National Grid’s FES 2020 will cost £18.47 billion every year-FOREVER!!!

BWRX-300 SMR: The world’s most cost-effective NPP

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Aug 28, 2020

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We’re paying John Pettigrew, National Grid’s CEO, a salary of £1.0 million per year.

Not only that, but we’ve contributed, through our electricity bills, a donation of an extra £4.3 million in ‘compensation’ as an extra ‘Thank You’!

There are profit reasons why the National Grid is pressurising the UK Government to commit bill and taxpayers to funding Wind And Solar Plants (WASPs). The bigger the grid, the more profit; the more balancing operations, the more profit; the more interconnectors (to offshore wind farms, etc.), the more profit.

WASPs fit the bill in every respect, so it behoves the National Grid to wilfully ignoring, burgeoning developments in advanced Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) in their recommendations to Government.

The National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios (FES) 2020, in the ‘Consumer Transformation Scenario’, calls for 480 TWh of intermittent electricity per year from WASPs by 2050.

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47 GW of Onshore Wind:

47 GW of Onshore Wind requires the siting of 196 wind farms the size of South Kyle Windfarm. That’s 6 to 7 wind farms per year and the ones built in the first year will have to be decommissioned and new wind farms built again, at the same rate, starting 2040/2045.

That’s £2.09 billion/year.

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83 GW of Offshore Wind:

83 GW of Offshore Wind requires the siting of 68 wind farms the size of Hornsea Project One. That’s 2 to 3 wind farms per year and the ones built in the first year will have to be decommissioned and new wind farms built again, at the same rate, starting 2040/2045.

That’s £10.11 billion/year.

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76 GW of Utility-Scale Solar PV:

76 GW of Utility-Scale Solar PV requires the siting of 217 solar parks the size of Cleve Hill. That’s 7 to 8 solar parks per year and the ones built in the first year will have to be decommissioned and new solar parks built again, starting 2050.

That’s £3.25 billion/year.

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THE ‘INTERMITTENCY PROBLEM’

In 2020, a total of 37.15 GW of installed WASP capacity required a Natural Gas (NG)-fuelled turbine capacity of 31.50 GW:

The ‘480 TWh from WASPs’ Scenario requires 206 GW of WASP installed capacity. On a pro-rata basis, this would entail a green hydrogen (H2)-fuelled turbine capacity of 174.7 GW.

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174.7 GW of Backup Gas Turbine Plants requires the siting of 131 plants the size of the West Burton plant. That’s 4 to 5 CCGT plants per year and the ones built in the first year will have to be decommissioned and new CCGT plants built again, starting 2045.

That’s £3.02 billion/year.

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In 2050, 480 TWh of intermittent electricity will be generated by 380.7 GW of WASPs and Backup Plants, at a cost of £18.47 billion per year and by then, it will have cost £554.10 billion. But from 2050 onward, ~12.7 GW of WASPs and Backup Plants will have to be decommissioned and replaced by ~12.7 GW of new plants — every year thereafter!

That’s £18.47 billion every year, from 2020 onward, Forever & Ever & Ever!

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ALTERNATIVELY:

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How about a ‘Home Grown’ answer, for extra energy security in the form of Rolls-Royce and their advanced Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), the 440 MW Small Modular Reactor (SMR). Rolls-Royce have 60 years of supply and manufacturing experience in putting the UK’s nuclear submarine fleet to sea.

No imported wind turbine generators (WTGs); no imported monopiles and transition pieces; no imported solar panels.

It would take 138 Rolls-Royce SMRs to generate 480 TWh of 24/7, low-carbon electricity each year, by 2050. The build-out can commence in 2030, at a rate of 6 to 7 per year, for a total capital investment of £284.4 billion. Over 20 years, that equates to £12.42 billion per year.

BUT:

With a design life of 60 years and, under normal circumstances, an economical life extension selected for most, if not all, of the SMRs, there would be and investment ‘hiatus’ of some 50 years, up to the year 2100. So the £284.4 billion is actually spread over 70 years — that’s £4.06 billion per year.

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Should this National Grid FES 2020 ‘480 TWh per year’ Scenario be adopted by Government, by 2030, every year an additional £14.41 billion of capital investment, over and above that for advanced NPPs, would be required for a WASP plus Backup infrastructure.

One way or another, this extra investment will work its way into the wholesale electricity price, along with operating costs and profits, to land onto the electricity bills of domestic consumers.

For a 2020 estimated 28.7 million domestic electricity meters, the average, annual, domestic consumption of 3,618 kWh in 2018, is trending towards 3,500 KWh per year by 2020 (Pages 7 & 8). At an average domestic price of 18.75p/kWh, an annual electricity bill will be £656 per year.

The domestic sector uses 37.1% of UK electricity (page 7), so considering capital investment on its own:

For advanced NPPs, 37.1% of the £4.06 billion would cost each household £52.60 per year — an 8% increase on the average electricity bill.

For WASPs plus Backup Plant, 37.1% of the £18.47 billion would cost each household £238.76 per year — a 36% increase on the average electricity bill.

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Conclusion:

The National Grid’s preference for WASPs means each bill-payer will pay an extra £186.16 cost per year to run a washing machine, a ‘fridge and boil a kettle. It will degrade the lifestyle choices and standard of living of each and every UK citizen.

Every one of those sacrificed, hard-earned £s would have been spent on goods and services of our own choosing, creating jobs in manufacturing, commerce and services. Some of it, as pension savings for later life, would have been invested and create even more jobs.

Political decisions, that result in everyone paying more than necessary for one of life’s-essentials, are to be abhorred. It’s up to all concerned individuals to ensure the UK Government is not ‘suckered into’ ignoring advanced NPPs.

And finally, there’s Fuel Poverty — John Pettigrew, and all of those Pro-WASP individuals haunting the Corridors of Power, will your activities come back to haunt you? “…The winter of 2017/18 saw the highest recorded number of Excess Winter Deaths since 1975–1976, with 50,100 excess deaths in England & Wales (provisional). Of these, 15,030 (30%) were attributable to cold homes…”

Rejection of the National Grid’s FES 2020 Scenarios is a moral as well as a financial imperative and must be fought for at every opportunity!