BRITAIN came “within a whisker” of blackout risks on Wednesday as wind power plunged in freezing weather – raising fresh fears about the impact of the Government’s net-zero crusade.
The UK’s grid operator has been accused of failing to predict the peak demand for energy during the recent cold snap and not being transparent with the public about how close we were to blackouts.
At the same time, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband was slammed for his over reliance on wind and solar power, as he rushes to decarbonise the economy.
“This should be a real wake-up call about the dangers of relying on weather-based generation,” Kathryn Porter, a respected independent energy consultant, said.
The grid operator, National Energy System Operator (NESO), warned on Tuesday that there was an insufficient buffer to keep the country powered during peak evening demand
Despite weather forecasts predicting freezing temperatures, the Grid had been caught on the back foot as less windy weather made wind turbines less effective.
As cold temperatures affected the whole of Europe, it was also unable to get as much power via interconnectors than it had thought.
The grid had assumed that it would be able to import 6.6 Gigawatts during “tight margins” but only 6.26 Gigawatts had been available.
Meanwhile, as Brits followed Health Secretary Wes Streeting‘s advice to turn on their heating demand for power was 46.8 Gigawatts – 2.4 Gigawatts higher than its peak demand expectation.
“This is a huge error”, Ms Porter said the risk was at the highest level since 2011 and “had just one power station tripped, demand control would have been a real prospect.”
Claire Coutinho, Shadow Energy Secretary, told The Sun: “Ed Miliband‘s obsession with wind and solar, far from giving us energy security will leave us out of pocket and at the mercy of foreign imports.
“As I said last year, we need to build more gas power plants and nuclear, so we can have cheap reliable energy.”
To keep the lights on, the Grid had to fork out £21million by spending ten times the usual daily rate to ask gas power plants to keep running.
Ms Porter accused the NESO of not being transparent with the public about how close Britain was to not having enough power.
“NESO used almost every last megawatt available with just 580 MW of cushion – only two thirds of the contingency that should be held.
“But because NESO tells everyone things are fine, even market participants may not realise just how close we came to demand control or blackouts,” she said.
Demand control is another term for rationing energy, by asking factories and other industries to reduce their power usage at peak times to ensure there is enough.
The grid paid out an eye watering £5,500 per megawatt hour to “balance” the power demand.
This meant that energy giant Vitol’s Rye House gas plant in Hertfordshire and Uniper’s Connah Quay station in northern Wales was paid £2,900 per megawatt hour to address the short fall.
The power stations were scheduled to be switched off, and then demanded more money from the Grid to turn back on.
Figures from the Grid show that gas is currently being used for 50% of the country’s energy needs, while wind has dropped to just 17.6%.
Experts said that it highlighted the risks of relying on renewable energy and not having power stations scheduled to run during winter.
Ms Porter also said it highlighted that the Grid had been overly optimistic in its Winter Outlook.
Greg Jackson, boss of Octopus Energy, said the huge sums paid to Vitol and Uniper were a “grotesque example of how the energy system screws consumers.”
NESO now answers to Mr Miliband after the government spent £630million taking control of it.
Last year it published a report that said his Clean Power 2030 mission was only achievable if wind farms and pylons were built at a rate not seen for the last 50 years and Brits were willing to be told to ration their power usage when needed.
