National Grid to Pay British Households to Use Less Electricity Amid Cold Snap

A smart energy meter, used to monitor gas and electricity use, is pictured in a home in Walthamstow, east London, on Feb. 4, 2022. Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images

As temperatures plunge across parts of the UK, a power blackout prevention energy rationing scheme has been rolled out to tighten the electricity supply, for the first time ever.

The National Grid said it would be activating its Demand Flexibility Service (DFS) to encourage households to avoid using electricity at peak time on Monday evenings.

The scheme, which incentivises people who have installed smart meters at their homes to use less electricity such as on radiators, ovens, and washing machines, during specific periods of time, has so far only been used in tests.

A net-zero policy critic told The Epoch Times that the new rationing scheme is a “reorganisation of society around the weather.”

With DFS, consumers can receive up to £100 in electricity bill discounts by cutting energy use during 12 peak times. More than a million households and businesses have signed up to participate with 26 major energy suppliers.

The National Grid said that the DFS was live between 5–6 pm on Monday. It added that it was also looking for bids from suppliers to help save up to 341 megawatts (MW) of power between 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Tuesdays.

National Grid

Freezing temperatures, combined with a lack of wind for renewables, are ramping up the demand for power.

The National Grid said on Twitter that “this does not mean electricity supplies are at risk and people should not be worried.”

“These are precautionary measures to maintain the buffer of spare capacity we need,” it said.

It added that its forecasts show “electricity supply margins are expected to be tighter than normal on Monday evening.”

“We have instructed coal-fired power units to be available to increase electricity supplies should it be needed tomorrow evening,” it said.

A view of electricity pylons behind houses in Lydd, Kent, England, on Sept. 30, 2022. Gareth Fuller/PA Media

Ofgem, the regulator for the energy industry, approved the ESO’s proposal to create a DFS for winter back in October.

Three UK coal plants have also been ordered to begin warming up in case they are needed for the country’s energy supply as the temperatures drop.

Head of National Control at National Grid ESO, Craig Dyke, did not say if the scheme would become a feature of British life, but told Sky News that activating it marked a “first step towards net zero.”

“‘It is something we strongly believe in. It provides flexibility for the system and the consumer. We see this as a growing market. We see this as a world-leading step forward into a space where we can only grow and drive forward toward net zero,” he said.

‘Green agenda’

Environmentalism skeptic Ben Pile, co-founder of the Climate Resistance blog and Climate Debate UK, told The Epoch Times, “Who knows if the next stage will be, ‘we can interrupt your supply and you can get a cheaper rate.’”

He added that the smart grid is really a “reorganisation of society around the weather, as it’s weather-dependent energy.”

“We are going back to the times of what you can do is determined by the weather. You couldn’t read in the evening, then electricity made it possible,” he said.

Pile pointed to comments the former National Grid Chief Executive Steve Holliday made in 2011, that the days of permanent electricity may be coming to an end and that families would have to get used to using power only when it was available.

‘We are going to change our own behaviour and consume it when it is available and available cheaply,” Holliday told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme.

“They have really put the green agenda before the needs of the public, that’s the full extent of it,” said Pile.

He said that he had met many climate policy skeptics in their 70s, 80s, and 90s who were responsible for building the grid, who were “religious in making sure that the key infrastructure of the country was running.”

“They come up against this stuff and it’s just anathema to them, they are the guys who follow rules obsessively, and the holy writ for them was grid stability and capacity,” he added.

Wind turbines adorn the landscape in the Southern Lake District, in Lambrigg, England, on Nov. 25, 2022. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

100 Percent Zero-Carbon Electricity

Pile warned that there have always been competing types of power, such as petrol for cars, gas for hot water, and coal or nuclear for electricity in the home.

“So your cars weren’t competing with your heating and your heating wasn’t competing with your power. When everything is electrified, everything will be competing,” Pile said.

However, the National Grid says it is confident that by 2025, it will have periods of “100% zero-carbon electricity, with no fossil fuels used to generate power in Great Britain.”

Pile said that the green dream is “in an entirely different system, which hasn’t been tried and hasn’t been proven.”

“To imagine that we could build efficient wind turbines offshore and then self-store the energy, all at a decent price, and have no problems is just a fantasy, because the grid is such a complicated thing,” he added.

The Epoch Times contacted the National Grid for comment.

PA Media contributed to this report.