12 hours ago
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Households will be called on to boost their consumption of Great Britain’s record renewable energy this summer to help balance the power grid and lower energy bills.
Under the new plans, people could be encouraged to run dishwashers and washing machines or charge up their electric vehicles when there is more wind and solar power than the electricity grid needs.
The plan will be delivered with the help of energy suppliers, which may choose to offer heavily discounted or free electricity to their customers during specific periods when the energy system operator predicts there will be a surplus of electricity.
Many suppliers already offer more than 2m households the opportunity to pay lower rates for electricity used during off-peak hours but this will be the first time that the system operator will use this tool to help balance the grid.
The National Energy System Operator (Neso) hopes that by issuing a market notice to call on energy users to increase their consumption it can avoid making hefty payments to turn wind and solar farms off when demand for electricity is low, which are ultimately paid for through energy bills.
The offer could prove particularly popular this summer as households brace for the government’s cap on dual fuel energy bills to rise to almost £2,000 a year from July due to soaring energy market costs since the US-Israeli war on Iran began.
The operator set out its plans to pay for higher energy use in advance of what is expected to be a season of record renewable energy, and which could be the first summer the grid runs entirely on zero-carbon electricity.
Great Britain set a double solar-power record earlier this month when the sunny spring weather powered the grid to new solar energy records on two consecutive days.
The solar record was confirmed less than a fortnight after Britain’s windfarms reached a record high, driving gas-fired power generation to a two-year low. Great Britain is also expected to be a net importer of electricity from continental Europe where high nuclear power and renewable energy generation is expected this summer.
The abundance of low-carbon electricity supplies means that a bright, breezy summer weekend could cause parts of the electricity system to become overloaded with renewable energy, raising the risk of an unplanned blackout, due to bottlenecks in Great Britain’s electricity grids.
In the future, grid upgrades are expected to make it easier for renewable energy generated far away from major population centres to be transmitted to more areas of demand without the need for curtailment payments.
There is also likely to be more power consumed by EVs, heat pumps and green hydrogen makers across the country by the 2030s, which will further reduce the need to curb green energy.
Businesses and manufacturers will also be able to boost their demand for electricity at certain times in exchange for better rates.
Great Britain is also expected to have enough gas to meet its needs this summer, when energy demand is typically lower, despite the global gas supply crisis triggered by the Middle East conflict.
The owner of Great Britain’s gas grids, National Gas, expects the country to rely primarily on North Sea gas from Norway and the UK to meet its summer demand.
The UK’s domestic gas supplies are forecast to fall by 6% compared with last year but this decline will be offset by higher imports from Norway and the global liquefied natural gas market, where prices have rocketed since Iran assumed control of Gulf exports via the strait of Hormuz.
Neso does not include a view on market prices in its summer outlook and does not expect any significant changes to Britain’s gas security over the summer months. But its analysts are understood to be monitoring the impact of a blockade on Gulf oil and gas exports before the winter when gas is in greater demand for heating and power plants and any impact will become more apparent.
