The UK’s power grid operator has issued a notice to the market to ask it to generate more back-up power after a ‘system margin shortfall’ caused by a lack of wind power.
The UK grid operator, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) warned electricity supplies may be tight on Monday morning as a result of low wind generation but it stressed that this is ‘not a warning of power cuts’ and that there is ‘no risk to customer electricity supplies.
NESO said it expects a shortfall of about 1.4 gigawatts during Monday morning’s peak period on November 9 and has asked the market to provide additional power generation as the margin tightens.
NESO said it was a “precautionary measure” to ensure there is headroom in the system to meet demand for electricity.
On Sunday night, it issued the electricity margin notice, which sends a message to the market that the operator would like more of a cushion between power demand and supply for a limited period.
This allows production to rise to increase capacity in the grid.
Neso said it was expecting a system margin shortfall of 1,388 megawatts from 6am to 11am on Monday.
“We have issued an electricity margin notice for tomorrow (Monday) morning, as a routine and precautionary measure, giving market participants the opportunity to make additional generation capacity available,” a Neso spokesperson said.
“This is not a warning of power cuts, there is no risk to customer electricity supplies, and customers do not need to take action – Great Britain’s electricity system remains secure.”
NESO says on its website that it uses these notices in order to ‘balance’ the system to ensure power cuts don’t occur.
It says: “One of our roles is to operate the electricity system and guide electricity from where it is generated to where it is needed. We don’t create or sell electricity – there’s an electricity market where that happens.
“To do this, we make sure the supply of electricity from the market always matches demand. It’s what we call ‘balancing’ the system, and it’s all managed in our national control room.
“Our control room experts have a set of tools at their disposal to help make this happen – the main one being the balancing mechanism – but it requires continuous communication with the electricity market, where the electricity is being created.
“This might mean asking generators to turn power up or down. Or we might ask them to increase or decrease demand.
“These notices are a routine way that we operate the system, and they don’t mean that electricity supply is at risk
“Because our analysts are constantly forecasting how much electricity will be needed at a given time – and providing this forecast to the market – normally only small adjustments will need to be made to match supply with demand.
“If demand or generation don’t happen as we forecast, we may have too much power or not enough power on the system at a given time.
“Occasionally, if we’re not able to match supply and demand through the normal mechanisms, we’ll send a more formal message to the electricity market to let them know.
“These messages are sometimes referred to as system warnings or notices. They’re a routine way that we communicate to the market and operate the system, and they don’t mean that electricity supply is at risk.
“We’re simply telling the market what we need.”
It adds: “If we can see that our normal safety margin for operating the system is not as big as we’d like, and we can’t address it through the normal mechanisms, then we would consider issuing an Electricity Margin Notice (EMN).
“This doesn’t mean we don’t have enough electricity to meet demand; it just means we’d like a larger cushion of spare capacity, and we want the market to provide it.”
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