Britain will make it through the winter without the lights going out. That’s the view of the National Grid, which is responsible for Britain’s energy system. You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise based on the BBC’s headline: ‘Homes face winter power cuts in worst-case scenario, says National Grid’. But Fintan Slye, executive director of the grid, offered some words of reassurance:
‘Under our Base Case we are cautiously confident that there will be adequate margins through the winter period.’
In other words: the lights won’t go out. In the scenario considered most likely, we’ll be left with a small margin of six per cent – or just under four gigawatts (GW) of unused capacity. Crucially, that’s about the level we’ve had to spare in winters gone by. Much of the coverage elsewhere has focused on the worst-case scenario included in the Winter Outlook report. Under that scenario, Britons could face rolling blackouts throughout the colder months lasting three hours a day.
This autumn is acting as a wakeup call
There’s uncertainty around the base case too, of course. But the Grid has mitigation steps ready to improve energy security. Three contracts for coal generators to supply an extra two GW of electricity are being lined up. This will provide enough energy to keep the power going in around 600,000 homes, or a city the size of Glasgow. The Grid also plans to introduce a ‘demand flexibility service’ where consumers will be paid £10 per day to turn the power off during peak times to help bring down demand. The Grid expects this measure to free up another large city’s worth of electricity.
Even before getting to the blackout scenario though, the Grid has an ‘alternative scenario’. In this model, electricity supply is reduced because European countries stop exporting power to Britain: something the Grid views as unlikely. If this does happen, the Grid is confident it can use the extra coal capacity and demand reductions to keep the lights on.
For the worst-case scenario to actually occur – triggering blackouts – gas supplies to Britain would have to stop at the same time as the electricity supply gaps explored in the alternative scenario. If that happens, the blackouts would be rotated around the country so no one region was hit badly. Warnings would be given to companies that blackouts were likely to cure. But the National Grid considers all of this ‘unlikely’ to occur.
The Winter Outlook report also points to the costs of electricity import and generation likely remaining high well into next year. There is better news on that though, as the price for contracts to buy gas at future dates has fallen considerably since it’s August peak as the below graph shows. If those prices keep heading down, the government can expect the cost of its Energy Cap to shrink too.
It’s not just uncertainty over gas imports that leaves Britain exposed to energy supply issues and the possibility of outages. Renewables also pose part of the problem. The Grid points to increased demand on days with cold weather and a lack of strong winds. This issue has been highlighted before: a report last year from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy found a nine per cent fall in supplies from renewable sources because of ‘decreased wind generation, which was down 14 per cent despite increased capacity.’ This was because of unusually low average wind speeds across the year. Hydro and solar power were down too ‘with lower than average rainfall leading to a 20 per cent decrease in hydro generation and lower average sun hours meaning that solar generation decreased by 5.9 per cent.’
This autumn is acting as a wake-up call. Relying so heavily on imported energy, specifically gas, leaves us with scenarios that are uncomfortably uncertain. It seems officials think we’ve done just enough to get us through the months to come. But if we don’t want to be in this situation – or worse – come 2023 we need to start improving our energy security now. There’s no time to waste.
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