{"id":1740,"date":"2022-09-30T05:59:18","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T05:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.uk\/?p=1740"},"modified":"2022-09-30T05:59:18","modified_gmt":"2022-09-30T05:59:18","slug":"britain-becomes-an-electricity-exporter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/?p=1740","title":{"rendered":"Britain becomes an electricity exporter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr Iain Staffell, Professor Richard Green, Professor Tim Green and Dr Malte Jansen \u2013 Imperial College London <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the first time in over a decade, Britain has become a net exporter of electricity.  The 3 months to June saw 8% of the electricity generated here (5.5 TWh) get sent abroad, the largest amount ever recorded.  This stands in sharp contrast to other forms of energy: Britain imports around \u00bc of its oil, \u00bd its gas and \u00be of its coal<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britain had a trade surplus of 5% of electricity generated (8% exported minus 3% imported), with a net value of \u00a3500m per month.  Britain\u2019s exports could have been higher if it wasn\u2019t for a fire at the IFA interconnector<\/a> to France back in September 2021.  This halved the link\u2019s capacity from 2 to 1 GW, with full service not expected until the end of this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historically, Britain has been an importer of electricity, with an average of 8% of electricity coming from our neighbours over the last decade.  This long-term trade imbalance stems from it being historically cheaper to import power than to generate more power here.  France had cheap electricity from its large fleet of nuclear reactors, and more recently British power stations face an additional tax on the CO2<\/sub> they produce<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, why the turnaround?  Prices on the continent have risen even further than in Britain because of low capacity and gas supplies.  France has suffered from extensive capacity shortages, with more than half of its 56 nuclear reactors offline either for summer maintenance, to repair corrosion and cracking in the reactor cores<\/a>, or because they could not be cooled during the summer heatwaves<\/a>.  Germany is also suffering from a chronic shortage of gas as Russia is withholding exports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Share of British electricity that was imported and exported each quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A growing export market is good for producers, as they can earn more for their generation by selling abroad, and good for the country\u2019s balance sheet (the current trade deficit is \u00a310 billion per month<\/a>).  But it can be bad news for consumers<\/a>, as more competition for the electricity that is generated here pushes up prices \u2013 particularly unwelcome when prices are already at a crisis point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Norway has threatened to impose export controls<\/a> on electricity to protect consumers, as its hydro reservoirs fall to their lowest levels since 1996.  Norway has been exporting more than usual to Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands in response to power shortages on the continent.  Britain\u2019s electricity trade with Norway is more balanced though, importing 0.66 TWh and exporting 0.44 TWh over the last 3 months.  Effectively, the UK has been paying Norway \u00a3117\/MWh to use their enormous hydro storage to balance out our wind and solar farms.[1]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This suggests there is value in increasing the amount of pumped hydro energy storage in the UK.  This is the main technology used for long-duration energy storage<\/a>, which unlike batteries can charge for 8 or more hours at a time.  This is essential for balancing weather-dependent renewable sources, such as solar power which needs to be shifted between day and night time, and wind has shortfalls and surpluses over timescales of days or even weeks<\/a>.  Britain has just under 3 GW of pumped hydro storage capacity, less than half that of comparable countries like Germany.  Given that there is now 39 GW of wind and solar power, it is no wonder that the job of balancing their variability is being outsourced to neighbouring countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the country\u2019s focus is all on the cost of energy, the threat of neighbours restricting their exports to us, or needing to import electricity from us, raises the issue of Britain\u2019s energy security.  Coal-fired power stations are being paid around \u00a3250m<\/a> to stay online for the coming winter<\/a>, rather than continue their decommissioning.  In August, the Rough gas storage facility gained approval to reopen<\/a> after closing on economic grounds in 2017, nearly doubling the UK\u2019s capacity for storing natural gas.  Meanwhile, National Grid conducted a four-day wargame exercise<\/a> to prepare the energy system for all eventualities, amid fears of rolling blackouts if gas supplies fail to materialise during winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/sup> The average wholesale price of electricity in Britain weighted by the amount imported from Norway, minus the price weighted by the amount exported to Norway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first time in over a decade, Britain has become a net exporter of electricity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1757,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-q2-2022"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1740"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1766,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740\/revisions\/1766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}