Renewable energy providers may be paid to switch off as demand plummets over bank holiday weekend

Grid introduces ‘temporary system’ where smaller solar and wind operations can receive payments to reduce or switch off their power, writes Harry Cockburn

Breeze and sunshine to see high levels of renewable power generated over bank holiday weekend (Getty)

The UK’s energy demands are forecast to hit record lows this weekend, requiring the National Grid to take additional measures to manage the UK’s power network.

The coronavirus lockdown has caused demand for power to plummet an average of 15 to 20 per cent as businesses and manufacturing operations have been halted.

Over the bank holiday weekend the grid is preparing for demand to fall as low as 15GW on Saturday daytime, 14GW on Saturday night and just 13.8GW overnight on Sunday – well below half the average national demand of 31GW, measured over the last year.

At the same time, bright sunny weather with fair winds are set to cause solar and wind farms to generate high levels of power.

A spokesperson for the National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) told The Independent: “Reduced demand for electricity brings a different set of challenges for our control room but one we’re used to dealing with.

“Great Britain’s electricity system is one of the most reliable in the world and no one should be concerned about their electricity supply.”

Usual running of the grid control room involves asking all power generators (including fossil fuel power stations) to adjust how much power they’re putting into the system every half an hour to keep supply and demand in balance, the ESO said.

But the grid is also using a “new temporary solution” called the Optional Downward Flexibility Management (ODFM) service, which the ESO said is “to help us manage the system over the summer period”.

The system will pay smaller energy producers with facilities such as individual wind turbines and smaller solar arrays to stop putting power into the system.

Amy Weltevreden, structuring and optimisation manager at the ESO, said: “This is an opt-in service for small scale renewable generators to receive payments from National Grid ESO if we ask them to turn down or turn off their generation of electricity.”

The scheme has reportedly already seen a total of 2.4GW of power capacity from 170 smaller generators signed up to respond if the grid makes an instruction from its control room. This includes 1.5GW of wind and 700MW of solar energy.

Ms Weltevreden said: “If we’re anticipating the wind blowing at a given time when we’re also expecting low demand, we’re now able to instruct these smaller-scale distributed generators to reduce output to help balance the system. As with any actions we take to balance the electricity system, they’re carried out in economic order, with cheaper actions taken first, to ensure we operate the system as efficiently as possible for consumers.”

She added: “Although there are a lot of big wind farms connected to our national transmission system, much of the renewable electricity generated in Great Britain comes from these smaller units – what we call distributed or embedded generation. Because they’re not connected directly to our transmission system, in the past we haven’t had as much ability to control the power they’re producing to balance the grid.”