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Britain to rely on France to avoid blackouts this winter
Britain will rely on electricity from France to guard against the risk of blackouts this coming winter, officials have said.
The National Energy System Operator (Neso), which oversees Britain's electricity grid, said it would import power from France and other nearby European neighbours this winter to help backstop the network.
It plans to use the interconnectors linking the UK with France, Holland, Belgium, Norway and Denmark to back up the UK's own power stations on 'tight days' when supplies are stretched.
Interconnectors are high voltage cables laid across the seabed between the UK and its neighbours. Those currently in operation have a total capacity of about 9 gigawatts (GW), with plans to double that by 2030.
Details of the UK's expected reliance on electricity imports have emerged in Neso's early winter outlook report, which sets out its plans for coping with the colder months.
Officials said they expected 'sufficient operational surplus throughout winter, allowing for natural variations in weather'.
However, they added: 'There may be some tight days and early indications suggest these are most likely to occur in early December or mid-January.'
On these 'tight days', Neso will lean on imports from Europe to give the UK an extra safety margin of 6.6GW, or about 11pc of total demand, one of the highest buffers in recent years.
Brush with disaster
The large margin comes after a near disaster last Jan 8 when poor renewable power generation and soaring demand left grid operators scrambling to keep the lights on.
The maximum demand the UK could face this coming winter is about 60.5GW, Neso said – roughly equivalent to 20 large nuclear power stations of the kind under construction at Hinkley Point in Somerset.
Backup power supplies are essential to support the UK's power grid as the reliance on renewables such as wind and solar increases. British winters often include lengthy 'dunkelflaute' spells marked by low light levels, short days and low winds.
Such weather triggers a slump in renewable power generation and was a key cause of the brush with disaster in January. Some of the interconnectors Neso was relying on had also been shut down as a result of failures or maintenance.
Over the last year about 37pc of the UK's electricity has come from renewable sources but solar switches off at night and wind is highly variable, meaning alternative sources are important.
The UK is increasingly reliant on overseas generators with annual cost of power imports hitting £3.1bn in 2024 compared with £1bn in 2019, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Most electricity comes from France.
Longer-term projects include Xlinks – a planned 2,500-mile set of cables between the UK and Morocco, connecting with a 1,500 square mile array of wind and solar farms in the north African desert.
Spanish lessons
Managing supply and demand on the electricity grid is a vital job. Shortages or surpluses of electricity can cause voltage and frequency fluctuations that can trigger blackouts, as happened in Spain and Portugal in April.
A report into Spain's disastrous April blackout on Tuesday blamed power grid operator REE for having too few thermal power stations switched on.
Such power stations use the heat from nuclear reactors or from burning gas or coal to generate steam, which in turn spins heavy metal turbine generators at fixed speeds.
It means the electricity they produce has a very constant frequency and voltage, which helps to stabilise the whole grid.
REE did not have enough thermal power stations switched on during peak hours of April 28 when the surge caused a chain reaction leading to the power outage, Sara Aagesen, Spain's energy minister, said.
The report also criticised a number of power plant operators for not being switched on when they were being paid to operate.
The unnamed power plants 'should have controlled voltage and, moreover, many of them were economically remunerated to do so. They did not absorb all the reactive power that was expected in a context of high voltages,' she said.
