National Grid: Winter blackout risks remain
The risk of winter blackouts has fallen this year but Britain may still need to rely on paying millions of households to use less electricity if imports from Europe are disrupted, National Grid has said.
The company responsible for keeping the lights on expressed “cautious optimism” about the outlook for power supplies this winter and said the risk of blackouts was similar to winters before Russia curtailed gas supplies to Europe last year.
However, it cautioned that “risks and uncertainties remain in global energy markets” and said it wanted to sign up four million households and businesses to its “demand flexibility service”, which would pay them to cut usage if supplies were scarce. About 1.6 million households and businesses were paid a total of almost £11 million for taking part in the scheme last winter.
National Grid said that the forecast spare margin between electricity supply and demand had increased since last year, thanks to new battery storage projects and the revival of some power stations that were out of action.
Also, healthy European gas stocks and the restart of French nuclear reactors have boosted the chances that Britain can get gas and power imports when needed. Britain generates most of its electricity supplies by burning gas and last winter National Grid warned it could be forced to impose rolling blackouts if supplies were restricted.
National Gas, the company responsible for managing gas supplies, said it was “unlikely” that the supplies would be at risk this year unless there was “a very cold winter in the UK coinciding with a major interruption to one of our gas supply sources”.
However, both companies warned that risks remained, and they were working on contingency plans.
National Grid urged households and businesses to sign up to its demand flexibility service, which it said could be used in a scenario of “unexpected reduced output” from power plants in Britain or “reduced imports available from Europe”.
