Great Britain could face 3-hour black-out

The United Kingdom could face planned power cuts to homes and businesses this winter if it is unable to import electricity from Europe and it struggles to attract enough gas imports to fuel its gas-fired power plants, the British National Grid has warned.

The prospect of power cuts comes as Prime Minister Liz Truss on Thursday wrote an op-ed in the Times newspaper calling on Europe to keep energy exports flowing during the winter, and is likely to heap further pressure on the government after she previously ruled out energy rationing in the UK.

The emergency plan would need to be approved by King Charles on the recommendation of the business secretary.

National Grid said that in the “unlikely event” of a shortage of gas supplies that some consumers would be without power for “pre-defined periods” during a day to “ensure the overall security and integrity of the electricity system across Great Britain”.

It said there would have to be reduced electricity imports from Europe and insufficient gas supply to power stations for the planned power cuts to happen.

National Grid has published a range of scenarios that could occur this winter as it assesses a highly uncertain period for power supplies, amid the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A senior industry source said: “We’re heading into winter in an unprecedented situation. Even during the cold war, the Soviet Union kept the gas flowing so it’s very unpredictable.”

National Grid has worked on a series of initiatives to attempt to manage supply and demand this winter. It is ready to call into action five coal-fired power plants, which can generate up to 2 gigawatts of power – after signing deals with Drax, EDF and Uniper at a cost of £340m to £395m.

It will also launch a “demand flexibility service” on 1 November that will encourage businesses and consumers to use power outside peak demand periods, including early evenings on weekdays. Consumers with smart meters will be notified the day before and will be paid for using power outside these time periods. The initiative was trialled by Octopus Energy earlier this year.

National Grid hopes this service will free up an extra 2GW, enough to power about 600,000 homes, if enough companies and households participate.

The network operator stressed it was “cautiously confident” that there would be enough electricity to meet the demands of businesses and consumers this winter.

In its “base case” scenario, National Grid’s electricity system operator believes there will be about 3.7GW more of electricity generated than the country needs. It forecast a “sufficient operational surplus throughout winter” although it expects tight margins from early December through to mid-January, excluding Christmas.
However, National Grid mapped out two alternate scenarios in which a shortage of gas in Europe, which could be caused by Russia cutting supplies, or outages in another country’s generation fleet, interrupted energy supplies.

Under the first scenario, electricity imports from France, Belgium and the Netherlands are cut for the whole winter. This would put the coal-fired stations into action and trigger the demand flexibility service.