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Energy Bill

There is a great deal to be said for such an amendment or something along these lines. I am not sure that the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, could be accepted in its present form. I have one overriding reason for saying that. I have discussed the matter with those who operate the grid in this country. To be fair to the noble Lord, he said that they would not find it difficult—and do not find it so—to accommodate small, genuine, local microgeneration sources because the amounts involved are very small. Applications to join the grid might come from community groups, or business groups, and as the amounts of electricity that the grid would have to accommodate become larger, it becomes more difficult for operators to sustain the viability of the grid. One has seen the other end of the scale. I was interested in what the right reverend Prelate said about the Danish experience of the larger offshore wind farms. It is now two years since the Danes reached the maximum amount that they can possibly generate by wind before finding that the grid they have to operate becomes unstable. That matches entirely with the report produced two or three years ago by E.ON about its experience in Nordrhein-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein. I have seen with my own eyes the large number of wind turbines operating in that very flat land, which is suitable for wind power, but the company found that once you went beyond about 18 per cent of total generating capacity coming from wind, the stability of the grid becomes very questionable. The reason for that is very simple. It is an intermittent source. If you go from full power to no wind power in a couple of hours as the wind falls away, you must have standby generation. Given the process of operating a grid in those circumstances with no doubt variable wind output having to be fed in, and then being offset as it goes down by standby operators, the company said that it could cope up to about 18 per cent. When you move to 20 per cent and beyond, the grid becomes so unstable that it is difficult to operate. I say with some hesitation to the right reverend Prelate who, through his wife, knows more about this than I do, but I saw the Danish wind farms when we went on a cruise up that way some years ago. The wind was blowing perfectly well but none of them was working as they had reached the point when it was not economic. The amount that the Danish power companies had to sell at rock-bottom prices to other grids in order to get some return was simply not worth their doing it. That was also the E.ON experience. The stability of the grid and its management are a vital factor. I recognise that the noble Lord has sought to take this into account in his amendment, which states in proposed Section 3B(1) that, "““the Authority shall ensure that … (a) … operators guarantee the transmission and distribution of electricity produced … without prejudice to the maintenance of the reliability and safety of the grid””." It is there, but one then asks how that will operate. How will the microgeneration supplier be able to know when he can feed it into the grid and when he cannot?