Britain can meet winter energy demands, National Grid reports

Britain has enough stockpiled electricity and gas to power the country through the winter, even after the Brexit transition period ends, according to a report by the National Grid.

The British power firm announced there should be sufficient energy through power links with Europe to meet the demand for the 2020/21 winter period.

This remains true even as Britain prepares to enter another lockdown period to combat the growing second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement, National Grid said: “We expect interconnector flows to be unaffected by the end of the EU transition period ... furthermore, even in the highly unlikely event of no interconnector flows between Britain and continental Europe, we have the tools and capabilities to ensure security of supply."

The UK's surplus power margin is currently forecast at 4.8 gigawatts (GW), far lower than the 7.8 GW forecast last winter.

This lower surplus is thanks to generation outages, but the Grid has assured the public the surplus remains within the limit to power the country and is still above the limits present from 2015-17.

The outages have caused the National Grid to put out a warning of potential outages for the next few days.

They announced they would attempt to keep generation going to prevent shortages as the current cold spell continues.

Demand for energy dropped by as much as 18% during the pandemic but has since started to return to normal levels as winter sets in.

Despite the number of people working from home throughout the Covid-19 crisis, the lack of commercial and office heating needed should balance the offset, the National Grid announced.

The total gas demand is set to be 50.9 cubic metres. This is comparable to the levels displayed last year.

They concluded that domestic and European gas levels continue to be strong on the chance that gas demand exceeds these forecasts.

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