National Grid moves to assure over power crunch this winter
National Grid has sought to assure British households that it will be able to keep the lights on this winter.
The company's chief executive Steven Holliday said that historically, between 2003-2008, it issued around seven alerts a year.
"We have got used to a lower amount, but if we went back to those levels it is not necessarily something to worry about," he said.
Last week National Grid had to issue its first "notice of insufficient system margin" in three years, following power station shutdowns and a lack of power generation from wind farms.
This led to emergency measures such as paying utilities companies like Centrica to keep reserve capacity available, and large energy users like Tata Steel to reduce their power usage.
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Such an notice – a notification of insufficient system margin – was last issued in 2012, although it was later cancelled by the company.
The UK's power supply is becoming increasingly squeezed due to the closure of old, uneconomic power stations and the failure to replace them with new ones.
In July National Grid warned that it's facing the tightest power supplies in a decade.
It said that the difference between how much power can be generated and possible peak demand, the spare capacity margin, would fall from 4.1 per cent to 1.2 per cent this year.
But emergency powers will provide an additional 2.6 GW of capacity and could increase the spare capacity margin to 5.1 per cent.