Should The Great Northern And Great Eastern Joint Line Be Electrified?
The Great Northern And Great Eastern Joint Line was created in the Nineteenth Century by the Great Northern Railway and the Great Eastern Railway.
- The main purpose was to move freight like coal, agricultural products and manufactured goods between Yorkshire and Eastern England.
- It originally ran between Doncaster and Huntington via Gainsborough, Lincoln, Sleaford, Spalding and March.
- It had a full length of almost 123 miles.
- There was a large marshalling yard at Whitemoor near March.
Over the years the line has been pruned a bit and now effectively runs between Doncaster and Peterborough.
- Trains between Lincoln and March are now routed via Peterborough.
- It carries upwards of twenty freight trains per day in both directions through Lincoln Central station.
- Many of the freight trains are going to and from the East Coast ports.
- The distance between Doncaster and Peterborough is 93.7 miles, as opposed to the 79.6 miles on the East Coast Main Line.
- The line is not electrified, but it connects to the electrified East Coast Main Line at both ends.
There have been some important developments in recent years.
2015 Freight Upgrade
Wikipedia says this about the major 2015 freight upgrade.
In 2015 a £280 million upgrade of the Joint Line by Network Rail was substantially complete, enabling two freight trains per hour to be diverted from the congested East Coast Main Line; gauge enhancements to enable the passage of 9 ft 6 in (2.90 m) containers were included in the work.
The Sleaford avoiding line had been substantially downgraded since the 1980s and was reinstated to double track as part of the 2015 scheme. Resignalling and modernisation of level crossings was included.
This means that freight trains have an alternative route, that avoids the East Coast Main Line.
Doncaster iPort
Over the last few years the Doncaster iPort has been developed, which is an intermodal rail terminal.
- It has a size of around 800 acres.
- The site opened in early 2018.
- There is a daily train to the Port of Southampton and two daily trains to both Teesport and Felixstowe.
- The Felixstowe trains would appear to use the Joint Line.
I feel that as the site develops, the Doncaster iPort will generate more traffic on the Joint Line.
This Google Map shows the Doncaster iPort.
There would appear to be plenty of space for expansion.
The Werrington Dive Under
The Werrington Dive Under has been built at a cost of £ 200 million, to remove a bottleneck at the Southern end of the Joint Line, where it connects to the East Coast Main Line.
The Werrington Dive Under was built, so that it could be electrified in the future.
LNER To Lincolnshire
LNER appear to have made a success of a one train per two hours (tp2h) service between London King’s Cross and Lincoln station.
- LNER have stated, that they want to serve Grimsby and Cleethorpes in the North of the county.
- North Lincolnshire is becoming important in supporting the wind energy industry in the North Sea.
- Lincoln is becoming an important university city.
- Several towns in Lincolnshire probably need a service to Peterborough and London.
- In 2019, the Port of Grimsby & Immingham was the largest port in the United Kingdom by tonnage.
I can see an expanded Lincolnshire service from LNER.
Full Digital Signalling Of The East Coast Main Line To The South Of Doncaster
This is happening now and it will have a collateral benefits for the Joint Line.
Most passenger and freight trains will also use the East Coast Main Line, if only for a few miles, which will mean they will need to be fitted for the digital signalling.
This could mean that extending full digital signalling to Lincolnshire will not be a challenging project.
Arguments For Electrification
These are possible arguments for electrification.
Electric Freight Trains To And From The North
It would be another stretch of line, that could accommodate electric freight trains.
An Electrified Diversion Route For East Coast Main Line Expresses
Currently, when there is engineering blockades between Doncaster and Peterborough on the East Coast Main Line, the Hitachi Class 800 and Class 802 trains of Hull Trains and LNER are able to divert using their diesel power.
But the electric trains of LNER and Lumo have to be cancelled.
An electrified diversion route would be welcomed by passengers and train companies.
It would also mean that any trains running from King’s Cross to electrified destinations would not to have any diesel engines.
An Electrified Spine Through Lincolnshire
If there was an electrified spine between Doncaster and Peterborough via Gainsborough, Lincoln, Sleaford and Spalding, these stations would be these distances from the spine.
- Boston – 16.8 miles
- Cleethorpes – 47.2 miles
- Grimsby Town – 43.9 miles
- Market Rasen – 14.8 miles
- Skegness – 40.7 miles
Note.
- These distances are all possible with battery-electric trains.
- Charging would be on the electrified spine and at Skegness and Cleethorpes stations.
All of South Lincolnshire and services to Doncaster would use electric trains.
London Services
London services would be via Spalding and join the East Coast Main Line at Werrington.
- Boston and Skegness would be served from Sleaford, where the train would reverse.
- Market Rasen, Grimsby Town and Cleethorpes would be served from Lincoln, where the train would reverse.
This would enable Cleethorpes and Skegness to have at least four trains per day to and from London King’s Cross.
North Lincolnshire Services
There are two train services in North Lincolnshire.
Cleethorpes and Barton-on-Humber.
Cleethorpes and Manchester Airport via Grimsby Town, Scunthorpe, Doncaster, Sheffield and Manchester Piccadilly.
Note.
- Cleethorpes would need to have a charger or a few miles of electrification, to charge a train from London.
- Doncaster, which is fully electrified is 52.1 miles from Cleethorpes.
- Barton-on-Humber is 22.8 miles from Cleethorpes.
Battery-electric trains should be able to handle both services.
Arguments Against Electrification
The only possible arguments against electrification are the disruption that the installation might cause and the unsightly nature of overhead gantries.
Conclusion
The Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint Line should be electrified.
National Grid ESO And Reactive Technologies Launch Flagship Inertia System To Measure Grid Stability
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on Current News.
The first three paragraphs explain the project.
National Grid ESO and Reactive Technologies’ flagship grid stability measurement service has launched today, following the construction of the world’s largest continuously operating grid-scale ultracapacitor.
Using Reactive’s GridMetrix technology, the new services will provide instantaneous data to the grid operator, allowing for more efficient management than relying on estimates.
The ultracapacitor – constructed by Spanish technology group Ingeteam – sends pulses through the grid, which act like underwater sound waves used in sonar. These pulses will enable the ESO to measure power system stability.
As a Control and Electrical Engineer, I can just about get my brain around what is happening, but I do feel the explanation could be better.
- There is no mention of the size of the capacitor.
- Capacitors are often used to calm voltages in electrical circuits.
- How does the capacitor send pulses through the grid? It must be some other piece of kit linked to the capacitor.
In the end though, I don’t care, if it works.
A Brief History Of Scottish Hydropower
The title of this post, is the same as that of this page on the Drax Group web site.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Over the last century, Scottish hydro power has played a major part in the country’s energy make up. While today it might trail behind wind, solar and biomass as a source of renewable electricity in Great Britain, it played a vital role in connecting vast swathes of rural Scotland to the power grid – some of which had no electricity as late as the 1960s. And all by making use of two plentiful Scottish resources: water and mountains.
These are some points from the page.
- The first scheme was built in the last years of the nineteenth century and provided power for aluminium smelting.
- The first modern scheme was the Lanark Hydro Electric Scheme, which was built in the 1920s and is still running today, under the ownership of Drax Group.
- In 1935, the Galloway scheme, set the tone for later projects with architecture including stylised dams and modernist turbine halls.
- The North of Scotland Hydroelectric Board was founded in 1943.
- Sloy, the largest conventional hydro-electric station opened in 1950 and has a capacity of 152.5 MW.
- Building the dams and power stations appears to have been hard but well-paid work.
- By the mid Sixties, the North of Scotland Hydroelectric Board had built 54 main power stations and 78 dams. Northern Scotland was now 90% connected to the national grid.
- In 1965, the world’s then largest reversible pumped storage power station opened at Cruachan.
- In 2009, the last major scheme at Glendoe opened.
The schemes are a working catalogue of everything you can do with water to generate and store electricity.
Future development now seems to be moving in two directions.
The Drax page says this about new hydro-electric schemes.
In recent years, however, the real growth has been in smaller hydro-electric schemes that may power just one or a handful of properties – with more than 100 MW of such generation capacity installed in the Highlands since 2006.
On the other hand, several large pumped storage schemes are under development.
- Balliemeanoch – 1.5 GW/45 GWh
- Coire Glas – 1.5 GW/30 GWh
- Corrievarkie – 600 MW/14.5 GWh
- Red John – 450 MW/2.8 GWh
Note.
These schemes add up to an output of just over 4 GW and a colossal 92.3 GWh of storage.
The existing Foyers scheme and the under-development Coire Glas and Red John schemes. all use Loch Ness as the lower reservoir.
Two of these under-development schemes will be larger than the current largest pumped storage system in the world; Bath County Pumped Storage Station in Virginia in the United States, which is a 3 GW/24 GWh system.
Conclusion
Adding large numbers of wind turbines and tens of GWs to Scotland’s existing pumped storage could transform not just Scotland’s but most of Western Europe’s green energy production.
STEAG Advances Plans For 55MW Norfolk Solar Plant With Battery Storage
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Business Green.
It is very much a standard solar farm with a battery and provided everything is installed properly, there shouldn’t be to much adverse effects on wildlife and especially, East Anglia’s magnificent hares.
This article on the Solar Power Portal is entitled Solar Farms and Biodiversity.
This is a paragraph.
The point is that all sorts of wildlife move onto solar sites, from hares and hedgehogs, buzzards and butterflies, grasshoppers and beetles; other protected species such as Hazel Dormouse – all continue their ways along the hedgerows uninterrupted.
Hopefully, if the rules are followed at King’s Lynn, the hares will thrive.
New Electricity ‘Superhighways’ Needed To Cope With Surge In Wind Power
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the Telegraph.
This is the first two paragraphs.
Energy companies are pushing for the rapid approval of new electricity “superhighways” between Scotland and England amid fears that a lack of capacity will set back the country’s wind power revolution.
Businesses including SSE and Scottish Power are calling on the industry regulator Ofgem to approve a series of major new north-south power cables in a bid to ease congestion on the existing electricity network.
These points are mentioned in the article.
- Current capacity is 6 GW, which even now is not enough.
- Another 17 GW of capacity will be needed by 2033.
- Wind farms in Scotland have been switched off and replaced by gas-fired power stations because of a lack of grid capacity.
- Another 25 GW of wind farms could be built after leases were awarded last month.
Two North-South interconnectors are being planned.
Peterhead And Drax
This is being proposed by SSE and National Grid.
- It will be an undersea cable.
- It will be two cables, each with a capacity of 2 GW.
- Peterhead and Drax power station are four hundred miles apart by road and 279 miles as the seagull flies, as a lot of the route would be over the sea. So an undersea connection would appear to be sensible.
- Peterhead is on the coast, so connecting an undersea interconnector shouldn’t be too challenging or disruptive to the locals.
- Drax power station is a 4 GW power station and the largest in the UK, so it must have good grid connections.
This Google Map shows the location of Drax power station in relation to Hull, Scunthorpe and the rivers in the area.
Note.
- Drax is marked by the red arrow in the West of the map.
- The large body of water in the East is the Humber Estuary.
- Hull is on the North Bank of the Humber.
- Scunthorpe, which is famous for its steel industry is South of the Humber in the middle of the map.
- To the West of Scunthorpe the Humber splits into the Trent and the Ouse.
- The Ouse leads all the way to Drax power station.
I suspect an undersea cable could go up the Humber and Ouse to Drax power station.
Is it a coincidence that both Drax power station and the proposed link to Peterhead are both around 4 GW?
Consider.
- Drax is a biomass power station, so it is not a zero carbon power station.
- Drax produces around six percent of the UK’s electricity.
- Most of the biomass comes by ship from North America.
- Protest groups regularly have protests at Drax because of its carbon emissions.
- Drax Group are experimenting with carbon capture.
- Drax is a big site and a large energy storage system could be built there.
- Wind is often criticised by opponents, saying wind is useless when the wind doesn’t blow.
- The Scots would be unlikely to send power to England, if they were short.
This is also said about Drax in Wikipedia.
Despite this intent for baseload operation, it was designed with a reasonable ability for load-following, being able to ramp up or down by 5% of full power per minute within the range of 50–100% of full power.
I take this it means it can be used to top up electricity generation to meet demand. Add in energy storage and it could be a superb load-follower.
So could the similar size of the interconnector and Drax power station be deliberate to guarantee England a 4 GW feed at all states of the wind?
I don’t think it is a coincidence.
Torness And Hawthorn Pit And Torness and South Humberside
These two cables are being proposed by Scottish Power.
- Each will be two GW.
- Torness is the site of the 1.36 GW Torness nuclear power station, which is likely to be decommissioned before 2030.
- Torness will have good grid connections and it is close to the sea.
- Hawthorn Pit is a large closed coal mine to the North of Newcastle, with a large substation close to the site. I suspect it will be an ideal place to feed power into the grid for Newcastle and it is close to the sea.
- Just South of Hawthorn Pit are the 1.32 GW Hartlepool nuclear power station, which will be decommissioned in 2024 and the landfall of the cables to the massive Dogger Bank wind farm.
- As I showed earlier with Drax, the Humber would be an ideal estuary to bring underwater power cables into the surrounding area. So perhaps the cable will go to Scunthorpe for the steelworks.
- As at Drax, there is backup in South Humberside, but here it is from the two Keadby gas-fired power stations.
The article in the Telegraph only gives the briefest of details of Scottish Power’s plans, but I suspect, that given the locations of the ends of the interconnectors, I suspect the cables will be underwater.
Conclusion
It strikes me that all three interconnectors have been well thought thought and they serve a variety of objectives.
- Bring Scottish wind power, South to England.
- Connect wind farms to the two nuclear power station sites at Hartlepool and Torness, that will close at the end of the decade.
- Allow the big 4 GW biomass-fired station at Drax to back up wind farms and step in when needed.
- Cut carbon emissions at Drax.
- Use underwater cables as much as possible to transfer the power, to avoid the disruption of digging in underground cables.
It looks to be a good plan.
New Catalyst Extracts Hydrogen From Hydrogen Storage Materials More Efficiently
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Tech Explorist.
These are the first two paragraphs.
Hydrogen storage is a crucial enabling technology for advancing hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. One of the ways to store hydrogen is chemically. Chemical storage allows large amounts of hydrogen stored in small volumes at ambient temperatures.
However, for the hydrogen to be useful, catalysts are needed to activate LOHCs and release the hydrogen. This process is called dehydrogenation.
LOHCs are Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers.
The article describes how scientists at the Ames Laboratory have developed a new catalyst that doesn’t use metals or additives, that works at mild temperatures and under normal atmospheric conditions.
It does seem to me that LOHCs have a future, but given the sparseness of the Wikipedia entry, their widespread use may be some years away.
Norfolk Vanguard Offshore Wind Farm Re-approved By Government
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
These are the two introductory paragraphs.
An offshore wind farm capable of generating electricity for nearly two million homes has been re-approved by government after consent was previously overturned by a High Court judge.
Vattenfall’s 1.8-gigawatt Norfolk Vanguard project had been granted consent by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
Note.
- Norfolk Boreas and Norfolk Vanguard are a pair of 1.8 GW offshore wind farms to be developed 72 and 47 kilometres off the Norfolk coast by Swedish company; Vattenfall.
- Hinckley Point C will have a capacity of 3.25 GW.
This map shows the two fields in relation to the coast.
Note.
- The purple line appears to be the UK’s ten mile limit.
- Norfolk Boreas is outlined in blue.
- Norfolk Vsnguard is outlined in orange.
- Cables will be run in the grey areas.
This second map shows the onshore cable.
Note.
- The cables are planned to come ashore between Happisburgh and Eccles-on-Sea.
- Bacton is only a short distance up the coast.
- The onshore cable is planned to go from here across Norfolk to the Necton substation.
But the planning permission was overturned by a legal ruling.
This article on the BBC is entitled Norfolk Vanguard: Ministers Wrong Over Wind Farm Go-Ahead, Says Judge.
These are the first four paragraphs.
A High Court judge has quashed permission for one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms to be built off the east coast of England.
The Norfolk Vanguard Offshore Wind Farm was granted development consent in July by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
But Mr Justice Holgate overturned the decision following legal action from a man living near a planned cable route.
A Department for BEIS spokeswoman said it was “disappointed by the outcome”.
This is a paragraph in today’s BBC article.
Kwasi Kwarteng, Secretary of State at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, granted development consent for the wind farm, having re-determined the application.
So will we be back to the Law Courts?
In Is There A Need For A Norfolk-Suffolk Interconnector?, I said this.
But seriously, is it a good idea to dig an underground cable all the way across Norfolk or in these times build a massive overhead cable either?
Perhaps the solution is to connect the Norfolk Boreas And Norfolk Vanguard wind farms to a giant electrolyser at Bacton, which creates hydrogen.
- The underground electricity cable across Norfolk would not be needed.
- Bacton gas terminal is only a few miles up the coast from the cable’s landfall.
- The UK gets another supply of gas.
- The hydrogen is blended with natural gas for consumption in the UK or Europe.
- A pure hydrogen feed can be used to supply hydrogen buses, trucks and other vehicles, either by tanker or pipeline.
- Excess hydrogen could be stored in depleted gas fields.
Thye main benefit though, would be that it would transform Bacton gas terminal from a declining asset into Norfolk’s Hydrogen Powerhouse.
For more information on blending hydrogen into our natural gas supply see HyDeploy.
Glendoe Hydro Power Station
When I think of hydro-electric power stations in the UK, I generally, think that most of the hydro-electric power stations were built years ago by organisations like the North of Scotland Hydroelectric Board. These power stations were one of the staples of the Meccano Magazine, of which I was a long-term subscriber in the 1950s.
But Glendoe hydro-electric power station is relatively new having been opened in 2009. At only 100 MW, the power-station may not be large in comparison to others around the world, but it does show what can be built in the Highlands of Scotland.
This Google Map shows the layout of the power station.
Note.
- The red arrow indicates the location of Glencoe power station, which is underground.
- To the North of the power station, is the Southern end of Loch Ness.
- In the South-Eastern corner of the map there is the lake from which the power station draws its water.
- The dam is at the Western end of the lake.
According to this article on Power Technology, the project cost £160 million.
This extract from a page on the SSE Renewables web site, describes the layout of the tunnels and the operation of the power station.
Engineers began planning the Glendoe project as far back as October 2001. Formal construction work at the site started over four years later, in January 2006. It involved constructing a 960 metre-wide dam on the River Tarff to create a new reservoir some 600 metres above the power station, giving it the greatest head of any hydro electric power station in the UK.
An 8.6 kilometre tunnel connects the reservoir to the power station that is built 250 metres below ground level, about two kilometres from the banks of Loch Ness. Although some of the tunnel was created using traditional drill and blast techniques that would have been familiar to the Tunnel Tigers of the last century, much of its length was bored out using a massive tunnelling machine named Eliza Jane by local schoolchildren.
The SSE page also describes the working and living conditions of those who built the scheme.
Most lived in specially constructed camps high in the hills above Loch Ness, braving brutal weather conditions in winter, and the fearsome Scottish midges in the summer.
The SSE page also gives the main use of the power station.
Today, the main operating feature of Glendoe is its ability to react quickly to changing demand for electricity, being able to reach full output in just 90 seconds.
So when there is an important football or rugby match on the television, it is ideal to supply the surge of electricity, when everybody puts on the kettle at half time.
Could This Power Station Have A Pumped Storage System Added?
Consider.
- There is a large lake six hundred metres above the power station.
- Loch Ness is a large source of water at the bottom of the mountain.
- Every tonne or cubic metre of water pumped into the upper lake would store 1.63 kWh of electricity.
- The world’s and the UK’s tunneling engineers are getting better and more ambitious.
- When this power station was built in the early years of this century, there wasn’t the large amount of wind turbines in Scotland, that there are now.
I suspect, it’s an idea that’s been looked at, but the costs or the distance to pump the water might kill it.
If a second project was the same size as the first, it would cost £210 million based on inflation.
But.
- It wouldn’t need another dam or a substation to connect to the National Grid.
- There would probably be a need for extra excavation at the power station to put in the pumps.
- I suspect it would need an extra tunnel to get the water uphill.
- One tunneling engineer told me, as with sex, digging a second tunnel is easier.
The main benefit, would be that it would be hidden infrastructure.
As to the energy storage capacity, I estimate from maps that the top reservoir at Glendoe is about half the size of Loch Mohr at Foyers power station, but the head is 600 metres as against 197 metres. As Foyers can store 10 GWh, it looks to me, that Glendoe could store around 15 GWh.
Also, as Glendoe power station was designed and built after the successful conversion of Foyers to a pumped storage station, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Glendoe was designed, so that the station could be converted to pumped storage at a later date.
Conclusion
This scheme will be seriously looked at for extension with a pumped storage facility.
National Grid Bets On Surge Pricing And Electric Cars To Avoid Another Energy Crisis
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on the Telegraph.
These are the first few paragraphs.
With wind supplies forecast to be low and other energy sources offline, a power crunch was looming by teatime the next day.
A call for help went out on a Tuesday afternoon and at 4.30pm on the Wednesday, electric car drivers plugged in special chargers to export power from their car batteries back to the grid, as part of a trial run by Ovo Energy.
Their efforts in November 2020 may have amounted to only a tiny portion of the power needed on that day, but it was a taste of things to come.
Cars and other devices will be both a source of electricity demand and a helpful tool to keep the lights on as the UK tries to build a much greener energy system at the least expense.
It is as the article says the shape of things to come.
I also believe that long-term car parking at places like airports will become storage batteries in the future. You will tell your car, when you will be returning and it will be fully charged to drive home, when you arrive. If you are running late, you would probably use an app to tell your car the new arrival time.
These developments will all be part of the Internet of Power.
The Anonymous Widower 