Brits can heave a sigh of relief that they won’t be working by candlelight next winter.
National Grid PLC (LSE:NG.)’s Electricity System Operator (ESO) has published its Early View of Winter Outlook report, showing a 9.4% margin between expected capacity and demand.
This is up from 7.4% last winter.
In raw numbers, the ‘de-rated margin’ as the ESO calls it, is expected to be 5.6 gigawatts (GW), up from 4.4GW last winter.
“Rebalancing in European energy markets has further reduced the risk of fuel shortages for gas generation in Great Britain and increased the resilience of interconnector imports to supply-side shocks,” the ESO said.
“We expect to have sufficient operational surplus throughout winter in our Base Case, even when we consider the expected natural variation of demand, wind and outages.
“There may be some tight days, and based on the current available information, these are most likely to be in late November, early December and late January.”
National Grid will publish a more comprehensive winter outlook in autumn.