British households and businesses may suffer from planned blackouts this winter if power plants cannot get enough gas to keep running, the body that oversees Britain’s electricity grid has warned.
The National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) said on Thursday that the margins between peak demand and power supply this winter are expected to be sufficient and similar to recent years.
But in the face of the “challenging” winter facing European energy supplies following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the grid operator is planning for what would happen if there were no imports of electricity from Europe.
To tackle a loss of imports from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, there are two gigawatts of coal-fired power plants on stand-by to fire up if needed to meet demand.
In the “unlikely” worst-case scenario, the ESO said, if there are not enough gas supplies for the gas-fired power plants—which produced 43 percent of Britain’s electricity over the last year—it could force distributors to cut off electricity to households and businesses for three-hour blocks during the day.
“In the unlikely event we were in this situation, it would mean that some customers could be without power for pre-defined periods during a day—generally this is assumed to be for three-hour blocks,” the ESO said.
It said the number of people left without electricity would depend on how many gas-powered stations would be forced to shut down because of gas shortages.
Truss Downplays Blackout Fears
Asked about the ESO warning, Prime Minister Liz Truss said the UK has “good energy supplies” and “can get through the winter.”Truss told reporters during a visit to the Czech Republic, “We have interconnectors with our European partners, we’re working on more gas supplies, we’re working on building out nuclear energy, building out wind energy, so we do have a secure supply of energy.”
She added, “We do have good energy supplies in the UK, we can get through the winter, but of course I am always looking for ways that we can improve the price for consumers.”
Truss has previously said she would not be telling people to ration their energy use this winter.
Cutting Peak-Time Demand
Climate minister Graham Stuart said on Friday that the government is not looking at reducing overall energy use.Instead, he said, it is supporting the energy regulator to devise solutions to provide incentives for businesses and consumers to potentially cut peak-time energy demand if needed.
Stuart insisted that because of the nature of the energy system, the government’s message is not to reduce overall consumption.
“In other countries it’s more about reducing overall energy use. For us, it’s not so much about that, it’s about reducing the demand at time of peak,” he told LBC radio.
