A few minutes ago, Unit 4 turbo-generator at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station desynced from the GB grid system, marking the END of electricity generation from COAL after 142 years 🇬🇧🙏🏻 @RobBurnett92 and I present a 🪡🧵on the evolution of coal fired power from 1882 to today 1/n Coal totally shaped my childhood. This photo, taken before I was born, shows an exchange visit between British 🇬🇧 and German 🇩🇪 miners. One of my grandfathers is 4th from left and the other one is 1st on the right. Both passed some years ago now. Both were coal miners ⛏️🏭🔥 2/

Thoughts on the end of coal generation. I went here as a 16 year old lad for work ex in EC&I. I LOVED it 💙 The size, scale, smells, HEAT 🥵, sweat, dust, noise is quite indescribable. Unless you been in the turbine hall, it’s impossible to comprehend the enormity 😳 [1/10] Imagine half a tonne of steam 💨💨EVERY second, per boiler, at 160 bar and 560 deg C, with four boilers, developing 2000MW of electrical power, burning 19,200 tonnes of coal EVERY DAY!!! That’s almost 20 full trains 🚂 every day 🤯 [2/10]

BUT, BUT, BUT…. Just bury it underground. Not as simple as that…
Part 1 👇🏻 Part 2 on cables

What’s a #BlackStart? Well it’s NOT an outage, power cut, loss of supply, localised fault, blown fuse, shutdown, trip, fault. It’s a TOTAL shutdown of the power system, with the desynchronisation of all power stations. It’s DEAD 😵 We have NEVER had one. So relax folks ☺️ [1/20] The GB power system is amongst the most reliable in the world. It was designed & built by expert engineers. It works very well indeed. And it’s always evolving. The same process of starting it from nothing is used for PARTIAL failure affecting wide areas also, if required [2/20]

A colleague of mine has done 45+ years in electricity supply. Largely in the same role. Titles come and go but the amperes very little. You could definitely say he’s at the top of his game. And then some. He does the equivalent job to me, different region. We work closely [1/11] Last week a flashover occurred in the storm on a 400kV bushing at a major power station. This back tripped a busbar. My colleague was asked to assist at 01.15, woken from slumber. He knows this station perhaps better than any alive, certainly any still working [2/11]

Transformers linking the supergrid with lower voltage networks go up to 270MVA, not hugely different from the ratings back in the 1950s as those old networks don’t have vastly different capacities. Transformers linking parts of the supergrid are now up to 1250MVA ! [25/36] The early 275 switchgear needed to break 7500MVA (half its subsequent rating) and the only suitable technologies in those days were airblast (still in its infancy) or oil. I covered OCBs recently but 275kV OCBs are pretty bloody special. Served us damn well over 70 years [26/36]

The British Grid of the early 1930s was built to interconnect power stations and establish technical standards for an integrated, synchronous national power system functioning on 3 phase AC 50Hz. It was a huge success 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 #BirthOfTheSupergrid [1/36] The demand for electricity after WWII was growing rapidly. Britain’s post-war industrial growth depended on reliable energy supplies. By 1950 the (then) 25 year old grid was at capacity. New and larger power stations were urgently needed as well as more transmission lines [2/36]