National Grid ordered back-up coal power stations to warm on Thursday as the UK’s energy market remains tight and exports to France soar.
Colder weather had led to hiked energy demand across the UK and Europe, worsened by the closure of 13 out of 56 nuclear reactors in France on Wednesday.
As a result, an average 2.11GW was exported hourly to France during the day, up from the weekly average of 0.2GW, according to the Grid’s electricity system operating wing (ESO).
As of Thursday morning exports were still running at 1.04GW, according to data from grid.iamkate.com, with France’s nuclear output down to 44GW, far below its 2021 capacity of 61GW.
France has suffered from its reliance on its aging nuclear power stations, which are operated by state-owned EDF, with almost half of its reactors being closed at some point last year due to heat waves and overdue maintenance works.
Paul Dorfman, who chairs the academic thinktank Nuclear Consulting Group, said: “These fluxes, prompted by the parlous state of the French nuclear fleet aren't good for affordability, reliability, sustainability.”
National Grid is currently selling the power to France at around £240/MWh, which Dorfman added would “be painful for EDF, which was dumping power to us last week at less than half that”.
UK spot today was £113.5/MWh while French prices are €150MW/h according to RTE, France’s power grid operator.
Drax Group (LSE:DRX) and EDF operate the UK’s contingency coal-fired power stations, kept from decommissioning by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy last year, amid fears of energy shortages this winter.
The ESO had ordered some of these to warm early this week, including EDF’s West Burton station and two of Drax’s North Yorkshire units, but these were later stood down.
It suggested the stations would only be used on Thursday “if required,” with domestic demand unlikely to rise too high given warmer forecasted temperatures for this end of this week.