UK Electricity Grid Rescued by Gas as Massive Winter Wind Droughts Disrupt Supply
by Chris Morrison 18 April 2025 11:00 AM
Sunning himself in some Spanish spring sunshine, the British Prime Minister is no doubt relieved that the Supreme Court back home has given him some much needed guidance on the biology of a woman. But we must hope his holiday good humour is being disturbed by news that the breezes that will power his new socialist economic miracle went on strike during significant parts of the first quarter. In a colder-than-usual winter, windmill output fell by 11%, pushing up demand for gas and imports and causing a number of unstable and highly expensive price spikes. What dick is in charge at the Department of Energy, he might be asking himself.
Step forward Ed Miliband, whose entire political career now seems to rest on his ability to keep a straight face while stating that the unreliable breezes and sunbeams are cheaper than regular-as-clockwork gas. According to Montel Analytics, low levels of renewable generation and high demand drove gas-fired power production to its highest level since 2021 for the first three months of 2025. But this gas rescue act came at a large cost since Britain’s increasingly unstable electricity supply, which provides some of the highest prices in the world, showed wild cost swings in windless days in January. On at least two freezing winter days, wind production was more-or-less zero. Not untypical winter weather conditions also saw the sun fail to shine for a number of consecutive days. Some periods saw the wholesale peak-time electricity price top £160 per megawatt hour ((MWh). On January 8th, when winter high pressure stopped the wind blowing across the UK, the wholesale price soared to £300 MWh, while the sophisticated clearing price needed to balance the non-storable supply with instant demand soared to £2,900 MWh.
Gas-generated electricity rose to 26.8 TWh during the first quarter, a rise of 13% from Q4 2024 and the highest Q1 level for four years. This despite considerable new wind capacity coming online. Wind generation fell to its lowest first quarter output since 2020. Britain sits on huge reserves of onshore gas and offshore hydrocarbons but over the winter the Mad One ordered two remaining gas fracking wells near Blackpool to be destroyed. Despite an official admission that gas will be needed for renewable electricity back-up into the foreseeable future, new oil and gas exploration has been stopped. And continuing with the de-industrialising, job-destroying, national security harming themes, a new coking mine in Cumbria was recently knocked on the head and this may have contributed to the economic woes of steel-making at Britain’s last blast furnaces in Scunthorpe.
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/04/18/uk-electricity-grid-rescued-by-gas-as-massive-winter-wind-droughts-disrupt-supply/
