Mechanisms in place to mitigate impact of Hinkley Point C delays

30 MAR, 2022 BY ROB HAKIMIAN

The Somerset power station is intended to bring 3.2GW to the national grid, and the power up was previously delayed to 2026. However, it now seems that it will be even later than that due to civils issues on site alongside global issues like the materials crisis, the invasion of Ukraine and the pandemic. This might seem like a massive blow to the UK’s energy ambitions and the move to net zero, but it’s not as bleak as that.

“Given that Hinkley’s already been delayed several times, the power industry is wise to the fact that it can’t be relied upon in the short term to turn up as expected,” says Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit head of analysis Simon Cran-McGreehan. “I know that EDF is looking at whether it can extend the lifetime of the existing nuclear fleet to try and bridge that gap before Hinkley comes online.”

However, this is not a watertight plan as nuclear plants are unreliable. Within the last 12 months, both Dungeness and Hunterston B nuclear power stations have had to decommission sooner than their operators EDF Energy would have hoped.

This is where the UK’s Capacity Market steps in. The Capacity Market was set up by the UK government to insure against the possibility of blackouts, ensuring consumers can still benefit from reliable electricity supplies at an affordable price even when the productivity of one source or another dips or goes offline unexpectedly. There are capacity market auctions for power held four years in advance to secure a capacity buffer of around 10 to 20 GW – much more than the shortfall of losing Hinkley Point C for another year or so.

UK Energy Research Centre director and Imperial College professor of energy policy Rob Gross says: “Through the capacity market, system operators would be looking to procure enough plant to make sure that it’s there and it’s available. But it would procure more than we would actually be likely to need, on the basis that, as you get closer to real time, things happen and some of that plant might turn out to not be available.”

He continues: “You could probably create a scenario where [the Hinkley delay] is problematic – coal closures, gas reactor closures, the stochastic nature of wind power – but I don’t see it as a cliff-edge.”

Cran-McGreehan adds: “These options have been very effective in ensuring that we have sufficient capacity. They provide sufficient funding for older power plants to remain on the grid, just in case they’re needed on the off chance.

“So the mechanism will continue operating and National Grid will carry on taking into account the delays in nuclear. It already has been taking the issues with nuclear into account in the capacity market, both the delays with new plants and the increasing outages in all plants. So the mechanism is there to cope with it, it’s probably no great surprise to the industry.”

Of course, relying on older coal or gas power plants to potentially make up the shortfall does not chime with the UK’s net zero by 2050 pledge. There are already dozens of projects to implement more renewable energy on the grid, and Cran-McGreehan believes that the country just has to keep moving forward with all actions for the transition to net zero. It would be nice to think that they can be accelerated, but there is already a huge pipeline working as quickly as possible.

It is possible to set up new solar farms within months, and wind farms are relatively short to build compared to power plants, especially as the government is looking to ease the planning approval process, but their capacity is not in the same league. On the bright side, within the next few years there will be much more advancement in new initiatives, such as Rolls-Royce’s small modular reactors and the Allam Cycle being built on Teesside, which have the potential to change the landscape of energy production.

Cran-McGreehin is not ready to rely on them yet though. “These things are a small part of the jigsaw and the massive part of the jigsaw is just a lot more renewables and the systems around them to manage the grid with higher variability, which is something National Grid is already preparing for. They’re expecting by 2025 to have short periods when we have 100% low carbon generation o the system, and then by 2035 it’s the government’s ambition to have 100% low carbon energy on the system all the time.”