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Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘I can save Britain from Spain-style blackouts'
Power generated by Icelandic volcanoes and sent at hyper-speed down a 1,000-mile subsea high-voltage cable could help save Britain from Spain-style blackouts, one of the City's most prominent financiers has said. Edi Truell, a self-proclaimed 'disruptive capitalist', made the claims as he edges closer to a decade-long dream of building a £3.5bn subsea cable that will funnel geothermal power from the hot springs of Iceland to the UK. Such interconnectors – cables that enable the exchange of electricity between neighbouring countries – 'are vital' in the fight against the type of blackouts that unfolded across Spain and Portugal last month, Truell said. The precise cause of the Continent's biggest power cut in living memory is yet to be determined, but Truell believes it can be traced back to the failure of the Viking Link interconnector between the UK and Denmark, which occurred just hours before the incident. Truell, a former adviser to Boris Johnson when he was mayor of London, described a devastating cascade effect that swept across Europe before the lights went out. Surplus power should have been diverted from neighbouring France, but it had already had to step in with back-up supplies to help smooth the outage at Viking, leaving the country with insufficient capacity to rescue the Iberian peninsula. 'They needed gigawatts from France, but the French didn't have them,' he said. With Truell's Icelandic project up and running, it could have supported an existing interconnector between Britain and Norway to provide another 4,000 megawatts, Truell said, 'which would have then freed up French power to free up Spain's'. Truell expects construction to begin on his Atlantic Superconnection (ASC) scheme before the end of the year. The link will bring enough geothermal and hydroelectric electricity to the UK to power around 2m homes, while also pumping excess wind energy generated in the UK back to Iceland. 'It's what the National Grid calls 'flexible base load' – it's always there,' Truell said. 'Depending on the time of day, you get between nine and 15pc of Britain's electricity pretty much guaranteed always on. 'It also saves the taxpayer a lot of money, because instead of turning the wind turbines off when it's blowing too much, you can whizz the surplus electricity up to Iceland and store it. It makes much more sense.' It is one of several power links in the works that promise to bolster Britain's energy reserves by tapping into inexhaustible overseas renewable sources. Former Tesco boss Dave Lewis is spearheading the Xlinks scheme, which aims to bring solar and wind power from Morocco to the UK via a 4,000-mile-long subsea cable. Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest is working on a competing proposal that would send clean energy generated from North African solar farms through Europe to the UK. Truell's project is being financed through a mixture of his own capital, backing from private investors and money raised in the debt markets. He said a 'major investment bank' stands ready to provide the entire £3.5bn funding in case of any snags. It follows a protracted decade-long process in which he was forced to go it alone after failing to persuade successive UK governments to get behind his grand plans. At one stage, Truell was led to believe by Theresa May's government that he had secured the blessing of ministers in the form of a long-term inflation-linked contract that would guarantee his project could sell its electricity at a fixed price to British households, he said. 'I was told it was 'in the post',' he said. But Truell's long-awaited Whitehall approval never came. 'I was basically lied to,' he said. The current government had been more supportive, but in other crucial areas was proving to be 'catastrophically useless', he said. He described Labour's energy policy under net-zero evangelist Ed Miliband as 'very muddled'. 'I don't think the investments are being made in the right place,' Truell added. He pointed to the £22bn that has been set aside to invest in various carbon capture projects in the North West and North East of England, with three quarters of the outlay expected to be recovered via customer bills. 'You could have six or seven interconnectors to Iceland for that, and it would save a hell of a lot more carbon than sticking it underground,' he said. 'So I think that is just bonkers.' Truell estimates that seven new interconnectors would bring around 12GW of power into the UK - equivalent to between 20pc and 25pc of Britain's electricity usage. Truell is also concerned about the impact that some types of renewables are having on the landscape and rural areas. 'I love the countryside. Carpeting it with solar panels made in China, and overhead pylons, is just retrograde,' Truell said. Cables are cheaper and because they are generally buried underground, 'you don't spoil the countryside,' he said. His criticism relates to Labour's plans to build thousands of new pylons in rural areas to help meet its ambitious clean power targets. Miliband has called the intended rollout of new pylons, alongside wind turbines and solar panels, a matter of 'national security' as the Government seeks to make the energy grid carbon neutral by the end of the decade. The Energy Secretary has also promised to 'take on the blockers, the delayers, the obstructionists'. But the proposals have been met with widespread dismay by affected communities. Campaigners have accused the Government of using 'bullying tactics' to impose new green projects on local communities. Truell called on ministers to change tack and adopt the approach taken in Switzerland, where he owns hotels and property, and spends much of his time. 'In Switzerland ... there is no building on greenfield [land] – none, zero, nought,' he said. 'Don't even apply because you're not going to get it. The Swiss are very straightforward about it: 'What part of no don't you understand?'' When it comes to land that has already been developed, the opposite stance is needed, he argued. 'Derogate planning permission for brownfield – you want to put a solar panel on your roof, just put it on. You don't want to apply for planning – just get on with it, take all that planning cost out. Every new house should have solar panels on it,' he said. In an attack on the Chancellor's tax raid, Truell said the super-wealthy are 'fleeing Rachel Reeves'. 'It just seems so self-destructive. They're being driven out, mainly by changes in the tax regime. It's class envy, putting a tax on private schools and doubling taxes on second homes. The whole mood music is 'we don't want people',' he said. Similarly, over-zealous regulation is forcing businesses to abandon the City, he claims. Though a longstanding problem, the failure to tackle it is particularly short-sighted in the context of Donald Trump's trade war, he said. Truell is a serial entrepreneur who made his fortune as the founder of private equity house Duke Street Capital, before setting up several pension buyout vehicles. 'We've got a golden opportunity because financial services are not subject to tariffs and Britain's got the biggest trade surplus in the world on financial services – about £77bn the year before last, which is bigger than anybody. We're really doing extremely well,' he complained. 'But the Government, whether it's this one or the last one, just keeps allowing the regulators to again drive business away,' Truell added. Truell is able to speak from experience after mothballing one of his more recent ventures amid accusations of regulatory dithering. In 2023, he decided to wind down his Pension SuperFund – a consolidator of company pension schemes – blaming the regulator, government and the insurance industry for making the business model 'uninvestable'. Despite all the promises the Chancellor made to rip up red tape in her maiden Mansion House speech in the autumn, regulation is at risk of becoming more burdensome, not less, he said. 'I did a lot of work behind the scenes on the Mansion House reforms and it's all great until you actually go to talk to the FCA [Financial Conduct Authority] or the Pension Regulator or the PRA [Prudential Regulation Authority]. 'My God, it's almost worse rather than better, because they're now thinking of ways to block the changes,' he said. He almost gave up on his Icelandic power link, too, in the face of ministerial foot-dragging. 'I felt very depressed,' he said. But in the absence of government backing, Truell vowed to finance the entire venture privately. Yet even now he can't quite escape the dead hand of officialdom. All major infrastructure projects in Britain require the blessing of Angela Rayner, the Housing Secretary, in the form of a Development Consent Order. Meanwhile, his plans to build a giant factory at the Port of Tyne to provide the hundreds of miles of cable needed for the scheme must pass an environmental assessment 'in case there are newts on the quayside' or 'a colony of badgers', he joked. Strip out 'old-fashioned bureaucracy' and you would speed up the process by 16 to 17 months, he estimated. Truell called on the Government to ask itself a simple question: 'Do you want critical national infrastructure or not?' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Independent
02-05-2025
- General
- The Independent
Britain noted ‘unusual' power activity hours before blackouts
Unusual power activity occurred in the UK hours before the blackouts in Spain and Portugal, it has emerged. Britain 's grid operator, National Energy System Operator (Neso), is investigating unexplained changes in electricity frequency early Sunday morning and evening. The incidents involved the Keadby 2 gas-fired power plant in Lincolnshire, as well as the Viking Link interconnector between the UK and Denmark. It said it's 'highly unlikely' these events are related to the widespread blackouts in Spain, Portugal, and parts of France on Monday. While the UK grid was unaffected by the European blackout, investigations are ongoing to determine the causes of all incidents.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Britain hit by unusual power activity hours before Spain blackout
Britain's electricity grid operator is investigating unexplained power plant failures that hit the UK's system hours before Spain and Portugal were plunged into blackouts. Control room staff at the National Energy System Operator (Neso) observed unusual activity on Sunday that saw the power frequency shift unexpectedly in the early morning and the evening. Keeping the frequency of the electricity system within certain limits is vital to keeping the lights on. The first event began at around 2am with an outage at the Keadby 2 gas-fired power plant in Lincolnshire, followed by the unexplained failure of the Viking Link interconnector between the UK and Denmark. At around 6pm, the frequency shifted unexpectedly again – with the cause currently unknown. Neso, the quango that manages the British grid, confirmed to The Telegraph on Tuesday morning that officials were investigating. A spokesman did not provide further details but said there was currently no suggestion that the outages were linked to each other or the massive system failures that occurred on Monday throughout Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France. Such investigations are standard practice whenever there is an unexplained outage on the grid. But it comes as grid stability is being closely scrutinised across Europe, with Spain and Portugal currently in the process of painstakingly re-activating their grids following the unprecedented loss of power nationwide. Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister of Spain, refused to speculate on the suspected cause in a press conference late on Monday. An earlier suggestion by Portuguese officials that the blackouts may have been triggered by a freak weather event have since been downplayed, leaving the events that led to Europe's worst electricity failure in decades shrouded in mystery. Meanwhile, Jordi Sevilla, the former president of Spain's national grid operator, Red Eléctrica, suggested on Tuesday that the loss of power was indirectly caused by Spain's heavy reliance on solar and wind farms. In an editorial for financial newspaper Cinco Días, Mr Sevilla said the rising dependence on renewables that did not generate so-called inertia, which helped to stabilise the frequency of electricity systems, created 'obvious' problems that had been ignored by politicians. 'Our electricity grid requires investment to adapt to the technical reality of the new generation mix,' he said, according to translated text. The unexpected outages in Britain on Sunday were of a much smaller magnitude but have still spooked officials. Market transparency data show Keadby 2 was scheduled to come online on Sunday morning to help meet high power demand in the morning, but it is understood it tripped at around 2am. The Viking interconnector was expected to provide power to the grid but also suffered a sudden fault just after this. According to market data published by Elexon, the cable was providing 236 megawatts of power to the British grid at 2am before the output suddenly fell to zero and remained at that level until about 11am. This is unusual because the cable will usually follow power prices – unless the Neso intervenes – meaning it tends to be either exporting or importing at least some power most of the time. It is understood that the problem may have been caused by a fault on the Danish side. Officials are also investigating the unexpected frequency change at 6pm, but it is understood that no specific outages have been linked to that currently. On Tuesday, a Neso spokesman said: 'As a prudent system operator we review all generator trips and events on our network as standard practice. 'We are still reviewing operational events across the weekend. However, it is highly unlikely that these events are connected to each other or related to the events on the European electricity network on Monday. 'Great Britain's electricity network was not affected by the power system incident on the European electricity network on Monday. 'We are working closely with our counterparts across Europe to understand the cause of today's power system incident and to offer our support. It is too early to comment further on today's events and whilst investigations are still ongoing.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
29-04-2025
- Climate
- Telegraph
Britain's grid operator investigates unusual activity hours before Spain blackouts
Britain's electricity grid operator is investigating unexplained outages that hit the UK's system hours before Spain and Portugal were plunged into blackouts. Control room staff at the National Energy System Operator (Neso) observed unusual activity on Sunday that saw the power frequency shift unexpectedly in the early morning and the evening. Keeping the frequency of the electricity system within certain limits is vital to keeping the lights on. The first event began at around 2am with an outage at the Keadby 2 gas-fired power plant in Lincolnshire, followed by the unexplained failure of the Viking Link interconnector between the UK and Denmark. At around 6pm, the frequency shifted unexpectedly again – with the cause currently unknown. Neso, the quango that manages the British grid, confirmed to The Telegraph on Tuesday morning that officials were investigating. A spokesman did not provide further details but said there was currently no suggestion that the outages were linked to each other or the massive system failures that occurred on Monday throughout Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France. Such investigations are standard practice whenever there is an unexplained outage on the grid. But it comes as grid stability is being closely scrutinised across Europe, with Spain and Portugal currently in the process of painstakingly re-activating their grids following the unprecedented loss of power nationwide. Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister of Spain, refused to speculate on the suspected cause in a press conference late on Monday. An earlier suggestion by Portuguese officials that the blackouts may have been triggered by a freak weather event have since been downplayed, leaving the events that led to Europe's worst electricity failure in decades shrouded in mystery. Meanwhile, Jordi Sevilla, the former president of Spain's national grid operator, Red Eléctrica, suggested on Tuesday that the loss of power was indirectly caused by Spain's heavy reliance on solar and wind farms. In an editorial for financial newspaper Cinco Días, Mr Sevilla said the rising dependence on renewables that did not generate so-called inertia, which helped to stabilise the frequency of electricity systems, created 'obvious' problems that had been ignored by politicians. 'Our electricity grid requires investment to adapt to the technical reality of the new generation mix,' he said, according to translated text. The unexpected outages in Britain on Sunday were of a much smaller magnitude but have still spooked officials. Market transparency data show Keadby 2 was scheduled to come online on Sunday morning to help meet high power demand in the morning, but it is understood it tripped at around 2am. The Viking interconnector was expected to provide power to the grid but also suffered a sudden fault just after this. According to market data published by Elexon, the cable was providing 236 megawatts of power to the British grid at 2am before the output suddenly fell to zero and remained at that level until about 11am. This is unusual because the cable will usually follow power prices – unless the Neso intervenes – meaning it tends to be either exporting or importing at least some power most of the time. It is understood that the problem may have been caused by a fault on the Danish side. Officials are also investigating the unexpected frequency change at 6pm, but it is understood that no specific outages have been linked to that currently. On Tuesday, a Neso spokesman said: 'As a prudent system operator we review all generator trips and events on our network as standard practice. 'We are still reviewing operational events across the weekend. However, it is highly unlikely that these events are connected to each other or related to the events on the European electricity network on Monday. 'Great Britain's electricity network was not affected by the power system incident on the European electricity network on Monday. 'We are working closely with our counterparts across Europe to understand the cause of today's power system incident and to offer our support. It is too early to comment further on today's events and whilst investigations are still ongoing.'
