British households and businesses may suffer from planned blackouts this winter if power plants cannot get enough gas to keep running, the body that oversees Britain’s electricity grid has warned.
The National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) said on Thursday that the margins between peak demand and power supply this winter are expected to be sufficient and similar to recent years.
But in the face of the “challenging” winter facing European energy supplies following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the grid operator is planning for what would happen if there were no imports of electricity from Europe.
To tackle a loss of imports from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, there are two gigawatts of coal-fired power plants on stand-by to fire up if needed to meet demand….