Energy Bang Goes the Theory

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The research is getting us the answers.

For the next eight weeks, we'll be bringing you

the science behind the headlines.

This week, Energy.

Every time we switch on a kettle or turn on the heating,

we expect our electricity supply to work.

We take it for granted that it will light our houses, cook our food,

run our businesses and keep us alive.

But in our lifetimes, this electricity supply is set to collapse

and we are rapidly heading towards a power crisis.

The nightmare scenario is that if our demand for electricity

can no longer be met by our ability to supply it,

then the lights go out.

Tonight, Bang Goes The Theory investigates this very real problem.

I'm at our National Grid to see for myself how they currently

cope with the dwindling supply and our ever-growing daily demands.

'I'm searching for new ideas to help us

'get out of this looming crisis, by cutting down our needs.'

If you added 400 buildings, each turning off their air

conditioning for an hour, that would equate

to taking a small power station off the Grid.

And by finding new, green solutions.

Look at that!

One of the most exciting ideas is to use stuff

that literally surrounds us.

Because if we don't get all of this right,

and fast, it could be catastrophic.

# Wake up, it's a beautiful morning

# Feel the sun shining for your eyes... #

Dawn breaks and Britain gets going.

Breakfast time means the toaster's on, kettle's boiling

and showers are pumping out hot water. All using electricity.

'And all the electricity in the country is controlled here,

'by this team of 25 people.

'This is the National Grid.'

This is one of the most secret locations in the UK.

National Grid's control centre.

Up there on that board, you've got every single power

station in the country and the demand at this precise moment.

'Over 300 power stations

'across the country turn coal, gas, nuclear and wind

'into precious electricity.

'And it's the job of these guys to send

'that electricity from where it's made to where we need it.

'Down thousands of miles

'of high voltage cable across the country, directly our homes.'

Hello?

'And on this particular cold winter morning, the demand for

'electricity is skyrocketing, nearly doubling in just 90 minutes.

'In charge of the Grid this morning is Rachel Morfill.'

It's now 6:20 in the morning

and we're coming into this big power increase. What are you calling on?

Which stations are you bringing online?

What we have is we've got a whole variety of power stations.

Today, here we've got

Ironbridge power station will be coming on fairly soon.

West Burton there.

We will just look at how much we need

and make sure that's planned in.

In winter, Britain uses on average

50GW of electricity, that's 50 billion watts.

The Grid meets the demand using -

7GW from nine nuclear power stations.

Coal power stations generate about 25GW.

Gas power stations make a little more.

And renewables, including wind, provide around 10GW.

Another 6GW comes from abroad or other sources.

At the moment, the Grid has more than enough power to supply

all our needs, but over the next ten or 20 years,

that will change.

Government have set ambitious carbon reduction targets -

at least 34% less carbon emissions by 2020.

To hit that target, we have to close almost

all our coal power stations.

And as our nuclear stations reach

the end of their lives, almost all will need to be switched off too.

So, within ten years,

Rachel and the team at the Grid might not have enough

electricity to meet all our needs.

And that could be catastrophic.

'Day-to-day, to make there is no disruption,

'Rachel and her team make a detailed energy plan, estimating

'the amount of power they think the nation will need, minute-by-minute.'

We've got years' worth of demand data and we'll use that then

to build up what we think we're going to get today,

looking at things like the weather, time of day,

what day of the year it is, and make our forecast.

'And as the morning progresses

'and we as a nation settle down to work,

'the Grid's predictions help her manage any change in demand.'

It's 11:20 and, if you take a look over here,

the graph has really levelled off.

Yes. During the morning into early evening, it does have quite

a flat shape there, because people are now doing things consistently.

People are sat at their offices, working.

They're not changing their uses of electricity.

So, we tend to get a flatter profile.

'This morning, the plateau is at about 45GW.

'And this is mainly supplied by three key types of power station.'

In terms of managing that power demand, what do you use?

We've got a lot of our steady, reliable generators on.

We've got a lot of gas, coal on,

and the nuclear that sits there as a base load.

'And this is the heart of our looming energy problem.

'Our base load is currently supplied by power stations that are closing.'

So, why are we turning off our precious power stations?

Coal currently forms the backbone of our supply,

providing the largest single power contribution.

But coal is very dirty, with one of

the largest carbon footprints of any fuel.

So, to meet our 2020 carbon reduction targets,

six major coal power stations are closing.

The demise of those dirty old coal power stations means that

over the next few years, we've got to find

30-40% of our electricity from somewhere else.

There are other options, one of which, like it or not, is nuclear.

The UK nuclear industry currently produces just over 7GW

of electricity, between 10-20% of our needs.

Once they're built, nuclear produces almost no carbon emissions at all.

But there are other concerns.

Critics question nuclear's safety

and the wisdom of storing radioactive waste indefinitely.

But it's their efficiency that makes them so attractive.

The key advantage of nuclear is its high energy density.

It might sound remarkable, but my entire energy needs

for a lifetime can be met by a piece of nuclear fuel the size of an egg.

And if you were to compare that to coal, you'd be

talking about 320,000 tonnes, the size of a five-storey building.

'But however effective they are, the truth is that eight

'of our nine nuclear power stations are reaching the end of their lives

'and will close in the next ten years.

'Last year the Government gave the go-ahead to build a new nuclear

'power station at Hinckley in Somerset,

'and has pledged to build more, producing 16GW.

'But the reality is that none of them will produce any

'electricity for another 10 or 20 years, at the very earliest.

'So, whatever you feel about nuclear,

'it certainly isn't going to fill the energy deficit any time soon.

'So, what about gas?'

When it comes to flexibility, gas is incredibly useful.

Power from gas can be turned up or down within seconds,

and the stations themselves are relatively fast to build.

So, gas is a cornerstone of the Grid.

If you've ever cooked with gas, you'll know just how responsive

it is to control, and it's much the same for a gas power station.

'This tiny little jet engine was made to power a model aeroplane,

'but I've tweaked it to work as a mini power station.'

The only thing we've added is this extra turbine blade here

in the exhaust connected to a little generator for creating electricity.

If I fire this thing up...

ENGINE ROARS INTO LIFE

Now we should get to see

the tremendous advantage of gas turbine technology.

Unlike coal and nuclear, the power here can be ramped up...

..and down almost instantly.

So, if the Grid calls on gas to

generate electricity, they can very accurately match demand with supply.

Here's a simple little version I've built here.

What's at the front of the gas turbine is a compressor.

The job of the compressor is to suck air into here, the combustion chamber.

There, highly flammable gas is injected in.

I'm using propane.

This goes in in scientifically measured quantities.

Then the gas-air mixture is ignited.

I'll wear goggles for this stage.

Excellent. Now, once that mixture is ignited it heats up and expands rapidly.

The expansion drives through this turbine at the back.

That's then rapidly rotated, that turns a little generator

which produces electricity for our towns and cities.

So all it takes to produce more electricity is more gas.

Which can be done with the twiddle of a knob. Even on an industrial scale.

This is one of the largest gas powered power stations in the country, Didcot B.

So in here is the gas turbine.

At the click of a mouse this turbine can produce over a gigawatt

of electricity - enough to supply a town about size of Birmingham.

Which means the National Grid is constantly in contact with the Didcot B

control room, fine tuning their supply to match the Grid's needs.

-What are they saying to you now?

-That's another load instruction just arriving.

So what's happening now?

The National Grid is asking us to change load again.

They want us to go to 600 MW from 655MW.

Does it sometimes get stressful to stay on target

so you're not wasting energy?

You've seen how easy it is to change load,

it's as easy as clicking buttons.

Gas seems like an excellent source of electricity,

but there is a problem. So far we've had it easy.

For over 40 years, gas has generated up to a third of all our electricity

because it's been readily available from the North Sea.

But it's running out, some suggest we only have 15% left.

So now we have to buy our gas from the open market.

Increasingly from Russia and the Middle East.

Transporting it thousands of miles, adds cost, makes supply insecure and

of course is liable to the ups and downs of a jumpy financial market.

Meanwhile, scientists are looking into another untapped source

closer to home.

We've all seen the headlines in the news about fracking,

using high pressure water to shatter the shale in the ground and releasing trapped shale gas.

But critics argue fracking has profound environmental consequences,

and many people just don't want it in their back yard.

Plus, scrambling for a fossil fuel with a high carbon footprint

until it all runs out is not going to solve our sustainable energy problems.

So what should we do?

Coal is cheap but dirty.

Gas is flexible but insecure,

and it also has a carbon footprint.

And nuclear, well, that could take a generation to get online, if we decide to go for it.

So what about renewables?

Could they meet the shortfall?

The government is hoping that by 2020, 15% of all our electricity will come from renewables.

They've invested in solar, tidal, and, most significantly for a

country perched on the edge of a blustery Atlantic Ocean, wind power.

But can wind deliver the kind of power we need to keep our lights on?

We're on our way to Thanet Offshore Wind Farm.

It's about 11km off Foreness Point in Kent.

It's made up of 100 wind turbines.

Oh! Oh, I got soaked!

I know this is good for the turbines but it's not so good for me.

When you get up this close to 100 wind turbines

each towering over 80 metres above the surface of the sea,

they really are quite spectacular.

Across the UK from Scotland to the English Channel, we have over 5,000

wind turbines feeding the Grid, capable, on a windy day, of producing over 10GW of power.

We're up to 28 knots today, that means these

turbines will be operating at full output, which is 300MW which is

enough to power a city the size of Sheffield.

It's a really really fantastic day for wind.

It does sound like a win-win situation but wind is not

constant, so how do we manage that inconsistency in power production?

The more spread out you can have the wind farms the greater the chance

that some will be blowing somewhere across Europe so the more you can link the better.

I've got a map over here if you want to have a look.

As well as our turbines there are tens of thousands

in Europe, in countries like Spain, German and Denmark.

In Denmark there is a lot of turbines and it can produce

more electricity from wind than the country actually needs.

In which case it just exports its power to the surrounding markets.

With a strong wind, Europe's turbines have the capacity to produce over 100

gigawatts of power, twice what the entire UK needs!

So linking all the European turbines would make a real difference.

So the more interconnections we have the more

we can then transport that power to the countries that need it.

But even so, a European wide wind network is still vulnerable

to totally windless days.

To give you an idea of this intermittency problem take a look at my graph.

This is the power produced by al the 5,000 turbines

scattered across the UK during December last year

when it was very windy.

Looking at the spikes a huge

amount of power was generated, but often, when we least needed it.

Now of course connecting to Europe will help a lot but

there is another potential solution. What if we could store the energy

produced on really windy days like this one and use it on less windy days?

Some experts suggest that with massive storage, an expanded network

of wind turbines it could easily delivery 10GW of consistent power.

So, how far are we from getting storage on that kind of scale?

Nowadays storing small amounts of electrical power is fairly easy.

We use batteries.

You pop them in the appliance you're interested in and fire it up and away you go.

But to store the vast quantities of energy

required to smooth out the fluctuations in wind power

would require not just millions but countless billions of batteries like this.

So it's still a problem awaiting just the right solution.

And for me one of the most exciting ideas being worked on at the moment is to

use stuff that literally surrounds us.

This is Highview Power's pilot Liquid Air Energy Storage plant in Slough.

When electricity demand is low - like at night -

it uses spare power to cool air into a liquid.

This is stored until the Grid needs some help.

Then it uses the liquid air to generate electricity. But how?

Inside this insulated container at about minus 200 degrees we've got what is essentially liquid air.

Look at that!

It boiling away furiously, at room temperature.

As it boils, gas, air spews out.

And the pressure as that gas expands can be extraordinarily powerful.

Here's how powerful.

Entertaining as it is to blow up a pop bottle, with a little more

engineering you can get something a whole lot more useful out of liquid air.

Another pop bottle. This time,

put liquid air in it again,

screw a lid on

but crucially this lid has a hole

so as the air boils back to a gas

the gas can rush up this hose.

It then enters an old air motor of mine.

It's going to start turning that round. That's going to turn this crank,

and then ultimately it turns this electrical generator

which, if it's going at the right speed, should light that light bulb.

So the plan is liquid air to useful electricity.

Start releasing it.

Look at that!

Sounds like a beautiful old steam engine!

Which is sort of what it is. Just a lot colder.

Highview is only a pilot system but already it can store enough liquid

air to generate enough electricity for 350 homes for four hours.

We're going to have to scale that up hugely in order to smooth out

the fluctuations in such intermittent source like wind power

but it's a system that's really got potential.

Meanwhile back at the National Grid, as late afternoon turns into early

evening our electricity demand shoots up over 50 GW.

Between 3 and 6 there is an overlap of activities

Some of us are coming home, but many are still at work.

If you look at the screens you can see how demand

is starting to build, isn't it? And I guess that's

because people are bringing their children home from school.

Just explain what accounts for the rest of that peak?

As you said, schools coming in here, people coming home,

things being switched on at home.

As the light goes dim and dark, people will start

switching on their lights, which carries that journey up.

But you've still got people at work, so the offices and the industry are still going.

Rachel's team issue hundreds of instructions to power stations

across the nation to keep the supply uninterrupted

during this peak period

which is taking the Grid to over 50 gigawatts.

It's interesting because what we've seen happening here at National Grid

is them adjusting the supply to meet the demand.

But there is another way of doing things which, essentially,

is flipping the whole thing on its head

and that's adjusting the demand to meet the supply.

This is the Park Plaza in central London.

It's got over 1,000 bedrooms, a spa, a swimming pool,

bars and restaurants.

And as a building, it needs 1.4 megawatts of power to operate.

Now, imagine if this hotel turned off its air conditioning

for just one hour. That would reduce the load on the Grid

by 350 kilowatts. It may not sound like a huge amount,

but what if it wasn't the only building doing that?

So, from this rooftop, I can see another dozen or so hotels.

Add to that, this hospital, the Houses of Parliament,

the office buildings that I can see, in my field of view, for example,

if you added 400 buildings, each turning off

their air conditioning for an hour, that would equate to a power saving

of 140 megawatts, the equivalent of taking a small power station

off the Grid for an hour.

And that's just with 400 buildings.

Think about how many there are in a city, far less in the entire country.

It's what many people have been stressing IS the solution

and it's now happening in the UK.

This is the control room of KiWi Power in central London.

Set up just five years ago, this company has signed up

hundreds of buildings and organisations who allow them

to temporarily switch off their electrical devices

to lower the demand when the National Grid is maxed out.

So, we're talking about hotels, hospitals, shopping centres,

airports, mines, distribution centres, water-treatment facilities,

anyone that uses a lot of power.

So, what exactly do you turn off and does it depend on the business?

We always focus on nonessential loads.

So, we'll focus on the kind of stuff we can turn down for half-an-hour

or an hour without actually affecting output.

So, when the Grid is looking for that extra energy,

-how does it work with you?

-So, what will happen is National Grid

will decide how much power they need at that specific point in time.

They'll be short of 10 or 50 megawatts, or whatever it might be.

They'll push a button in their control room

which will feed into here. Our system will pick the sites

that need to be dispatched and call them.

MOBILE RINGS What's that?

-That's an actual demand-response event.

-Oh.

Everything's automated. However, the last signal is

-somebody needs to call this number. I love it.

-The signal that comes in

-from the Grid to us, phone call.

-This is brilliant. OK, so...

"Are you sure you wish to dispatch contract S ban?

-Yes.

-You are. Boom.

-Marriott Hotel. What are we switching off

at the Marriott right now? What have I just done?

So, Park Plaza, we've got control

of a lot of the air-conditioning system.

All the equipment is being switched off automatically.

I can bring up the live consumption right now

and we can see exactly what's happening.

Right at the end there, you can see the consumption

has started to drop and about 200, 300 kilowatts

has come off in just the one hotel.

-Can we check it out at the hotel...

-Absolutely.

-..so I make sure

-nobody's going, "I can tell, they've switched something off"?

-Let's do it. Let's go.

An hour or so later, have the staff and guests

even noticed the difference?

Have you noticed the temperature change at all in this lobby

-while you've been here?

-No.

-No? Nice, comfortable temperature?

Not too warm? Not too cold? Good to go?

-Haven't noticed anything.

-Have you noticed anything change?

-No.

No? Good. That's the right answer!

-Nothing.

-No? Nothing tangible?

Have you noticed it getting warmer or colder or anything?

-No.

-No? Good news.

So, how does the future look for you? How would you roll this out?

If you can imagine, not just a few hundred companies,

but thousands or even tens of thousands of companies

all operating, being aware of what's going on with the Grid.

And then, beyond that, this being in every home,

being in every fridge, every freezer, every washing machine.

Any appliance that uses some electricity being aware

of what's going on at the Grid

and adjusting its consumption accordingly.

It's still early days, but in the future,

it's estimated that companies like Yoav's

could substantially reduce the demand on the Grid

at the touch of a button.

I'm very excited about what I've seen.

You know, we still live in a consumer-driven society

that pays very little attention to how much energy we waste

and this is a very effective way of reducing our carbon footprint

and the stress on the Grid

by effectively managing our power consumption.

I just want to see all businesses doing this all year round

and households too.

It makes an awful lot of sense and it could save millions.

Well, it's 8.20. The National Grid is beginning to wind down

for the night. Over the next four hours,

power consumption will drop by 50%

to around 27 gig.

So, slowly, one by one, power stations will be turned off.

Except there is just one drama to play out quite literally.

EASTENDERS THEME TUNE PLAYS

The key soaps often have what we call a TV pick up at the end of them

where people finish watching the programme, go out,

put on the kettles and we see a pick up in the demand.

We have the TV in here, watching it,

so that we can watch it with everyone else and be ready,

finger on the button, to go when it finishes.

Right. They're rolling. OK.

So, how's it looking?

There's definitely been a slight pick-up there.

The white line on the graph shows the bump and to manage this,

Rachel effortlessly calls up a couple of stations

which quickly deliver the electricity needed.

-Oh. What's that?

-This one here?

-Yep.

This is picking up.

So, looking at that little bump, how much energy does that represent?

-How much have you brought on?

-As a rough conversion, we use

what we call our kettle count. About 80,000 kettles

have been switched on just as EastEnders has finished.

Our National Grid is an amazing feat of engineering.

It's powerful, flexible, robust and secure

and it works so efficiently day after day, so effectively,

that we easily forget how impressive it really is.

But will our Grid be able to operate like this as power supplies dwindle?

The reality is that bold decisions need to be taken now

to develop new, green electricity supplies

or to rethink our carbon-reduction targets

and perhaps use technology to reduce the demand.

Only then will our lights remain on long into the future.

Next week, we look at how science is helping us

to fight back against cancer.

In the last 40 years, survival rates for some cancers have doubled,

but what does the future hold?

And if you want to know how you can become a National Grid controller

check out the website at /bang for our very own careers guide.

And you can also find out how energy powers your postcode

by following the links

to the Open University's free, interactive learning pages.