Power station's last coal delivery arrives by rail | Hacker News Reader

Power station's last coal delivery arrives by rail

bbc.co.uk

54 pointszeristor95 comments

I think the lede that this article buries is that this is the last coal fired power station in the UK. The UK has been burning coal since 1882 so that feels like quite a significant milestone.

Possibly because there's still some emergency (/somewhat expected winter 'emergency') coal capacity I believe?

As far as I could tell from a few minutes of googling the emergency stations were at West Burton, but both have been decommissioned as of 31st March this year.

Emergency capacity is provided by natural gas turbine plants, which can go online in ~10 minutes, and respond to capacity demand in less time.

Coal takes hours and is not suitable for grid stabilization.

Grid stabilization in the UK is largely provided by hydro like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station

...which can go from 0 to 1.7GW in seconds. The UK has long used hydro to help with the "tea kettle" effect every time the BBC was between programs or went to commercial.

And where this is no hydro for grid services, batteries are taking over as they’re deployed (providing synthetic inertia vs that from spinning thermal generation).

Some former coal power plants (not sure if this is true in the UK, but it's true elsewhere) are being converted into flywheels for grid stabilization services. So real inertia is still an option even without thermal generation.

Any examples? I am interested in learning more!

https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/home/stories/irelan...

Ahh! Synchronous condensers, makes sense. I didn't make the connection when you said flywheel but should've. Thank you!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser

> the "tea kettle" effect every time the BBC was between programs or went to commercial

This effect is famous, although of course the BBC does not show commercial content in the UK. I wonder if the effect has diminished with the increased variety of entertainment. Coronation Street now peaks around 5 million viewers, down from 20 million in the 90s [0], and is on a channel that does show ads. Perhaps half time in England football games still creates a big power draw.

[0] https://coronationstreet.fandom.com/wiki/Viewing_Figures

It's known as TV Pickup.

Half time of a pivotal England World Cup game, shown only on commercial TV. I'm pretty sure finals (and maybe semi-finals) are always simulcast on the BBC so it's unlikely to have that commercial break element. There were a few big ones (>1GW) this century for big England games, and a notable one during COVID responses when people put a kettle on and then went outside to clap thank you to NHS workers.

But the other types of events, soap character's murderer revealed, long running drama ends, that sort of thing, are casualties of modern viewing habits - no longer a single identifiable (and potentially disastrous if not allowed for) bump.

> Coal takes hours and is not suitable for grid stabilization.

That's fine, because winter emergency capacity is not the same as grid stabilization. You need some amount of fast-reacting emergency power, but not all your emergency power needs to be fast-reacting. How to build the rest comes down to what's cheaper: extra peaker plants, or extra coal plants that are only used for a week every couple years.

Ratcliffe is the last one.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_coal-fired_powe...

No, this is it for coal. It's finished. And no, we won't be mothballing any coal power stations, it takes too long to spin up. Gas power plants are more efficient and cleaner, but these are also being phased out eventually.

The idea is to replace all the fossil fuel power plants with a mix of nuclear power stations, ideally 10 and lots of wind turbines and solar farms.

> The UK has been burning coal since 1882 so that feels like quite a significant milestone.

The UK has been burning coal since the 13th century for heating so it's an even more significant milestone than that. There was a short ban because of the pollution it caused but otherwise the UK has been continuously burning coal since the late middle ages.

I recommend Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese. The history of coal in Britain is fascinating and closely intertwined with the birth of the industrial revolution, some of the first workers rights, etc.

The missing term in bb123's comment is "burning coal for electrical generation".

The Holborn Viaduct Power Plant, the first coal-fired electric power station in the UK, opened on 12 January 1882:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holborn_Viaduct_power_station>

Yes, UK / British coal consumption for other uses long predates the 19th century.

More on Ratcliffe-on-Soar

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/21/end-times-f...

> At the end of the last century, coal was used to generate more than 95% of the UK's energy, but last year it had fallen to 1%.

That looks like an impressive change, even if the coal use hasn't been replaced with renewables. But looking up details, the 95% number doesn't appear to be true:

- "Energy mix of UK"[1] shows no time when coal was above ~55%, and even total fossil fuel use was over 95% in 1965, not around the year 2000. But this may be total energy use, not just for electric (not sure).

- "UK electricity production by source"[2] shows that around the year 2000 fossil fuels made up perhaps about 70% of the mix.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_mix_of_UK.svg [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_electricity_production...

Because that only goes back to 1965 and we've been burning coal since the 19th century..?

OK, but they wrote "At the end of the last century", which implies towards 2000 not 1900.

I subtitled an album of music written and performed by friends and colleagues in about 2000, "Music from Turn of the Century Southampton" and some people were initially confused because they indeed hadn't got used to the idea that nope, this is in fact the turn of the century - all that stuff you thought would happen in the 21st century? Well that's now.

Historians tend to talk about "long" versions of the centuries, e.g. European historians might have a "long 19th century" which ends when World War I breaks out in 1914 and begins with the French Revolution in 1789. The idea is that although calendars start and end arbitrarily, these "log" centuries are roughly 100 years but are bookended by substantial change to society.

I think there's an argument to be made that the "Long 20th century" didn't end until a few years back, historians doubtless have numerous events they'd focus on, Ukraine, Liz dying, financial crash... So it may still feel to some people like "last century" still means the 19th.

Liz Truss died?

A different woman, somewhat more important than Liz Truss, but also with the given name Elizabeth. She was roughly the same age as my (dead) grandmother and they had roughly the same notional military job during WW2, driving a truck.

GP means Queen Elizabeth II, it's an annoying antimonarchist trope of being coy about the most obvious descriptors and using generics because 'they're just like the rest of us' etc.

I don't think I've ever been called "antimonarchist" before. I think a (constitutional) monarchy is a very good solution to a big real problem if it's available and so the UK is in an enviable position in this regard.

The article has been updated to "At the turn of the 20th Century", which ambiguously means either 1900 or 2000.

I wonder if the author was thinking of 1899 as "the end of the last century." It can happen to people who lived much of their lives in the 20th century.

That sounds plausible. I've sent them a mail.

I was born not that far off the end of the last century and I didn't bat an eyelid at that, heh.

Even weirder is that we are currently in the '20s. That's always going to mean 1920s to me, but I imagine I'm going to have to get used to younger family & news etc. using it to mean 2020s in the not too distant future.

The BBC failing to copy and paste from the press release:

> At the turn of the 20th century, coal supplied over 95% of energy consumed in the UK.

https://www.uniper.energy/united-kingdom/news/gb-railfreight...

Meanwhile Germany is still operating over 130 coal-fired power plants. Despite 25 years of energy transition.

Not very surprising with 16 of the 25 years being under a conservative government. Even so, the electricity production from coal has more than halved over the period.

The world is approaching 1 TW/year of solar deployed (will likely be achieved in the next 18 months at current global solar manufacturing ramp rate) [1] [2]. Germany will phase those coal plants out before the end of the decade, regardless of what the current narrative is.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40788172

[2] https://archive.is/2024.06.24-223854/https://www.economist.c...

"Germany will phase those coal plants out before the end of the decade"

Very optimistic. If we can avoid a CD(S)U-AfD coalition it might even work out.

I approach it from the cold, hard economics and the human lizard brain operating model.

You mean:

"me feeling cold"

"coal is cheap"

"burning coal makes me warm"

"coal good!"

Coal remains the cheapest energy source in the north. Only if you factor in the external costs, it gets expensive - but that factoring in is politics.

And there are already lots of people feeling angry and voting "alternatives" because they think the politicians made energy (coal) too expensive. Climafanatics is the term they use for people who say coal is very expensive in the long term .

If you want to bet $1000 to a charity of the winner’s choice about what coal consumption looks like in 2030, let me know and we’ll spin up a Long Bet.

https://longbets.org/

Well, I would like to loose that bet and do all I can that I would loose it. So sorry, I am not betting against my interests ..

So be more optimistic than your comments lead you to be. Pragmatically speaking, the manufacturing learning and deployment curves speak for themselves.

Humans suck around this urgent transformation need, but renewables and storage are a freight train that can’t be stopped, based on all available evidence.

"So be more optimistic than your comments lead you to be."

I think I am as optimistic as one can be, without closing my eyes to the reality on the ground. Where I live, the AfD got 40% of the votes. And further east, poland and co. are not that keen on phasing out coal, either.

Thinking coal is definitely going away, because some letters on a paper currently says it will happen, is dangerous I think. It will go away if there is continiously active support for that transition. So far china is also still building lots of coal plants, despite their solar panel production.

That seems a bit cowardly. People bet against their interests all the time and that’s called hedging.

Eg I bet on the President that would be worse for me a decade ago. Winning some money took off all the sting

Cowardly?

Maybe my english was bad.

To be clear:

I want burning coal gone as soon as possible.

Betting that it isn't going away would give me incentive to activly work against the banning of coal. Why should I do that?

edit: but reading more carefully, yeah, that is what you mean. "Winning some money took off all the sting" Well, that is cowardly I think. Betting on both outcomes. I rather invest what I have in the desired outcome, where my consciousness is. Otherwise my motivation would be less. Because I personally would win this way, my reptilian brain likes immediate payout.

Why are you so careful about your incentives? Do you think your motivation is so fickle as to be swayed by a bet when the other stakes are so high? This seems like a deflection.

Genuinely curious if some people think this way.

"Do you think your motivation is so fickle as to be swayed by a bet"

Not swayed, but definitely influenced.

Every positive and negative outcome of every scenario gets evaluated and our actions result from on this evaluation. Changing some factors changes the outcome.

The details are obviously very complicated and the process far from understood, but the principle is quite established I think.

So I do not want to influence my motivation even a tiny bit in a direction I do not like.

edit: Hypothesis, many problems exist, because too many people bet on things they do not want, but might make money. So less investment in actually changing it.

That still doesnt explain the concern, given that there is a fundamental difference between influence and action threshold.

There is no need to worry about putting a feather on a scale if the other side has an elephant.

"There is no need to worry about putting a feather on a scale if the other side has an elephant."

True, but I think the scale here is a bit more complex.

Climate change is a quite abstract threat for the brain.

Feeling cold feels very real on the other hand.

So doing things here and there might add up. Even feathers have weight.

Nope your English is fine and I really do consider your conduct cowardly. If you’re concerned about bad incentives, just commit to donating your winnings from the bet to a charity that fights coal or climate change or something. I’m also gonna go out on a limb and guess that you have approximately zero impact on coal consumption

Allright then. Well, I rather think it would be cowardly to not put my money where my mouth is.

"and guess that you have approximately zero impact on coal consumption"

And we will see about that in 10 years.

I wish longbets was more active. I imagine that a big blocker is that they only allow bets to charity, due to American gambling laws. I'm not opposed to the money going to charity, but it definitely limits the number, and size, of bets I'd be willing to make.

https://manifold.markets/

"Coal remains the cheapest energy source in the north."

You're about ten years behind on that claim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

Note the charts showing solar and on-land wind dropped past coal ten years ago and kept dropping while coal has flatlined.

Also note that nuclear is getting to be four times the cost of solar. And solar is still dropping.

And before you screech about "wHaT aBOut WHen tHe SUn gOES dOWn!1!", google "cost of battery storage trends"

Hint: it's dropped to one fifth the cost it was ten years ago. It dropped 15% this year, and that's with an increase in demand of 50%. Economies of scale and competitive pressures are causing battery prices to fall like a rock.

Think about that for a second: when Tesla Powerwall was introduced (2015) the batteries in them cost 5x what they do today.

The cost of coal went up because of regulation. I am in favor of that.

But take away the regulations - and guess what happens.

Coal is condensed energy buried in the ground and cheap to extract.

Solar and battery is high tech, mainly coming from china with the domestic production allmost died out in europe. One global escalation and the solar prices will rise - and the coal will still be there.

I am arguing against blind optimism. Not against renewables.

I think you may be comparing fuel supply for a coal plant with installing a new PV plant.

The demand of the "alternative" climate change sceptics is, to not phase out the coal plants, but have them running.

If you look at the source above, you will find that the coal prices start to rise with the implementation of renewable energy laws and tighter regulation for coal plants.

In general, a coal plant is a quite simple technology, compared to solar panels. And if all fails and if you are cold, you can just burn them. It is for a reason, that german slang for money is "coal" ("Kohle").

Coal to be warm is simple.

Coal to run a power plant, via turbines, is significantly more complicated than solar panels.

"Coal to run a power plant, via turbines, is significantly more complicated than solar panels."

A modern high tech coal plant maybe, with all the digital control, automation and filters maybe. But the basic tech is from the 19.century. A average metal workshop could build one with some time.

But solar panels? That requires high tech in all of the production steps.

You need some high quality chemical sources to make the solar panel, but once it's made it's just a fancy slab of glass that spits out power. I find that pretty simple.

Both of them require high tech to produce, now that you have to consider things like quicksilver emissions limits when setting up a plant. Measuing parts per billion and tuning the process to minimise emissions is high tech. But that's a distraction.

The key difference is that operating a coal power plant involves a logistics chain from a coal mine in a desert in Australia, and operating a PV plant involves wiping dust from the panels. One global escalation and the logistics chain is in trouble — while the panels will still be there.

The problem still exists up north where solar produces about zero energy for months. Of course, wind power is option there.

For Northern Europe there’s also hydro power. Norway is basically all hydro power plants and is well connected to its neighbours.

And there’s trash burning power (with district heating). Norway, Sweden and Denmark has a few of those. Possibly others in the region as well.

I don't know how they could cope with the loss of lignite strip-mining.

> The world is approaching 1 TW/year of solar deployed (will likely be achieved in the next 18 months at current global solar manufacturing ramp rate)

That's nice, but it's still underachieving compared to the task. We need ~50TW of solar and ~30 TW of wind to be able to smelt iron, make transport fuels and plastics and lubricants as well as electricity. Unless, of course, you want to suppress development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

I think 2050 is a reasonable goal to get to 100% renewable/clean (including nuclear to some degree) for all energy. Then we need to average, what, around 4TW/year for two decades?

Considering how fast solar/wind is growing, that seems within reach doesn’t it? We’ll probably be somewhat under that in the 2030s and hopefully above that in the 2040s?

I hope by 2030 we start to see some real growth in advanced geothermal too. Maybe some wave and tide power as well.

Yeah, but they're getting rapidly phased out for electricity generation. The most difficult to replace are the ones which also supply district heating, which is pretty widespread in the former GDR.

Those aren't "difficult to replace" at all.

Instead replacing the systems in dozens or hundreds of homes, you're replacing just a few. And because those plants usually use multiple boilers for redundancy and load scaling, you can replace them without interrupting service. Also, banks understand and finance that sort of stuff more easily than they will Joe Homeowner.

The Coefficient of Performance for a fossil-fuel heating plant is about .8. The COP for a large building / campus sized heat pump is nearly ten times that.

They're well understood, too, as millions of office and apartment buildings and campuses use them. All that it takes to turn a cooling system into a heating system is switching where water is routed...

Large city-scale heat pumps are pretty new technology - the currently largest build in Denmark is from 2023 [1]. Even if you have hot water available, it will take a city like Munich many MANY years [2].

Don't get me wrong: it's high time to switch heating and cooling to district systems, where producers of heat like datacenters can add to the supply. But it's at the same time not as easy and fast to switch a many-hundred-megawatt block to heat pumps as it is to switch a single building.

[1] https://www.ingenieur.de/technik/fachbereiche/energie/fernwa...

[2] https://www.swm.de/magazin/energie/geothermie

At least they got rid of their nice clean nukes.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po...

58 according to this and 210 in America.

The American nuclear lobby really, really hates Germany's nuclear free green transition though. Coal and global warming theyre not at all bothered about.

“I pity the fuel”

– Mr. C (Lawrence Coal)

> During its lifetime, Ratcliffe - commissioned in 1967 - has generated enough power to make more than a billion cups of tea every day.

The most British unit of energy measurement possible. What would the American version be? Hamburger patties cooked? Smartphones charged? Highway miles driven?

If we're firing shots anyways, go with mobility scooter miles.

Surely in the case of firing shots it would be number of rifles manufactured or rounds produced.

Sure, use round numbers.

Too many holes in this idea.

The American version would be number of football fields smoked.

But you have to further specify whether you're using Carolina freedom units or Texas freedom units, because the two groups can't agree on whether it includes the end zones or not.

Standardized Texas A/C hours.

It's also the British billion which is larger than the American billion.

It's probably not, unless you've calculated that it is? It's not at all common any more, led by financial interoperability I think.

(Unfortunately in my opinion: it seems more logical than the American/standard billion. We go up to nine until we run out of units and start on tens, until we run out at nine tens and nine and start on hundreds, until we run out at nine hundreds and nine tens and nine and start on thousands, until we run out at nine hundred and nine tens and nine thousand and nine hundreds and nine tens and nine and start on millions. Why then only go to nine hundred and nine tens and nine million (...)? It breaks the pattern of using all the expressable numbers until you run out and have to start a new word.)

True, but the pattern would break down with (the long-scale) definition of trillion in any case.

The long scale makes sense because it is powers of a million -

- one million - 10^6,

- one billion (long scale) - 10^12 - ‘bi’ meaning two, is a million squared,

- one trillion (long scale) - 10^18 - ‘tri’ meaning three is a million cubed,

- one quadrillion (long scale) - 10^24 - ‘quad’ meaning four is a million to the power four.

In each step of the American system, you go up by a factor of 1000 each time. There is no discontinuity.

The problem was that there were once two billions, the short billion and the long billion. The English world decided to use the short billion and the French world decided to use the long billion.

Long-scale billions are essentially never used in English, and for official purposes the UK switched to short-scale billions in 1973. So, er, probably not.

> What would the American version be? Hamburger patties cooked? Smartphones charged? Highway miles driven?

We tend to use homes powered. Which seems logical enough, until you realise there is a built-in assumption of 4,000 kWh/month homes.

holy tamole...

I think we use around 700-1000/month most months. who is using 4000/month?

1) big houses in the south with lots of AC.

2) at least one house in Pittsburgh that runs a few GPU servers for its owner's startup. ;) (not quite 4000, but over 3000 this month including our normal use and ac)

Our lowest/highest are 1800/3300 for a 6 adult FL household. Our lower number was 1700 but our winters keep warming.

Replying to myself:

I guess... there's only two adults in the house here, and a 2000 sq ft house with two heating/cooling units (up/down) and relatively modern windows/sealing.

I think this month will be 1200, and I think we'll have a couple more 1000-1200 kw/h months up ahead.

EDIT: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit.... This shows the average being 10500 kw/h/year, which seems to be in line with our use case. That average is including all housing types (apartments, detached homes, etc).

I live in a 1900sqft house of 4 people (and lots of electronics) in FL and we used 2477kwh last billing period. Our low period is about 1370kwh.

> until you realise there is a built-in assumption of 4,000 kWh/month homes.

No idea where you got that figure - you're off by a factor of four.

https://www.google.com/search?q=US+electic+usage+per+home

For example:

> The U.S. Energy Information Administration notes that the average homeowner used about 914 kWh per month in energy

and https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit...

It should be noted that the average for an apartment unit in most of the country is half that, and a substantial portion (40%) of the US population lives in apartments.

Perhaps they are conflating it with annual electricity consumption, which is about 4000 kwh per capita per year

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49036

> No idea where you got that figure - you're off by a factor of four

From facts, yes. Forgot where I recently saw it, but it was in the amount of energy a datacentre in the South burns. Work backwards from the PR stats, and you get a moderately-large American house’s energy footprint.

While that's very British, you forget the obvious: The BTU is the British Thermal Unit.

Can't get any more British than something with British in its name. Not to mention it's very widely used in practice, though it's up there with pounds, gallons, and miles.

Spoken like a true American. Despite the name, the BTU is an American customary unit, used almost exclusively in America for measuring the power of air conditioners. In practice, it's not quite extinct in the UK as gallons are, but it's on the way.

The other weird unit for measuring air conditioning is "tons". One ton of air conditioning has nothing to do with the weight of the air conditioner. Instead, it means the air conditioner provides cooling equivalent to one ton of ice per day. One ton is almost exactly 12,000 BTU/h; curiously, the round number is a coincidence.

I think it might be more extinct than gallons, tbh. People still talk about miles per gallon a bit (note that, for extra confusion, a UK gallon isn’t the same as a US one) but _very_ few people would have reason to think about BTUs these days, I’d have thought.

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