Balancing Britain’s power grid cost £47.9 million in a day — The Guardian

Great Britain’s electricity grid operator spent £47.9 million in a single day balancing the system: it paid wind farms in regions with excess electricity to reduce generation and brought gas-fired power plants online where supplies were constrained. The Guardian reports that these costs nearly reached a record level.

The total included a £1.6 million payment for one half-hour period. Balancing costs are included in household energy bills.

Bottlenecks in the grid

The high costs were caused by constraints on transmitting electricity across the country. According to consultancy LCP Delta, wind and hydroelectric power plants with a combined capacity of around 9 gigawatts were paid that day not to generate electricity. The company estimates that this volume would have been enough to power more than 8 million typical households.

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Instead, the operator had to pay to bring gas and biomass power plants online and buy more electricity from Europe via high-voltage subsea cables. The constraints most often affect wind farms in Scotland, where there are insufficient high-voltage lines to transmit the electricity generated to areas of higher demand in the south of the country.

Costs are rising

In September, the total cost of balancing the electricity grid reached £505 million, the highest monthly figure on record. Over the next year, these costs are expected to amount to £3.2 billion.

The situation has intensified concerns over the pace of the £150 billion energy grid upgrade, which is failing to keep up with the connection of new renewable energy facilities. Several days earlier, the National Energy System Operator sought emergency assistance from the French operator, which agreed at the last minute to supply electricity to Great Britain on Monday and Friday of the previous week.