Energy nationalism and interconnectors: the next power threat? | Nils Pratley
Solar eclipses are far easier to manage than Europe’s cross-border electricity politics In the end, the solar eclipse did not cause the electricity grid to flicker.
The early drop-off in solar generation was manageable, just as the National Energy System Operator (Neso), the state-owned body responsible for keeping the lights on, predicted.
Gas-fired generators still had to be paid nose-bleed prices to fire up, and power via high-voltage interconnectors to continental Europe was also expensively sourced.
But the system worked.
A summer of heatwaves, however, has highlighted European grids’ reliance on those interconnectors – including seven between the UK and the continent – in an age of extreme weather and greater use of intermittent renewables.
On Thursday, another low-wind “heat dome” day, a fifth of power to the British grid was coming from the continent at 10am.
Cables from France alone were meeting 11%, or 3.54 gigawatts, of demand, or more than twice as much as the output at that time from the UK’s entire fleet of windfarms.
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