National Grid asked coal-fired power stations to warm up on Thursday for the third time this week in case they are needed, as cold weather across the UK continues.
Two units at Drax, in Yorkshire, and one at West Burton, in Nottinghamshire, were asked to fire up just before midnight on Wednesday. The West Burton unit was stood down at 5:13am, but the Drax units have continued to heat up, according to notifications sent to the industry.
National Grid has been active in balancing the UK’s energy supplies in recent days as it copes with colder, less windy weather, which pushes up energy use and causes power generation from wind to drop.
It was the third time in a week that the National Grid’s Electricity Supply Operator (ESO) has asked coal-fired stations to warm up in case they were needed.
National Grid has also been running its demand flexibility service for the first time this month outside trials. The service involves energy suppliers paying some households with smart meters for energy reductions, helping to reduce peak demand, which means it has less need to draw on more polluting energy sources when energy use rises in the evenings. Some businesses were already paid to reduce energy use.
In total, National Grid is expected to pay just over £3m to suppliers for the service over Monday and Tuesday, with about £850,000 on the first day, and £2.1m for the longer session on Tuesday.
In the future, the service is likely to be much more widespread and electric cars and home batteries will play an increasing role in balancing the grid.
Drax, the owner of the Yorkshire units, and West Burton, owned by France’s EDF, agreed in the summer to extend the lives of their coal-fired generation units through the winter in exchange for fees as the UK government looked to shore up Britain’s energy supplies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Drax and West Burton plants had been due to close their coal operations in the autumn to reduce use of the more polluting fuel, but their owners agreed to keep them open until at least March if needed by National Grid.
A National Grid ESO spokesperson said: “The ESO has issued a notification that we will warm winter contingency coal units for potential use on Thursday 26 January. This notification is not confirmation that these units will be used on Thursday, but that they will be available to the ESO, if required. The ESO as a prudent system operator has these tools for additional contingency to operate the network as normal.”
