Winter blackouts are now a real possibility after a fire took out a key cable that ships electricity to the U.K. from France.
Electricity is now so scarce in Britain that any more grid mishaps or unexpected plant outages could leave millions without power. Even before the fire, National Grid Plc’s buffer of spare winter capacity was set to be the smallest for five years.
“If anything goes wrong, we might not have anything left in the back pocket,” said Tom Edwards, a consultant at Cornwall Insight Ltd., an adviser to the government and utilities. “If a nuke trips offline or something else big, that could cause issues because we might not have anything to replace it.”
Beyond the immediate chaos a blackout would cause, a prolonged shutdown could have severe economic consequences. Just as Britain emerges from the pandemic, power outages would send energy prices even higher, compounding concerns about inflation and adding to the rising costs businesses are already shouldering for raw materials.
Britain imports and exports power along six huge cables, and two of them are connected to France. The electricity flows to the market with highest price. On average, about 7.5% of U.K.’s demand has been met by power from France’s 56 nuclear plants this year.
The fire at a U.K. power converter station now means the supply from France is set to be diminished. It will cut off half of the cable’s supply until the end of March 2022, meaning the shortage will impact prices well into next year. National Grid said the rest of the capacity is set to come online Sept. 25, but that will depend on the extent of the damage and whether the cable can be operated safely.
