England's goalless World Cup draw with Ghana on Tuesday added stress to Great Britain's power grid, causing electricity demand to spike by about 300 megawatts (MW) at half-time and 225 MW at full-time as millions of viewers switched on kettles and air conditioning during a heatwave. A handful of gas power plants were paid nearly £4 million to generate electricity for just a few hours to meet the surge.
Heatwave drives up electricity prices
The heatwave has sent electricity prices soaring across Europe this week, driven by higher demand for cooling and a series of power plant outages due to record high temperatures. In Great Britain, the energy system operator had to manage the demand jump during breaks in the match, though hydration breaks did not noticeably affect power demand, according to experts.
Gas plants were paid up to £1,000 per megawatt-hour to ramp up output during the evening as solar power waned. This is about 14 times the average power market price in June last year. However, Shivam Malhotra, head of power trading at consultancy LCP Delta, said there was no evidence of gas plants gaming the market. 'These are the prices I would expect to see at the moment; they’re at about the right level to reflect the scarcity we can see in the market,' he said.
Payments to gas plants and imports
The National Energy System Operator (Neso) paid about £3.85 million to gas power plants to operate between 5.30pm and 10.30pm on Tuesday. This included £2.7 million to ramp up SSE's Seabank gas plant near Bristol and £1 million for power from Uniper's Killingholme gas plant in North Lincolnshire. Smaller payments were made to other gas plants and energy storage projects, and about £2.9 million was spent on importing electricity from the continent.
Malhotra noted that the hydration breaks 'did not produce a noticeable change in demand, which may reflect their short duration and unfamiliar timing. While they may help TV advertisers, there isn’t a clear benefit to electricity systems by spreading out the demand surges.'
Power supply warnings and renewable challenges
On Wednesday, Neso issued a rare summer power supply warning, asking plant owners to provide extra electricity as the heatwave intensified. The warning was later cancelled after securing around 1.7 gigawatts of imported electricity from the continent, paying about £1,400 per megawatt-hour—nearly 20 times the average electricity market price in June last year.
The high-pressure heat dome caused wind speeds to plummet, reducing renewable energy supplies, while about five power plants were forced to cut generation due to the heat. As solar power waned, Britain had to fire up more gas plants and increase imports from European markets also facing outages. In France, where temperatures exceeded 40°C, four nuclear plants reduced output because high river-water temperatures hindered reactor cooling.
Gas plant owners have previously been accused of profiteering from high payments during tight winter periods, but Malhotra said current prices reflected market scarcity.
