Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 8TH -14TH JUNE 2018 | 5 ELECTRICITY Drax seeks consent for coal- to-gas conversion Drax has applied to the Planning Inspectorate for consent to replace two of its three remaining coal units with up to 3.6GW of gas generation and up to 200MW of battery storage. The company wants to substi- tute each of the two coal units with a high-efficiency combined-cycle gas turbine and a battery storage system. Since the plans were unveiled, Drax has been developing engineer- ing and environmental reports for the application and consulting local authorities and communities. If the Planning Inspectorate approves the plans, they will go before the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. A decision on whether to grant a development consent order is expected to be made in 2019. ELECTRICITY Windfarms apply to Crown Estate for extensions The Crown Estate has received applications from companies wanting to extend their existing windfarms such that, if approved, they would generate an extra 3GW. The real estate business, which owns the rights to developments on the seabed around the UK, announced last week that it had received eight applications to extend existing windfarms around the coast of England and Wales. Currently there is 7.1GW of off- shore wind capacity in the UK, with a further 2.6GW under construction and a further 3.6GW that will be built by 2024, according to figures from Renewable UK. £350m SSE is to invest £350 million in a 840MW combined-cycle gas turbine power station at Keadby in North Lincolnshire. Senior staff from Wessex Water brought a new lease of life to a children's playground in Somerset as part of a volunteering project. To mark national Volunteers Week (1-7 June), five members of Wessex Water's operations management team spent a day cleaning up the play area in Beckington, near Frome, under the company's Water Force volunteering programme. "The contribution of interconnectors to security of supply is unknown, and, to a significant extent, unknowable" John Feddersen, chief executive of Aurora Energy Research, says relying on interconnectors to back up intermittent renewables could put the security of supply at risk. UK gas imports declined in 2017 Net gas imports in 2017 were down 4.1 per cent year on year, according to the latest figures from the Depart- ment for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, as imports fell by 1.8 per cent and exports rose by 8.8 per cent. LNG imports dropped by about a third, more than offsetting an 8.2 per cent increase in pipeline imports. 200 175 150 125 100 75 50 25 0 -25 -50 -75 TWh IMPORTS AND EXPORTS source: BEIS Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 2014 2015 2016 2017 LNG imports Pipeline imports Exports

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