We need answers to grid concerns
IT is worth noting that Hunterston Reactor 3 has in the last few days moved
to its final defuelling phase and “will not return to power generation”
according to the French owners EDF Status website today, so another 500MW
of stabilising synchronous generation has now been lost to Scotland. The
remaining Reactor 4 is due to stop generating in January, which will leave
west Scotland with worryingly low network strength (called fault level) due
to our increasing reliance on renewables even though the HVDC
interconnector from Wales terminates in the locality. This will affect the
electrical protection response when there is network fault.
In addition, National Grid in 2018 published its concerns that HVDC links
will in many circumstances not be able to transfer power when feeding
low-strength areas of the network. This identified that when nearby network
faults occur there will be many scenarios where the HVDC/AC converters will
become unstable and our AC voltage will start to surge and oscillate at a
different frequency to the 50Hz (cycles per second) that we receive in our
homes, which will necessitate shutdown, meaning Scotland could not import.
I, along with many, would like to hear from Scottish Power, EDF, which owns
Hunterston, and SSEN that they have fully responded to National Grid’s 2018
request for input to “further explore the risk to converter instability”
and that we can be confident such problems have been solved.
DB Watson, Cumbernauld.
Storm Arwen has shown the folly of the green agenda
A Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks team working to reconnect
homes still without supply after damage caused by Storm Arwen
34 comments
IT is barely two weeks since the COP26 circus left town and took all their
well-intentioned but impractical ideas with them. I would make the
following observation and give your coverage of Storm Arwen as exhibit A
(“24,000 still left without power as battle to restore supply goes on”, The
Herald, November 30).
Where are Greta Thunberg, Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie now to explain to
the thousands of households in the north-east still without power the
benefits of being solely dependent on electricity with no gas or log
burners or oil or solid fuel stoves or oil or gas boilers? Sole dependency
on air heat source (AHS) pumps? I don’t think so.
As an aside, I have yet to have it explained to me how an AHS pump is to be
fitted onto the back wall of every tenement flat, in back courts with
restricted vehicle access, and I see no sign yet of the further disruptive
works necessary to instal car charging points every couple of metres along
every pavement.
In 2013 we on the west coast of Arran suffered considerable snow drifts and
a continuous seven-day power loss, but with an oil Aga, and for cooking and
water heating a gas hob and a log-burner and back up mobile cylinder gas
heater, life was okay. But the three aforementioned experts want us to rip
all that out in preference for their as-yet only alternative, the totally
impractical AHS pumps. No thank you: back to the drawing board for that
idea, as the last few days has proved elsewhere.
And by the way, the diesel four by four SUV kept us mobile during that week
and able to render assistance to others less fortunate than ourselves.
Neil Arthur, Kilpatrick, Isle of Arran.
Fossil fuels are life-savers
PEOPLE should be prepared for power cuts. Torches, preferably the LED type,
should be kept ready along with a stock of long-life batteries. Camping gas
lanterns provide illumination for hours. Spare butane/propane cylinders
should be available, and spare mantles. Cooking can be done on small
camping gas stoves. A propane cylinder connected to a gas heater gives a
lot of warmth, with a CO2 detector as a precaution. In case the water
supply fails, a few sealed five-litre plastic bottles of spring water will
fill the gap.
It is interesting to note that all these useful items depend on fossil
fuels – plastics from oil, gas, steel which requires coking coal, and
diesel machines to mine zinc and manganese (for the batteries). We depend
on the products of oil, gas and coal in so many ways. Keeping fossil fuels
in the ground is definitely not a good idea.
William Loneskie, Lauder.

SAS Volunteer

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