The heat wave jumps the price of electricity in the UK to '55 times'



The record heat wave that hit the UK caused a surge in electricity demand in the capital, London, which brought the UK government nearly 55 times more expensive to import electricity to meet the tight electricity situation. It was reported that it was found to have jumped up.

London's Record £ 9,724.54 per Megawatt Hour to Avoid a Blackout --Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-25/london-s-record-9-724-54-per-megawatt-hour-to-avoid-a-blackout

London paid a record price for electricity during its heatwave --The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/27/23280640/london-uk-electricity-blackouts-heatwave-import

In the UK, a record heat wave called 'Red Extreme' has been generated since the beginning of late July 2022, which caused the data center cooling system to stop functioning, leading to a series of Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud. There is a failure to stop at.

Two cloud services, Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud, shut down at about the same time due to record heat waves --GIGAZINE



An unusual event, which hits the highest temperature ever observed, caused a major power shortage in London and was on the verge of a power outage. To handle this situation, the United Kingdom imports electricity from Belgium through Nemo Link , a power cable that runs through the seabed.

However, due to the fact that the heat wave this time affected the solar power generation due to the maintenance of the transmission line and the occurrence of the storm in Belgium, the UK was forced to purchase electricity between 12:00 and 13:00 on July 20th. The amount paid reached £ 9724.54 per megawatt hour. This is about 55 times the normal price of £ 178 (about 30,000 yen), which is five times higher than the highest record that the UK has ever paid for imported electricity.



'It was a tremendous shock, and the stable supply of electricity was jeopardized, so we turned it on,' said Phil Hewitt, executive director of EnAppSys, a British energy market research firm, who has been monitoring electricity prices for over 20 years. That's how much it's been priced to continue. '

According to media reports, the amount of electricity purchased at the highest rate ever recorded was only equivalent to the annual consumption of eight ordinary households. But if Belgium didn't accommodate electricity, the British power system would have lost control of supply and demand and would have had to stop supplying electricity to homes, officials said.

Bloomberg also pointed out that 'without buying any electricity from abroad, we should have been able to get electricity from Scotland, where offshore wind power is popular.' However, in the UK, the power grid has not been strengthened due to soaring metal prices, and local residents are opposed to the expansion of ground facilities, so there is a fact that we have to rely on power cables that pass through the seabed. There is even a joke in the British power industry that 'fish don't go to vote'.

Regarding the electricity situation in the United Kingdom, Bloomberg said, 'To avoid a power shortage, the United Kingdom paid about £ 1600 per megawatt hour in 2021 and about 2000 on July 18, 2022. I paid £ and it reached nearly £ 10,000 in just two days. It's clear what's going on and it's not enough to pay the unprecedented highs. And only after the power outage will we realize our lack of investment. '

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