area will affect the best approach.
Due to the high likelihood of power cuts in the UK, for instance, I would suggest that the best way to prevent pipes freezing in unused areas of the house would either be to drain the relevant area or to make sure that you have a backup power supply for heat tape - it won't use much in the British climate.
Plastic pipes also spring back once they unfreeze, although of course they may leak whilst they are doing so.
If anyone has any contributions to make, that would help a lot, as I am by no means current in building practise.
Rune - This is excellent stuff! More please soon!
Dave - I think the message has to be pushed that the economics of insulating homes should be costed at peak winter gas rates (and at what they will be when 'Peak Gas' arrives).
Rune - what do you think the cost of a marginal winter therm of gas is now and might be in ten or twenty years time?
BobE
BobE
Day ahead 67 P/Therm as of Oct. 27th 2008.
Futures presently around 80 P/Therm (varies slightly with the length of the contract).
Oil price at US$60/bbl should result in a nat gas price that now should translate into approximately 70 P/Therm at energy parity.
(GBP has recently weakened relative to USD, and is expected to weaken more)
“Normally” nat gas trades at 60 - 70 % of oil at energy parity, which has been a historical trading range in the US liberalized market and this is also the price range found for most of the long term delivery contracts that are indexed towards oil.
As the UK market also is liberalized, and a liberalized market is far more responsive to changes, UK nat gas should (based on historical ratios) have been expected at 45 P/Therm at the beach (trading point)
Futures presently around 80 P/Therm (varies with the length of the contract).
This suggests that supply issues presently drive UK nat gas prices.
Weather (temperature) hugely impacts nat gas prices in a tight market, but assuming an upcoming “normal” winter, meaning the average of the last 6 – 7 winters, I would expect nat gas prices to go way north of 100 P/Therm (day ahead) at the trading point.
The marginal price (P/Therm) 10 or 20 years into the future (I did not know we had one ;-)) is hard to predict, but from what I understand of the European supply picture I would expect it to be considerable higher and it could approach parity with electricity.
In my view nat gas is still unbelievable cheap, presently running at approximately 2,2 P/kWh.
- Rune
Rune,
Thanks for an informative post.
As a UK resident, I have my concerns about the turbulent future of natural gas in the UK.
We have become too reliant on this valuable resource in the last 40 years, and now with the North Sea in steep decline, we are going to lose this local access to a fuel source that we now depend on.
The future looks increasingly like a bidding war between Europeans for natural gas on the global market, from suppliers such as Qatar and Russia.
For clarification 1 therm is 100,000 BTU or about 29.3 kWh.
Most UK suppliers are selling gas this October for about 4.0p per kWh inclusive of standing charges and 5% VAT. Most UK householders will burn between 60 and 120kWh per winter's day - depending on the level of insulation and the outside temperature.
Even greater profits can be made for the utilities that convert this gas into electricity in CCGT power plants. However, in the event of a natural gas shortage, will these plants will be quickly taken off line and the gas reserved for heating usage?
If the day ahead price is roughly 2.2p /kWh and expected to rise, then we can only expect more sharp rises in the price that the domestic consumer pays.
I've hedged my bets by fitting a woodstove with boiler in addition to my condensing gas fired boiler.
What was the cheapest, most abundant fuel by far, only 3 or 4 years ago, gas is now no longer as attractive.
2020
2020Vision
Thanks!
Most countries on the Continental Europe have entered into long term supply agreements with Algeria, Norway and Russia. Most of the European market has not been liberalized.
The German energy company E.On Ruhrgas is the largest foreign owner in Russian Gazprom and by coincidence their stake of 6,4 % in Gazprom closely matches German nat gas imports from Russia relative to total Gazprom production.
In 2007 Germany imported 35 Gcm from Russia. 6,4 % of a total Gazprom production of 560 Gcm approximates 35 Gcm.
The Germans have always had a long term strategy for their energy supplies and there is one phrase they often revert to “security of energy supplies”.
I don’t have any detailed information on the priorities during a gas shortage. From what I have understood consumers with interruptible contracts will first be shut off.
If the shortage gap is not closed by this, then electric utilities could be next in line. What then happens could quickly develop into something very ugly, as the UK presently has small generating margins and could result in part of the grid going down (black outs).
I think you (and those around you) soon enough will appreciate the woodstove.
- Rune
UK day ahead as of now 73,25 P/Therm.
Probably Germany or Denmark are better places to look for energy efficiency ideas. They actually take it seriously here, fuel being far more expensive.
So, the rich and wasteful are being subsidised by the poor and thrifty. LOL.
Yeah, I ripped off a lot of common practise in Germany in particular to re-present it in my blog - the point is that there is no way the energy gap will be filled in time, whatever we build, as the time is just too short, even though they probably won't close some of the coal plants they now say they will for emissions reasons, so conservation is the first option:
http://energy-futures.blogspot.com/2008/02/conservationour-best-route-to...
Please note that since writing this I have changed my mid about residential solar thermal, which originally thought ineffective in the UK as it does not provide much hot water at peak in the winter, and hence would not help the grid much.
It is now apparent that the situation is so dire that any contribution at all is needed, but insulation is still much more cost effective.
The thing is though that Germany and Denmark have addressed their problems on a long-term basis, and so have super-insulated large portions of their housing stock, use a lower proportion of gas, have better stockpiling arrangements and long term supply contracts etc - in other words they are far better prepared than the UK, although not so well as France with it's nuclear contribution.
In the UK we are just going to have to patch something up on an emergency basis, or freeze, hence my attempt to show some quick bodges to reduce energy use, even if it means living in one room.
I have personally bought greenhouse-type bubble plastic, which I will use to seal the windows if we get power cuts.
My experience with solar thermal in winter is mixed. At present I have 2 x 20 vacuum tubes heating a 120 litre tank. On bright sumnny days even in the depth of winter this arrangement will add 30-40 degrees of heat to the tank - 5-6 kwh per day. Heavily overcast days and you are lucky to get a 5 degree temperature lift.
That said for a 4 bedroom detatched house I have reduced gas consumption to 7500kwh per annum (electricity is around 35ookwh per annum)
Hi Nick.
I had not known that there was such a big difference when it is overcast.
The only figures I have seen just contrasted winter and summer, without going into cloud cover.
It sounds as though you are getting around 2,000kwh from your set-up, as it would increase the temperature more in summer - is that about right?
What was the cost of your system?
I am wondering about creating a separate blog, to deal exclusively with practical energy saving measures in the UK climate, where we can tabulate experience such as yours - a sort of 'Popular Mechanics Goes Warm!'
Hi Dave
I would be happy to do that and provide figures and photos.
My system as a DIY install came in at about £1150. Installation took about 4-5 days. It basically consists of 2 20 tube panels, a controller, pump, pressure vessel, and a retrofit coil that inserts into my cylinder via the immersion.
I have calculated that my set up should deliver 3000-3200 kwh per annum. Typically a 20 tube (47mm x 1500mm vacuum tube) system should deliver 1450 - 1600 kwh annually. I have 40 tubes in total.
Today for example the base of my water tank at 8am was 19 degrees. At 6pm 46 - so a 27 degree increase at the base. The tap water is about 65 degrees suggesting some stratifcation in the tank. I would guess todays yield is in the region of 5kwh - not bad less than 55 days from winter equinox.
Regards
Nick
Dave,
"In addition, pollution laws mean many GW of stations are due to retire, with a lot of coal stations being retired by 2015."
This is the EU large combustion plant directive.
It's actually worse than just retirement by 2015. Those coalfired powerstations that have opted out of the scheme are only allowed 20,000 hours run time, after January 2008.
This means that the operators are now running the coal plant in stop-start mode, in order to try and keep the hours down. This practice does nothing for the overall efficiency nor the pollution of the plant. Indeed, rising nat gas prices have made some operators run the more modern coal plants in preference to the CCGT plants. In the UK electricity market, they will do whatever makes the most profit.
Will the operators wriggle out of the EU LCPD, pleading that they cannot produce sufficient power, if the older plants are retired early?
Since the time to do something else effective has been frittered away, closing the coal plants on schedule is probably entirely unrealistic, and new plants are likely to get built as you can't build nuclear that fast and they haven't even started.
As for wind energy, apart from the stonking cost of off-shore which we may not be able to afford, AFAIK there is only one ship capable of erecting the turbines, so even the BEA says that Government plans for power by 2020 are in a different reality to this planet.
Since most of the on-shore wind potential is in Scotland, I doubt that they will allow a maximum speed build of on-shore wind, at least until power shortages really hurt.
You could co-fire the coal plants with biomass to reduce the emissions, its not really reducing the run time but might be an option for providing some wiggle room.
Miscanthus/Willow could provide about 30MWh (elec)/ha/yr which means we could stretch solid fuels by using some marginal land. IMO a better route to go is gasification for home heating (effective 60MWh/ha/yr yield due to higher end use efficiency about 3 houses worth), then using the char as soil amendment.
I favour increased use of wind to power heat pumps and production of biogas (from switchgrass) to make use of existing infrastructure and stretch out gas supply.
Build as many EPR reactors as soon and safely as possible 10-15 would be nice ~25GW
DICE (direct injection coal engines) Low speed diesel engines in range of a couple of hundred MW could run as distributed combined heat and power network in high density areas. Coal is made into tiny particles and mixed with water. According to the source below this could be about 50% efficient (with the waste heat put to good use the emissions from this process would be significantly reduced compared to standard practice.)
Expanding and electrifying the rail network (for food and fuel transport as much as people) in conjunction with transmission and fibre optic cables.
Make better use of frequency responsive loads and real-time pricing to help secure the grid and reduce peak demands.
Insulate here, insulate now, pay less.
Info on Direct coal injection.
http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/223831/CSIRO-NSW-c...