Doing laundry at night in UK could keep France’s lights on

BRITISH households could be paid to help prevent blackouts in France this winter, under plans by National Grid.

The company in charge of keeping Britain’s lights on is prepared to ask households to cut their energy usage so that more power can be exported to the Continent to avert blackouts there.

The deployment, which will be only in “occasional and exceptional” circumstances, comes amid concern about blackouts due to energy shortages caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine and outages on France’s nuclear fleet.

Britain’s power supplies are connected to the Continent’s by undersea cables through which electricity is constantly traded back and forth. Network operators on all sides hope that neighbours will help each other if shortages arise in their territory.

To bolster supplies, National Grid plans to pay households to cut usage when needed. This could see people paid to, for example, run washing machines overnight instead of at peak times. It is also paying coal-fired power plants to stay open longer than planned.

National Grid’s electricity system operator told industry it was willing to use both measures “to support exports” if other measures fail. It would not do so if there wasn’t enough power for British households. A spokesman added it would “expect similar assistance” from its Continental counterparts.

The payments for households are ultimately funded by consumer bills. National Grid is paying suppliers £3 per kilowatt-hour for demand saved. It plans 12 test runs, meaning households could be in line for payments of £100 or more. The first demonstrations will be in the weeks of Nov 21 and 28.

Electricity trades between Britain and the Continent according to prices. However, grid operators can intervene to protect domestic demand. In July, National Grid paid Belgium’s operator a record high of £9,724 per megawatt hour to get power into London amid network constraints.

Britain tends to need to import some power from the Continent to manage peak demand. France has been a major exporter to Britain, but has several nuclear reactors offline due to maintenance or corrosion problems.