Tue 18 October 2022:
Households in Britain may see blackouts and gas outages in the coming winter between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. amid an ongoing energy crisis, the head of the National Grid warned.
John Pettigrew said electricity and gas may be switched off on “those deepest, darkest evenings in January and February” if energy supplies suffer due to the war in Ukraine.
The move could be imposed on households between 4pm and 7pm on ‘really, really cold’ January and February days, if gas imports are reduced, John Pettigrew said.
Speaking at the Financial Times’s Energy Transition Summit on Monday, Pettigrew said the National Grid had not changed its “base case” that there would be sufficient gas and power to meet demand in Britain this winter.
However, he said the blackouts could occur if temperatures drop particularly low in a worst-case scenario.
His comments underlines a similar warning made by the National Grid in an unusual intervention earlier this month.
The grid warned that in the ‘unlikely’ scenario of there not being enough gas, some areas could face three-hour planned outages.
“In the context of the terrible things that are going on in Ukraine and the consequences of that, right that we set out what some of the potential risks could be.”
The National Grid earlier this month said it was “unlikely” that Britain would run low on supplies.
Britain gets 40% of its electricity from gas-fired power stations, with gas also heating the majority of homes, according to a report by Sky News.
Concerns about the problem have been simmering across Europe thanks to Vladimir Putin’s war with Ukraine.
The Russian President has turned off supplies to other countries on the continent, raising fears about energy security, due to the widespread reliance on Russian gas imports.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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