Keeping the lights on

This winter will see the margin between supply and demand in the UK’s electricity grid at a lower level than for most of the last decade. To take us through the winter months – when electricity demand is at its highest – National Grid has a suite of grid management measures.

This report examines the contingency measures available to the Grid to keep the system in balance. They include maintaining a number of plants on standby, reducing industrial demand, asking power stations to boost output and ramping up imports, among others. It finds that increased use of demand-side response (DSR) could have reduced the cost incurred by invoking National Grid contingency measures on a day of very high demand last winter by one-fifth.

To download a copy of the report, click here.