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Low-wind heat dome days highlight UK dependence on power imports
On Thursday, cables from France alone supplied 11% of British demand, or 3.54 gigawatts, more than twice the output from the UK’s entire windfarm fleet at 10am.
A low-wind “heat dome” day has underscored how much Britain relies on cross-border power flows, even as the system has generally handled earlier renewable shocks, according to The Guardian Business. In the end, a prior solar drop-off did not cause grid flickers, and the National Energy System Operator, Neso, had predicted early declines in solar generation were manageable.
The article says that during the Thursday event, about a fifth of power to the British grid was coming from the continent at 10am. France alone accounted for 11% of demand, or 3.54 gigawatts, which the piece notes was more than twice the output at that time from the UK’s entire fleet of windfarms.
It attributes the economic appeal of interconnectors to potential security benefits from cross-border transfers, and to pricing differences, such as France’s nuclear-dominated generation being sometimes cheaper than UK gas-fired supply. The piece adds that, over a full year, the UK imports roughly a tenth of its electricity and that flows can reverse when UK renewables run surplus.
On the political side, the story highlights disruption and disputes around exports: Neso cut off exports to the Netherlands at short notice during 23 June, and an investigation is ongoing into what happened when the grid fell below operational frequency limits for almost two hours. It also notes that the FT reported that Neso instructed wholesale market traders not to export power via four interconnectors.