The unplanned outage coincided with record-high levels of wind generation in the UK with generation from transmission connected wind exceeding 6.3TWh. Due to this outage, the cost of turning down wind output through the Balancing Mechanism (BM) hit a record high of £30.9 million.
“The Western Link was designed to accommodate the increasingly high volume of power generated in Scotland and prevent transmission bottlenecks” said Lee Drummee, Analyst at Cornwall Insight. “But since commissioning the cable has been fraught with issues. The availability of the link makes a clear difference. For example, December 2019 also saw high wind output of 5.6TWh. However, the Western Link was available in December, so, the volume of wind bids classified as system actions on the BM was significantly lower at 247.1GWh. Avoiding constraints not only allows more volumes of renewable power to flow onto the Grid but reduces the amount of money that National Grid has to pay to turn off wind farms in Scotland. However, the reliability of the Western Link will need to be solved for its full potential to be realised. As more onshore wind develops, especially in Scotland, the problems of constraints will need to continue to be actively managed”.
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