Whitegate and Dublin Bay Power Stations Trip

 850MW of generation lost last night

Both Whitegate and Dublin Bay gas power stations tripped last night a few hours after I had published about the return of Whitegate power station. Dublin Bay appears to be back this morning but Whitegate is still offline. This shows the precarious nature we are in. It now means we are dependent on a not too dependent interconnector and wind system. 

There is no reason given for the outages. It's possible that the loss of one power station can trip another but whether this is what occurred last night I do not know. 

Whitegate Gas Power Station back in Action

 Whitegate power station has in the past hour returned to operation after nearly 12 months out of action due to a turbine fault. It is expected to return to full commercial operation tomorrow. A small loose bit of metal caused significant damage last December to what is a very sensitive piece of equipment. It was due back at the beginning of November. The return of the 444MW power station comes just at a good time as the weather has turned cold and demand is rising. Also imports from the UK  and wind energy appear to be very low in the past few days. 

Back in July, the Energy Regulator warned that power stations have become less reliable due to extreme operational requirements that they were not designed for during periods of intermittent wind. 

How Close is Ireland to Blackouts ?

 

                                  Chart 1 - The green line includes all potentially available capacity whether currently in use or not. Some adjustments have been made to the red line to take account of the temporary loss of two gas and one oil generators . 

The above graph shows how Ireland's electricity supply position has evolved since the height of the building boom in 2006. The green line shows the total generation capacity that consumers must pay for including wind energy. As you can see the gap between the green line and peak demand in blue has increased exponentially in tandem with the building of new wind farms in yellow and new power stations in red. This gap is a large part of the reason why electricity bills have soared in recent years as the capital element of all of this capacity must be financed through bills regardless of how much energy they produce. So with all of this excess capacity, how is it that we are facing the prospect of blackouts? 

The red line is dispatchable plant, that is, plant that can be switched on at a moment's notice as required. The main ones in Ireland are gas, coal and oil power stations. The interconnector to England (EWIC) is also included in this however it's debatable how dispatchable this is in light of recent events (more on this later). Peat is also dispatchable but two of those power stations were closed down in 2020 leaving only one remaining peat station in Edenderry which also runs on biomass. It is due to be closed down in 2023. It has now finally being accepted by almost everyone (apart from the Green Party Energy Minister ?) that wind is not dispatchable and during long periods of low wind as we have had this year it is really the red line that we are relying on to keep the lights on.

The red line takes a noticeable dip after 2020. This is to take account of the loss of three power stations during 2021 - Huntstown 400MW, Whitegate 444MW and Tarbert 243MW. This has returned us to 2007 levels of dispatchable plant. This shouldn't present a serious problem, we managed okay back then. However, there are two main differences between now and back in the Tiger days :

1) Peak demand has increased by about 10%. The peak of 5,357MW was reached in December 2020. It is likely that this will increase further this winter which means the gap between the red and the blue line in Chart 1 will narrow even further. 

2) The rate of forced outages has increased dramatically in recent years. According to Eirgrid, the forced outage rate went from a low of about 3% in 2016 to a high of about 16% in 2021. The forced outage rate is the rate at which power stations are breaking down. Power stations are becoming less reliable and not just old ones. One reason for this is that they are switching on and off too much to balance the wind (more here) . 

The situation then is precarious enough but what happens if the UK does not have spare energy to give to us over the interconnector ? This has become a greater risk as energy shortages have recently become a major political issue in the UK. Chart 2 shows what happens when the EWIC is no longer available :

Chart 2

There is now a very small gap between the red and blue lines. 353MW to be exact. Which is about the size of a single power station. So another power station outage would leave us on the precipice and if the winter is a cold one demand will surely rise pushing us over the edge into blackout territory. 

To sum up here, it would take six events occurring at the same time to leave us in a very dangerous position - three of those are the three currently unavailable power stations not being repaired in time for winter, the fourth is the interconnector becoming useless, the fifth is either another power station breaking down or demand rising higher than last year. The trend for the fourth and fifth events is going the wrong way in all cases. The likelihood however of all 3 power stations not being repaired in time for winter is fairly slim although I have a feeling Whitegate may not be repaired by mid November as scheduled.

The sixth event is perhaps the biggest variable of all, the yellow line in the charts - wind energy. If there is plenty of it then in theory the majority of these events occurring simultaneously would not pose such a major problem. But if we have another lull as we have had this summer then that is a different story.

I say, in theory, because it is slightly more complicated than that. Certain power stations are required to be operating at all times to maintain the stability of the grid. Currently that includes Moneypoint coal power station. Moneypoint happens to be the oldest power station on the grid so there is a risk to the entire grid if it alone suffers an outage. No amount of wind energy can replace the inertia that Moneypoint provides to the system. 

In any event, the demand of large energy users will most likely be cut before we get near the precarious position of all or most of these events occurring together. 

Demand management they are calling it. Which is another form of blackout, just with a nicer name . 

Lifespan of a Gas Turbine

 According to Siemens a gas turbine is designed to run for 40 years with maintenance every 3 years as this video explains:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj3a1e901Uk

The gas turbine in Whitegate power station was severely damaged last December when a small piece of metal broke loose and damaged the blades. The turbine was installed in 2010. So it is unusual that the turbine would be so severely damaged after just 10 years. 

Have A Green Green Christmas !

 Blackouts on the Way ?

Val Martin reports on what we predicted many years ago would happen as unreliable wind energy became a major energy source in the grid:

There are a number of unusual events occurring at the same time this winter :

• On the 10th December, peak demand exceeded that of 2010:

• Two peat power stations have been closed down by the Greens, a loss of 228MW
• Whitegate power station is offline due to a forced outage, a loss of 440MW
• Indaver waste to energy plant is offline due to a forced outage, a loss of 17MW
• The forced outage rates has increased every year for the past four years, which tends to support the theory that higher levels of wind energy leads to excessive cycling and ramping of generators which they were not designed for.
• Increased reliance on UK interconnectors, a country that has trouble itself with keeping the lights on.
• the all-island winter capacity margin has reduced every year over the past five years mainly due to increasing demand, dispatchable generation exiting the market and increasing generator forced outage rates. The capacity margin is the spare capacity available to meet peak demand. It is now at its lowest in recent times :

Source: Eirgrid Winter Outook

Irish State sold profitable Power Station for 10% of it's cost

In 2010, Bord Gais Energy, then owned by the Irish State, began operation of Whitegate Power Station, a 445MW  gas powered station in Cork. It cost € 400 million to build.   

In 2014, Bord Gais and it's assets was sold off to Centrica UK. It was rumored at the time that the State took a hit of as much as €360 million on the sale of Whitegate.

As this newspaper [Irish Independent] revealed last week, the "enterprise value" paid for Bord Gais by new owners Centrica was €210m. However, this included €60m of income that would have been earned anyway if the company wasn't sold. Furthermore, the book of 680,000 Bord Gais customers could have had a value of about €110m, so this suggests a value of just €40m was put on Whitegate, which cost €400m to build.

The 2014 accounts show the power station valued at € 39 million confirming the massive loss. Somehow the power station lost 90% of it's value in four years. Did they spend too much on it's construction ? ESB built an 884MW gas powered station in the UK costing € 820m which works out at just under a million euros per MW, roughly the same cost as Whitegate.  Aghada power station, which is situated close to Whitegate, was built for slightly less at € 360m, about € 0.8m per MW. So the loss in value of € 360 million could not be attributed to over spending on construction. 

The most recent accounts shows that operating profits at Bord Gais Energy jumped from €50m to €63m during 2016.  I cannot say how much of this profit is attributable to the power station but the accounts do say that :

Whitegate benefited from good reliability and availability throughout the year.

Within the energy generation market, Whitegate remains both reliable and efficient and continues to achieve high market availability. 

The generation profile for the power station below shows that it was generating less by 2014.

Source EPA

Presumably this was a trend that government officials thought would continue into the future but in reality, we can now see that the power station did in fact return to growth and achieved high market availability. 

The constant ramping up and down to accommodate more and more wind energy would also have been another contributing factor that led to the loss of it's value. But the recovery of the power station in the energy market is a surprise considering that about 650MW of wind farms were built between 2014 and 2016, which theoretically should have displaced more gas power. 

The above graph shows that the capacity factor (actual output / maximum output) for the gas power station increased to 68% while that of wind energy dropped to 27%. Whitegate now has the second highest capacity factor for gas in Ireland (Dublin Bay CCGT has the highest at 80%)

It appears that the government officials and consultants wrongly assumed that adding wind capacity meant more wind energy and less gas power. Of course, increased demand was another factor in Whitegate's market recovery. But no matter what excuses can be made, the loss to the Irish State of € 360 million shows gross incompetence. The Irish government bet on wind, whilst the private sector bet on gas. Where idealism meets pragmatism in the business world, the latter usually wins out. 

Has wind energy distorted asset values in the energy market ? Consider that recently Greencoat Renewables paid €2.5m per megawatt for a wind farm in Co.Kerry compared to the €0.9m per megawatt it cost to build Whitegate. 

The cost of Brexit to Ireland is estimated to be €200m per year, however our own government conducted business deals long before Brexit that cost us more than that. 

As usual, the taxpayer picks up the tab.