UK households to be urged to use more power this summer as renewables soar | Renewable energy
Households will be asked to boost Great Britain’s record renewable energy consumption this summer to help stabilize the electricity grid and reduce energy bills.
Under new plans, people could be encouraged to run their dishwashers and washing machines or charge their electric vehicles when there is more wind and solar power than the electricity grid needs.
The plan will be implemented with the help of energy suppliers, who may choose to offer highly discounted or free electricity to their customers during certain periods when the power system operator anticipates a surplus of electricity.
Many suppliers already offer more than 2 million households the opportunity to pay lower rates for electricity used during off-peak hours, but this is the first time the system operator will use the tool to help balance the grid.
By issuing a market notification urging energy users to increase their consumption, the National Energy System Operator (Neso) hopes that it can avoid making high payments to shut down wind and solar power plants when electricity demand is low, and that these payments will ultimately be paid through energy bills.
The offer could be particularly popular this summer, as households expect the government’s dual-fuel energy bill cap to rise to around £2,000 a year from July due to rising energy market costs since the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran.
The operator has laid out plans to pay for higher energy use ahead of what is expected to be a record renewable energy season and could be the first summer the grid runs entirely on zero-carbon electricity.
Great Britain broke a double solar energy record earlier this month when sunny spring weather fed the grid with new solar energy records for two days in a row.
The solar power record was confirmed less than two weeks after Britain’s wind farms hit a record high, pushing gas-fired power generation to a two-year low. Great Britain is also expected to be a net importer of electricity from Continental Europe, where high nuclear and renewable energy production is expected this summer.
The abundance of low-carbon electricity sources means a bright, windy summer weekend could cause parts of the electricity system to become overloaded with renewable energy, increasing the risk of an unplanned outage due to bottlenecks in Great Britain’s power grids.
In the future, grid improvements are expected to make it easier to deliver renewable energy generated away from major population centers to more demand areas without the need for outage payments.
It is also likely that more energy will be consumed by EVs, heat pumps and green hydrogen producers across the country by the 2030s, further reducing the need to reduce green energy.
Businesses and manufacturers will also be able to increase their electricity demand at certain times in exchange for better rates.
Great Britain is also expected to have enough gas to meet its needs this summer, when energy demand is generally low despite a global gas supply crisis triggered by the conflict in the Middle East.
National Gas, which owns Great Britain’s gas networks, expects the country to rely primarily on North Sea gas from Norway and the United Kingdom to meet summer demand.
The UK’s domestic gas supply is expected to fall by 6% compared to last year, but this will be offset by higher imports from Norway and the global liquefied natural gas market, where prices have risen rapidly since Iran seized control of Gulf exports via the Strait of Hormuz.
Neso does not include a view on market prices in its summer outlook and does not expect any significant change in the UK’s gas security in the summer. But analysts are understood to be monitoring the impact of the blockade on Gulf oil and gas exports ahead of winter, when gas is in greater demand for heating and power plants and any impact will be more pronounced.
