Offshore wind developer Ørsted believes it has fixed the issue that led to the Hornsea One offshore windfarm going offline on 9 August 2019
A project spokesperson said, “During a rare and unusual set of circumstances affecting the grid, Hornsea One experienced a technical fault which meant the power station rapidly de-loaded – that is, it stopped producing electricity.
“Normally, the grid would be able to cope with a loss of this volume (0.8 GW). If National Grid had any concerns about the operation of Hornsea One we would not be allowed to generate.
“The relevant part of the system has been reconfigured and we are fully confident that should this extremely rare situation arise again, Hornsea One would respond as required.”
Hornsea One is currently under construction 120 km off the coast of Yorkshire on the east coast of the UK. When fully operational, it will be the largest offshore windfarm in the world, and the furthest from shore.
An investigation was launched after a gas-fired power station and Hornsea One went offline within moments of one another, leading to a significant power cut that affected the UK.
As previously highlighted by OWJ, the incident started when the Little Barford gas-fired power station owned by RWE went offline, followed very shortly afterwards by Hornsea One.
A report into the incident by National Grid, the UK’s electricity system operator, is due to be published shortly. The Government has also set out the scope of a separate review into the actions by National Grid.
The Energy Emergencies Executive Committee will establish what happened to cause the outage and if correct procedures were followed. It will also consider whether improvements are needed to prevent future power cuts and better respond if they do occur, including minimising impacts on people and essential services.
The committee met for the first time on 12 August and will provide a report on initial findings within five weeks to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It will then submit a comprehensive report within 12 weeks.
The review will complement the investigation being undertaken by energy regulator Ofgem into how the electricity operator responded in line with its licence conditions and system security standards. It will advise if any further actions need to be taken.
National Grid has already confirmed that the incident was not linked to the variability of wind power.
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