Some interesting stuff from
gridwatch.
Claim from the National Grid is that power outage caused by Little Barford and Hornsea wind disconnecting from grid.
In May 2008 similar happened:
htTps://www.ofgem.gov.uk/ofgem-publications/41426/nationalgrid-systemeventsof27mayfordswg16july.pdf
except 2 stations (Longannet and Sizewell) tripped which gave a loss of 1582MW and then other back up systems failed.
the outage ended after 7 hours
Little Barford Power Station is a 740 MWe gas-fired power station
Hornsea
Wind Farm maximum is 1.2GW
1.5 GW maximum lost according to gridwatch and they have learned nothing since 2008.
and of course even more people affected
What is interesting is that Gridwatch shows that the frequency dropped nearly 20 minutes before the two stations went offline. Grid watch is updated every 5 minutes so should have shown a intantataneos frequency and power loss.
The frequency changes as a result of overload on the grid.
Did the stations drop because of frequency drop or did the frequency drop because the stations went offline? Or is it a reporting issue?
If the fast reserve cannot handle 1.8GW going offline simultaneously how do they expect to handle Hinkley C with 2 reactors of 1.6GW?
PS
Many suggest that the variability of the wind is to be blamed. But if you look at the power levels during that day there was adequate capacity.
There was 8GW of spare CCGT power at the time of the outage. There was a demand 2.8GW below peak of the previous day. There was no drop or increase in wind strength. Simply put a gas power station tripped and a fault occurred on the transmission lines from the wind farm causing 0.9GW loss of supply.
