Networks
Over the past few days forecasters have been warning of a cold snap, with particularly cold weather hitting the north of the UK, which began on Tuesday – as I began writing this post at lunchtime on Tuesday 7 March there had been some [...]
Last year I warned repeatedly that Norway can not be expected to sit passively by while other countries drain its reservoirs and that it may well take steps to restrict exports. I drew attention to comments by Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, and [...]
On Monday 28 November, National Grid ESO issued the second Capacity Market Notice (“CMN”) of the winter, again on a day with low wind output. Although the Notice was cancelled after around half an hour, it is certainly a sign of trouble as temperatures [...]
Just after 2:30 yesterday afternoon, National Grid ESO issued the first Capacity Market Notice (“CMN”) of the winter, predicting a spare generation margin of just 177 MW at 7pm – CMNs are issued automatically if the margin drops below 500 MW. Although the Notice [...]
Norway's energy security would appear to be a done deal, yet the past couple of years have been very challenging for its electricity market. While the rest of Europe struggles with reduced access to gas, it seems strange that a country which produces far [...]
I have received a response from National Grid ESO to some of my questions on the Early Outlook for Winter 2022. In this post I update my analysis and add some further commentary on the risks to energy security this winter. Reliance on interconnectors [...]
Today National Grid ESO has published its early view of the Winter Outlook for 2022/23. Unbelievably, it believes the capacity margin will be slightly higher than last year at 4.0 GW compared with 3.9 GW. This strikes me as extreme wishful thinking which does [...]
There has been a lot of noise recently about the prospect of a move to some form of location-based pricing in the GB electricity market. National Grid ESO is strongly in favour, seeing nodal pricing alongside a return to centralised dispatch as the best [...]
In my previous post I looked at Ofgem’s network charging reforms. Here I will summarise the conclusion of the Significant Code Review into network access (now known as the “Access SCR”), which was originally part of a wider review into network access and forward-looking [...]
One night last week I had a dream that hydro-power isn’t generated by water, but by a mouse called Lucy which is getting tired, with dire consequences for the market. The dream made more sense than the tangle which is known as network charging [...]