Britain narrowly avoided blackouts on Wednesday as plummeting temperatures and reduced wind power generation forced grid operators to work overtime to maintain electricity supply.
According to data from the Amira platform, the national grid’s surplus electricity capacity had dwindled to just 580 megawatts (MW) at 5:30 PM on Wednesday.
This critically low level meant that even an outage at a “relatively small” power plant could have triggered widespread blackouts, one expert warned.
However, on Thursday, the National Energy System Operator (Neso) refuted these concerns, asserting that power supplies were never in immediate danger of failing.
Neso had previously forecasted that the spare power available during the coldest weeks of winter would reach its highest levels in five years.
However, Kathryn Porter, an independent energy consultant, remarked, “On January 8, the GB power market nearly experienced blackouts as Neso utilized almost every available megawatt.
“This should serve as a clear warning about the risks of depending on weather-based energy sources.”
However, Neso rebutted these concerns, stating that it had maintained approximately 1.4 gigawatts (GW) in emergency reserves that remained unused on Wednesday. These reserves are set aside for worst-case scenarios, such as the sudden failure of a major power generator, and were in addition to the 580MW of surplus capacity.
Craig Dyke, Neso’s Director of System Operations, commented: “Neso operates Great Britain’s electricity network to one of the highest levels of safety and reliability anywhere in the world.
Yesterday, our control room engineers utilized standard operational tools to manage the electricity network, ensuring we maintained sufficient electricity for our standard operating contingency. At no point did electricity supplies fall below anticipated demand, and our engineers were able to rebalance the system without needing to implement emergency measures.
One of the standard operating reserves held by Neso at all times is for the largest power generator on the system, which last night was 1,400MW, not the 580MW that has been reported online.”
This clarification follows Neso’s earlier warning that electricity supplies on Wednesday would be particularly tight between 4pm and 7pm, leading to a series of alerts aimed at bringing more generators online throughout the day. As the grid operator, Neso is responsible for balancing supply and demand on the electricity system minute by minute.
However, officials were taken by surprise when their forecasts for evening peak demand were too low, as freezing temperatures caused households to stay home and increase power usage. Additionally, they faced a sharp decline in wind power generation and significant outages on interconnectors with Europe, preventing them from importing more power from neighboring countries like France.
