U.K. Power Grid Takes Emergency Steps to Prevent Blackouts

(Bloomberg) -- National Grid Plc is taking unprecedented action to ensure it can keep the lights on this weekend, as the combination of record low demand during a public holiday weekend and high solar levels threaten blackouts.

The network operator struck a deal with Electricite de France SA to cut supply at its Sizewell nuclear plant by half for at least six weeks. National Grid will also offer small wind and solar generators money to switch off if needed and has made a request to the U.K. energy regulator for emergency powers to disconnect these installations if necessary.

The unusual measures are needed because demand for power is 20% lower than normal as measures to contain the coronavirus have shut industry and kept people at home for weeks.

Blackouts can happen when there’s too much demand or too little. National Grid has never had to cope with such low demand on the network and it’s happening at the same time as sunny weather is boosting solar supply.

This chart shows high solar output forecast for U.K. in the next week:

“These are really difficult times,” Fintan Slye, director of the system operator at National Grid, said in an interview on Bloomberg Radio. “Low levels of demand are a sign of low levels of economic activity in the economy as a whole and businesses and households are under pressure.”

Cutting supply from EDF’s Sizewell, one of the U.K.’s largest generators, won’t only reduce the amount of power on the system, it will make it easier to stabilize the grid if something were to unexpectedly go wrong that would cause the lights to go out.

Demand is forecast to fall as low as 14.4 gigawatts overnight on Sunday, according to National Grid. The problem isn’t just this weekend. National Grid is expecting the impact from the virus to last for months leaving the system at risk of an overload when wind or solar generation is high.

EDF will be paid not to generate from Sizewell but it has also opted to reduce output at its Torness-2 unit without a contract. In France, parent company EDF has warned that low demand will mean output from its nuclear stations will fall by more than a fifth this year. Its output is near the lowest since at least 2012 after about a dozen plants were taken offline in April.

In Sweden, two reactors at Vattenfall’s Ringhals plant are idle because prices are below the level where they break even for most of the time.

The timing of the lockdown has coincided with ideal conditions for solar generation. Both Britain and Germany have seen record levels in the past month. As a result, the U.K. has been able to go 28 days without needing coal for power generation.

“It’s a function of low demand and sunny days but also a more long-term transformation that has been underway in the energy sector with an increase in renewables, particularly solar and wind,” Slye said

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.