Great episode. I am doing my PhD on the decarbonisation of the UKs energy industry and the electricity grid is one of the most fascinating complex system I have ever seen - Great content and I hope we can get more of these - especially what is happening at the distribution level and all the challenges from LCTs and the rollout of renewables. Congratulations and that James is such a charismatic bloke. Just loved it ❤
Yeah, indeed a great episode, and I want to understand how renewable energy affects the grid, as well as the threshold beyond which an oversupply of renewables could compromise grid stability.
I just found your channel and am impressed. I live in southeastern USA. In viewing your videos I notice one big difference, that being I see few solar panels. Then it occurred to me, Y'all don't have any sunshine. Here in sunny Dixie many people with roof top solar are interested in adding power onto the grid. My hope is to have a decentralized power grid. What is happening is that the consumer will also become a producer. Thanks. May the Grid be with you.
@@MaxDigby-q1t That is great and thank you for the information. However, that is only part of why I made a comment. My feeling about this channel is that it is "Grid" producer oriented. I used the word decentralized to convey a potential trend that balances the power (political) between consumers and producers. Hypotheticality, if every consumer had solar and battery backup this would have a positive impact upon grids.
@@chrisconklin2981 totally agree, I have solar and battery storage as well as a stake in a cooperative solar park and wind farm. I was more just addressing a misconception within the UK population that we don’t have enough sun for solar. Because of our position as a country in the northern hemisphere we have long days in the summer so production can go on for a long time. I’m a great believer as it sounds you are that the more the consumer can produce for themselves the better.
@@MaxDigby-q1t That's great. Just to let you know, I have been helping you Brits out. Every day I wrap up a bundle of sunshine-BTUs, walk down to the Gulf of Mexico and toss the package into the Gulf Stream. The package drifts 6,500 km to end up warming the UK shore.
Hi there, we focused on the National Grid interconnectors in this episode, there are a few more not in our control, a full list can be seen here on OFGEM's website www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy-and-regulatory-programmes/interconnectors
This is an excellent episode. I would like more technical information and answers: is there just one grid in Europe or are we connecting to each country’s grid? Why are there 2 connectors to France. Why did the Norwegians decide against a second connector. Will you do an episode on the impact of the Danish energy island?
How do they do the 'burying 1m' bit? It's easy enough dropping the cable off the back of the boat, but trenching it on the muddy seafloor sounds a bit tricky. Maybe if it's just mud all you have to do is vacuum up some silt, or aerate it so the cable sinks in? Or maybe it's just really soft and the cable sinks in anyway under its own weight?
The Netherlands building internals and offices are so tidy and nicely set out, designed well. The UK office is a bish bash bosh and slap on some paint - job done
The first uk to France was much earlier than the 1980’s ! I was taught about the first one when I was at UNI in 1963. One of the reasons for using dc was the difficulty of synchronising the UK and Mainland Europe.
@@mfx1 Except the distance to France is only 25 miles so it's not really a very long cable on the scale of things. We have much longer (100km?) AC cable segments on the UK grid. The DC/AC cost crossover used to be a few hundred km, but has come down as converter stations have got much cheaper. So for the early French interconnector the ability to connect unsynchronised grids must have been a significant consideration. I think DC is much better underwater too so that helps justify the converter station cost.
With alternating current in cables you get interaction which reduces efficiency. Keep current flowing in one direction works better. Years ago when visiting a network control room in West Midlands the network map had a note against a Welsh connection "Beware of 22 deg phase difference", perhaps not exact wording.
Their systems might run stably only on XP. Also, it's a pretty solid OS. Still in use all over the world in places where it's needed because of the programmes running on it.
I'm in the same situation, you don't want to run a mission critical program(not software) on a machine that stops because it doesn't have the latest doodas en gegaws.
I know Windows inside and out, I have several MS certifications. While XP was a great OS for its time a lot has changed since the days of WinXP. Other than a few very specific situations, I would never run windows XP unless it was isolated from the Internet and even then there’s several reasons not to use it. If you truly must run a very old application, that what Compatibility Mode was designed for.
@@Jonathan_O Compatibility mode has its own issues and isn't as stable as running on the original OE. And, if your machine(s) are isolated then it doens't matter quite so much.
I've been inside (as a visitor) such converter stations for project Nemo link. Banks of semiconductors sure are different from a "plain" transformer. I do wonder why they're using paper/lead insulated cable instead of materials such as XLPE.
4:28 - National Grid does NOT own the transmission network across the entire country (UK). The transmission networks in Scotland are owned primarily by ScottishPower and SSE. NG is the national _operator_ of the transmission networks across the UK but liaise with control rooms in Scotland.
Matte Hinde fails to mention the two interconnections between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and between Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. He also doesn't mention there are in fact 3 ICs between the UK and France with the third one going via the Channel Tunnel. Or come to that the interconnecter between GB and the Shetlands.
Hey Graham, correct, we only mentioned National Grid interconnectors in this episode. A full list of interconnectors can be seen on OFGEM's website: www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy-and-regulatory-programmes/interconnectors
Interesting how this works. also: it's 2011, Windows XP is already 10 years old, yet someone thought. yeahh let's use Windows XP on our brand new installation,and continue to use it 10 years+ after support has ended. unless of course they had already installed in 2007. you would not want to use vista in 2007 for anything critical.
An increasing amount of grid SCADA infrastructure in the UK is addressable using TCP/IP and so it does kinda use the internet. Just how secure it is remains to be seen!
@@screwdriver5181 not all transmission and (especially) distribution level assets have integral fibre or auxiliary fibre cables installed, so there will be reliance on shared comms networks to an extent.
Don't sweat about the XP computers. It is a very,very stable rock solid OS in use for decades. All the OS bugs were killed off many years ago. It runs on cool slow machines that run 24 /7 /365 without a hitch. This is industrial control software connected to actual machines no need for speed.
Yes they were using the same XP windows computers in a GE Gas power turbine power plant I did some work on a few years ago. They have two of each PC circa 2002 to allow for redundancy and maintenance. I was there to replace the SCSI hard drives as part of the maintenance schedule.
25:15. A fine example of motor-normativity: 'London is an hour and half in that direction'. Presumably he means 'by car'. Distance would be a lot more useful. One might wish to travel in some other way, or indeed just have distance given in distance units.
Please use real terms, an hour and a half that way is nothing in terms of an answer! Is that skipping, helicopters or cycling? Same goes for 1 thousand kWh, isnt that a mega watt? I dont advertise £1 as 100 pennies so don’t do it with measurements! Dont get me started on soccer pitches or Olympic swimming pools, not seen either but educated in acres and square miles lol
And now we can no longer afford to use electricity for industry we have outsourced a massive amount of production to China and India who are polluting the world with no emissions regulation whatsoever. Lost count how many new coal fired power stations China and India have built in the last couple of years, but it exeeds the number we had in total in Uk a few years ago. Where has it all gone so wrong ?
It's a very interesting topic but I'm a bit mystified why you'd use a "children's TV" style presenter to ask the questions. I'll admit it annoyed me. Can anyone recommend a good video (or a book or site) explaining more fully how the grid works, balancing of power, grid batteries, LCOE, efficiencies, energy trading etc?
More technical details please- what voltage/current is used for the DC interconnect, how does the ac/dc conversion work etc.
This Hass to be aimed at people who just want to find out more, unfortunately without loads of detail
450kV DC, it showed it on the pole.
Inverters, reactors, rectifiers that sort of jazz
I wanted to know, how they re-sync the AC with the grid frequency
@@dansonamission and 1000MW
Great episode. I am doing my PhD on the decarbonisation of the UKs energy industry and the electricity grid is one of the most fascinating complex system I have ever seen - Great content and I hope we can get more of these - especially what is happening at the distribution level and all the challenges from LCTs and the rollout of renewables.
Congratulations and that James is such a charismatic bloke. Just loved it
❤
Yeah, indeed a great episode, and I want to understand how renewable energy affects the grid, as well as the threshold beyond which an oversupply of renewables could compromise grid stability.
So interesting !! More videos of power lines and the grid !!
You'll love episode 2! We dive deeper into the transmission grid and take you into one of our most interesting substations..
@@nationalgriduk Thanks for the response :)
Fabulous. More of this please. I would love to hear lots more detail about all of the grid.
Much much more on the way! Our future episodes will feature the other parts of our Grid, stay tuned!
Really enjoyed this, well done. One concern.. Windows XP on your terminal equipment? 15:07
Nothing wrong with XP - as long as it's not 'online' it'll be fine lol 🤣🤣
You'd be surprised how stable XP is sometime
Came here to say this 😂
as a registered electrician, I loved the episode! cant wait for the second
Still got some lovely old XP machines running the show :)
Greate bro❤
Well worth watching. Looking forward to the next episode 😀
Cant wait to get notifications on future episodes, thanks for sharing...
I just found your channel and am impressed. I live in southeastern USA. In viewing your videos I notice one big difference, that being I see few solar panels. Then it occurred to me, Y'all don't have any sunshine. Here in sunny Dixie many people with roof top solar are interested in adding power onto the grid. My hope is to have a decentralized power grid. What is happening is that the consumer will also become a producer. Thanks. May the Grid be with you.
UK and Netherlands do have a lot of solar. Not as much as as south USA, but increasing. But they have a lot more offshore wind power per citizen.
Yesterday the UK’s electricity production was 29% solar. More than any other source.
@@MaxDigby-q1t
That is great and thank you for the information. However, that is only part of why I made a comment. My feeling about this channel is that it is "Grid" producer oriented. I used the word decentralized to convey a potential trend that balances the power (political) between consumers and producers. Hypotheticality, if every consumer had solar and battery backup this would have a positive impact upon grids.
@@chrisconklin2981 totally agree, I have solar and battery storage as well as a stake in a cooperative solar park and wind farm. I was more just addressing a misconception within the UK population that we don’t have enough sun for solar. Because of our position as a country in the northern hemisphere we have long days in the summer so production can go on for a long time. I’m a great believer as it sounds you are that the more the consumer can produce for themselves the better.
@@MaxDigby-q1t That's great. Just to let you know, I have been helping you Brits out. Every day I wrap up a bundle of sunshine-BTUs, walk down to the Gulf of Mexico and toss the package into the Gulf Stream. The package drifts 6,500 km to end up warming the UK shore.
Very informative, well paced, and entertaining. I am looking forward to the next episode. Well done 👏 ✔️ x
This is Great documentary 😮😊
We're glad you enjoyed, Abdul! Be sure to catch episode 2 which is out now. Episode is on the way soon!
@@nationalgriduk when episode 3 coming out
@@Abdul.M. Good news, it's live now!
@@nationalgriduk thanks 👍🏾
10:47 you missed out the ELEClink cable that goes via the channel tunnel
Hi there, we focused on the National Grid interconnectors in this episode, there are a few more not in our control, a full list can be seen here on OFGEM's website www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy-and-regulatory-programmes/interconnectors
I'm really looking forward to Episode 2.
You're in luck! Keep your eyes peeled next week.. 👀
This is an excellent episode. I would like more technical information and answers: is there just one grid in Europe or are we connecting to each country’s grid? Why are there 2 connectors to France. Why did the Norwegians decide against a second connector. Will you do an episode on the impact of the Danish energy island?
Love it! When’s ep2?
Soon! Keep an eye out on our channel 👀
Our lives are powered by food and water, electricity just makes thing easier.
How do they do the 'burying 1m' bit? It's easy enough dropping the cable off the back of the boat, but trenching it on the muddy seafloor sounds a bit tricky. Maybe if it's just mud all you have to do is vacuum up some silt, or aerate it so the cable sinks in? Or maybe it's just really soft and the cable sinks in anyway under its own weight?
Google subsea cable trenching machine, a bulldozer type machine cuts a trench
The Netherlands building internals and offices are so tidy and nicely set out, designed well. The UK office is a bish bash bosh and slap on some paint - job done
Very interesting, thank you.
The first uk to France was much earlier than the 1980’s ! I was taught about the first one when I was at UNI in 1963. One of the reasons for using dc was the difficulty of synchronising the UK and Mainland Europe.
The main reason is much higher efficiency over long distances removing the synchronisation issues was a side benefit.
@@mfx1 Except the distance to France is only 25 miles so it's not really a very long cable on the scale of things. We have much longer (100km?) AC cable segments on the UK grid. The DC/AC cost crossover used to be a few hundred km, but has come down as converter stations have got much cheaper. So for the early French interconnector the ability to connect unsynchronised grids must have been a significant consideration. I think DC is much better underwater too so that helps justify the converter station cost.
With alternating current in cables you get interaction which reduces efficiency. Keep current flowing in one direction works better.
Years ago when visiting a network control room in West Midlands the network map had a note against a Welsh connection "Beware of 22 deg phase difference", perhaps not exact wording.
Love that they have a Windows XP computer running in the background 😂. Very high tech!!
Their systems might run stably only on XP. Also, it's a pretty solid OS. Still in use all over the world in places where it's needed because of the programmes running on it.
I'm in the same situation, you don't want to run a mission critical program(not software) on a machine that stops because it doesn't have the latest doodas en gegaws.
I know Windows inside and out, I have several MS certifications. While XP was a great OS for its time a lot has changed since the days of WinXP. Other than a few very specific situations, I would never run windows XP unless it was isolated from the Internet and even then there’s several reasons not to use it. If you truly must run a very old application, that what Compatibility Mode was designed for.
@@Jonathan_O Compatibility mode has its own issues and isn't as stable as running on the original OE. And, if your machine(s) are isolated then it doens't matter quite so much.
Wow that's superb! Very informative, very well produced, and very knowledgeable people 👍
We're glad you enjoyed it, Peter! Check out episode 2 if you haven't already, we've got another 2 episodes on the way soon!
I've been inside (as a visitor) such converter stations for project Nemo link. Banks of semiconductors sure are different from a "plain" transformer.
I do wonder why they're using paper/lead insulated cable instead of materials such as XLPE.
4:28 - National Grid does NOT own the transmission network across the entire country (UK). The transmission networks in Scotland are owned primarily by ScottishPower and SSE. NG is the national _operator_ of the transmission networks across the UK but liaise with control rooms in Scotland.
Fantastic, but please don't dumb it down so much! it's not kids' TV.
I agree with you in that but there is loads of people who wouldn’t understand it
If you want a detailed description, you probably understand enough to do your own research
pp
Grace’s Amazing Machines on CBEEBIES would give a more technical view than this dumbed down effort.
٧٦٧جج😊كاد 😊@@johnwindess1641
19:35 well done, we have people using a computer for personal matters that is also connected to our national power networking.
Quite amazing really.
Gaz UK
Why is DC used within the cable running between the countries? Aren't there losses in the rectification/inversion process?
Because it’s too hard to synchronise the AC between two separate countries
@@extrude22 not true, uk and entire Europe synchronized, an incredible feat
AC passes thru zero at 100hz there in lay the losses
I worked on the construction of the isle of grain CNG mentioned on here.
12:49 - "What would happen if I went in there?" (viewers think- please go in there!)
Matte Hinde fails to mention the two interconnections between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and between Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. He also doesn't mention there are in fact 3 ICs between the UK and France with the third one going via the Channel Tunnel. Or come to that the interconnecter between GB and the Shetlands.
Hey Graham, correct, we only mentioned National Grid interconnectors in this episode. A full list of interconnectors can be seen on OFGEM's website: www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy-and-regulatory-programmes/interconnectors
Interesting how this works. also: it's 2011, Windows XP is already 10 years old, yet someone thought. yeahh let's use Windows XP on our brand new installation,and continue to use it 10 years+ after support has ended. unless of course they had already installed in 2007. you would not want to use vista in 2007 for anything critical.
Not connected to “dirty” internet. Only connected to internal “internet”
@@abusasha478 you could see the XP machines had internet access..
I'v seen factories still running 1990 computer and floppy disk. If it ain't broke don't fix it
And of course the SCADA controls run on windows XP... Hopefully they will not be connected to the internet by mistake 😅
An increasing amount of grid SCADA infrastructure in the UK is addressable using TCP/IP and so it does kinda use the internet. Just how secure it is remains to be seen!
With its own fibre in the cable there is no reason to use and risk the web. It’s just that new it engineers have been web conditioned.
@@screwdriver5181 not all transmission and (especially) distribution level assets have integral fibre or auxiliary fibre cables installed, so there will be reliance on shared comms networks to an extent.
@@protectiongeek Use an APN, created by your service provider, if you want to connect remotely.
Don't sweat about the XP computers. It is a very,very stable rock solid OS in use for decades. All the OS bugs were killed off many years ago. It runs on cool slow machines that run 24 /7 /365 without a hitch. This is industrial control software connected to actual machines no need for speed.
Yes they were using the same XP windows computers in a GE Gas power turbine power plant I did some work on a few years ago. They have two of each PC circa 2002 to allow for redundancy and maintenance. I was there to replace the SCSI hard drives as part of the maintenance schedule.
Yep. Nuclear-armed submarines still run on it.
Its "an" interconnector, because there are many connections to many countries.
25:15. A fine example of motor-normativity: 'London is an hour and half in that direction'. Presumably he means 'by car'. Distance would be a lot more useful. One might wish to travel in some other way, or indeed just have distance given in distance units.
Usually it’s only Americans doing this.
Very interesting. As a retired DNO worker I'm looking forward to a section on distribution. Oh, and lose the 'Kid's TV' presenter 😉
The presenter should stick to Blue Peter. Interesting content from the professionals.
Agreed.
Its a bit of a concern that our end is on an island, when sea levels are set to rise! ooops.
I just wish that National Grid would admit that these set-ups are more about making money and not fixing gaps in supply.
25:22 ridiculous things in that man's ears.
Make it less like kis's TV and more like a boring ASMR documentary from before TV became over commercialised in the 90a
اهلا ❤
😊. 👍. ❤ F R O M T A X I L A . 🇵🇰
Please use real terms, an hour and a half that way is nothing in terms of an answer! Is that skipping, helicopters or cycling? Same goes for 1 thousand kWh, isnt that a mega watt? I dont advertise £1 as 100 pennies so don’t do it with measurements! Dont get me started on soccer pitches or Olympic swimming pools, not seen either but educated in acres and square miles lol
And now we can no longer afford to use electricity for industry we have outsourced a massive amount of production to China and India who are polluting the world with no emissions regulation whatsoever. Lost count how many new coal fired power stations China and India have built in the last couple of years, but it exeeds the number we had in total in Uk a few years ago. Where has it all gone so wrong ?
Good, but he says "wow" too much.
It's a very interesting topic but I'm a bit mystified why you'd use a "children's TV" style presenter to ask the questions. I'll admit it annoyed me. Can anyone recommend a good video (or a book or site) explaining more fully how the grid works, balancing of power, grid batteries, LCOE, efficiencies, energy trading etc?
Fire the presenter and make it a more serious look at a complex situation
Get rid of that presenter and bring in Guy
I could have done without the giddy presenter.
😢
😢