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A handful of Great Britain’s gas power plants were paid almost £4m to generate electricity for just a few hours on Tuesday evening as millions of sweltering viewers turned to air conditioning, electric fans and icy drinks during England’s second World Cup game.
The heatwave has caused electricity prices across Europe to surge this week amid higher demand for cooling and a string of power plant outages due to the record high temperatures.
In Great Britain, the energy system operator was also required to manage a jump in electricity demand during breaks in England’s goalless draw with Ghana as millions of viewers headed to make drinks at half-time and after the final whistle. However, the much-discussed hydration breaks failed to have an impact on power demand, experts said.
Gas plants were paid up to £1,000 a megawatt-hour (MWh) to ramp up their output during the evening to help battle the record high temperatures as Great Britain’s solar power began to wane; solar-charged batteries were used to manage the grid fluctuations during the match.
These prices are about 14 times the average power market price in June last year but Shivam Malhotra, the head of power trading at the consultancy LCP Delta, said there had been no signs that gas plants had been trying to “game” the market to secure higher prices for their power.
“These are the prices I would expect to see at the moment; they’re at about the right level to reflect the scarcity we can see in the market,” he said.
Gas plant owners have previously been accused of profiteering on receiving record high payments to generate power when electricity was in short supply during tight winter periods.
Malhotra estimates that England’s match added further stress to Great Britain’s power system by causing electricity demand to increase by about 300MW at half-time, and 225MW at full-time, as millions of viewers switched on their kettles.
“Interestingly, the controversial hydration breaks during both matches did not produce a noticeable change in demand which may reflect their short duration and unfamiliar timing. While they may help TV advertisers, there isn’t a clear benefit to electricity systems by spreading out the demand surges,” he said.
In total, the National Energy System Operator (Neso) paid about £3.85m to gas power plants to fire up between 5.30pm and 10.30pm on Tuesday, including £2.7m to ramp up the Seabank gas plant near Bristol owned by SSE, and £1m for power from Uniper’s Killingholme gas plant in North Lincolnshire.
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The system operator also made smaller payments to a handful of gas plants and energy storage projects, and paid about £2.9m to top up Great Britain’s power supplies with imported electricity from the continent.
Power plant operators were expected to continue to receive high payments on Wednesday after Neso released a rare summer power supply warning, asking plant owners to provide any extra electricity possible as the heatwave gets more intense. It later cancelled the warning, saying it had secured around 1.7GW of imported electricity from the continent to meet the demand, paying around £1,400 a MWh, or nearly 20 times the average electricity market price in June last year.
The high-pressure heat dome has caused wind speeds to plummet in a blow to renewable energy supplies, while about five power plants were forced on Tuesday to cut their generation due to the heat.
As solar power waned through the evening, Britain was forced to fire up more gas plants and increase its power imports from European markets which are also facing power plant outages.
In France, where temperatures have breached the 40C mark, four nuclear plants have been forced to lower their output because high river-water temperatures are making it more difficult to cool the reactors.
