National Grid steps up fight against blackout risk

The UK’s National Grid is taking extra measures to guard against the heightened risk of blackouts, as a string of recent unplanned outages threatens to halve the expected supply margins for this winter.

National Grid said on Tuesday morning that it will manage the increased risk of a supply shortfall this winter through a precautionary tender process for Supplemental Balancing Reserve (SBR).

“This is a sensible precaution to take while the picture for this winter remains uncertain,” said National Grid’s UK market operations director Cordi O’Hara.

“At this stage we don’t know if these reserve services will be needed, but they could provide an additional safeguard,” she added.

Last month Utility Week reported that the UK’s safety margins could halve after the unexpected loss of 3 GW of electricity generation capacity in recent months.

At the time, former top government official Jonathan Brearley told Utility Week the supply situation is “tight but manageable” if National Grid and Ofgem remain vigilant.

The fire-damaged Ferrybridge coal-fired power plant and four of EDF Energy’s nuclear reactors, taken offline due to safety concerns, are due to return later this year but delays would increase the risk of a supply shortfall.

Under an SBR contract capacity providers would be required to ramp up generation between 0600hrs and 2000hrs between November and February to meet peak demand.

“The actual volumes of SBR contracted, if any, will depend on how the situation evolves over the next two months, how the market responds, and whether prices offered in the tender offer value for money to consumers,” National Grid said.

These measures are in addition to the so-called ‘demand side balancing reserve’ which calls on participating large energy users with the flexibility to reduce electricity use by 330MW during winter 2014/15.

The DBSR is expected to rise to 800MW for winter 2015/16 when the risk of blackouts was believed to be at its greatest due to the mandatory shutdown of older plants before new capacity is ready to come online.

However, the string of high stake outages over recent months mean the looming capacity crunch could arrive a year earlier than anticipated.

National Grid said its new plans are backed by Ofgem and the Department of Energy and Cliamte Change.

Last month a spokesman for Ofgem told Utility Week: “While no system can ever give a 100 per cent guarantee, householders can be confident that National Grid has the right levers to help keep the lights on.”