Energy supplies warning as wind power set to fall in cold snap

‘The prospect of blackouts affecting older people’s heating and electricity is incredibly worrying’

NATIONAL Grid is on standby to alert households to cut electricity usage amid a looming supply squeeze.

The grid operator has warned that supplies will be tight this weekend as wind levels drop amid a cold snap.

It may use “enhanced actions” to shore up supplies. These include a new scheme under which households can be paid to use less electricity, for example by not using the washing machine.

Running extra coal-fired plants is another option. National Grid said: “Margins are expected to be tighter this week, particularly for the next few days. “Our control room has a range of operational tools available to manage this.”

Weather warnings are in force across much of the UK until Sunday, with the Met Office warning that the ice, snow and sub-zero conditions brought by Arctic air will last for at least a week.

Charities warned that vulnerable elderly people were “incredibly worried”. Morgan Vine, head of policy at Independent Age, said: “The prospect of blackouts affecting older people’s heating and electricity supply this winter is incredibly worrying.

“Not being able to put the lights on or keep warm enough could put many older people’s health at risk, increasing the chance of falls and making health conditions worse. Many older people rely on equipment that needs continuous power, have telephones connected to their broadband routers or use their TV or radio to stay connected.”

Concerns have been mounting over energy supplies following cuts in Russian gas exports, affecting supplies of fuel for heating and electricity generation. In the coming days electricity supplies are set to be affected by fluctuating levels of wind, while nuclear capacity has also fallen due to closures this year.

It will leave Britain more reliant on imports from the Continent, despite concerns about the availability of French supplies amid outages on its nuclear fleet. Britain was exporting power to France yesterday afternoon as cold weather on the Continent also fuelled an increase in demand.

Already the cold snap, dubbed the “Troll of Trondheim”, has seen schools in Scotland shut with two inches of snow in Aboyne, Aberdeenshire and Althnaharra in the Highlands. Steve Willington, the Met Office chief meteorologist, warned of an “increasing risk of snow as the week progresses”.

In Sheffield, the Red Cross has been drafted in and a “major incident” declared, after a burst water main left thousands without gas. Four people were killed across the UK in road collisions on icy roads. Paul Buckworth of power market specialists Enappsys, said higher demand because of the cold weather and less windy conditions were the main problems.

He said: “National Grid Electricity System Operator’s forecasts assume 4 gigawatts of imports into Great Britain from interconnected markets. This level of imports is stated to be as per their Winter Outlook base case scenario, but they note that actual flows will be driven by market price.”

According to National Grid forecasts published on Wednesday, wind generation in Britain is set to fall to 2.9 gigawatts today and 1.1GW on Sunday, compared to 11GW on Tuesday.

That would leave the buffer of spare capacity falling below the levels National Grid deems adequate. Wind generation is also expected to be relatively low on Saturday, although demand in the evening is likely to be lower as millions drop other activities to watch England’s World Cup match.

Electricity supply and demand has to be constantly matched to avert blackouts. The outlook for any given period becomes clearer nearer the time as traders start to lock in their positions and weather forecasts sharpen. National Grid has to give 24 hours formal notice of any requirement for consumers to cut their usage, and had not given any as of last night.

Michael Gove, by his own admission, is something of a coking expert.

But he proved pretty knowledgeable about coal too. Yesterday, he addressed MPS about the approval of a new metallurgical coal mine in Cumbria. Green groups were said to be “furious” about this (as always), but not quite as much as an incandescent Sir Lindsay Hoyle. After blasting Gove for failing to provide an advance copy of his statement, the Speaker suspended Parliament for five minutes’ reading time.

Eventually, this was pushed back for a whole hour; not, as far as I could tell, because MPS are remedial readers (though, admittedly, less than half of them passed a Year 6 SATS test in Parliament earlier this week), but to give Hansard time to make a proper transcript.

When we returned, Gove’s opposite number was also fuming. “What on earth is the Government thinking?” foghorned Lisa Nandy, jabbing a finger across the despatch box. “Where is the ambition? Where is the leadership?” The new mine, she said, would be akin to putting “200,000 extra cars on our roads every year”. (It wouldn’t, of course, unless Labour plans to make steel by knitting it – but her backbenchers cheered anyway.) Given Nandy’s levels of wind power, plugging her into the National Grid would have provided enough clean energy to supply the whole of Wigan.

The Secretary of State wooed his opponents with a classic Govian gambit – disarming them with flamboyant politeness. Despite his resemblance to a 1930s bank clerk, this was Gove in silver-tongued lawyer mode, the swotty Sir Galahad of the front bench. He shovelled out the extravagant compliments with Stakhanovite zeal, and idiosyncratic hand-gestures – imagine someone caressing a poltergeist.

“In her question, I fear she elided the difference between coal used for metallurgical purposes, and coal used for energy,” he said to Nandy almost sorrowfully, as if this were a regrettable (yet entirely accidental) oversight on her part. When Alan Brown of the SNP snarkily accused Gove of pandering to “Tory backbench climate-change cynics”, he reverted to Sir Humphrey-ish mandarin politeness once again. Gesturing across at Nandy, he half-swooned, “I think we all know where the ambition and where the leadership is and it’s sitting right across from me.”

This was probably intended as a side-swipe at Sir Keir Starmer, but it sounded more like an admission of Tory guilt. Boldly, from one who’d failed on basic photocopying, Gove repeatedly urged MPS to read the 340-page statement from the independent planning inspector.

Not for the first time, the greatest firepower came from the backbenches.

Ashfield MP Lee Anderson reminded the House that Ed Miliband – Labour’s answer to Greta Thunberg – had once intervened to prevent the closure of a colliery in his constituency, using the identical logic that importing coal from abroad would be worse. Labour MPS wrinkled their noses. Meanwhile, Galahad-gove praised 2015 Miliband for his “valuable contribution to this debate”.