GB grid balancing cost nears £50m in a day
The cost of keeping Great Britain's electricity system balanced reached almost £50m in a single day, close to record levels.
The grid operator paid £47.9m on Wednesday to turn off wind farms in areas with too much power and turn on gas plants where supplies were tight, according to The Guardian. Balancing is the continuous task of matching electricity supply with demand across the country.
The daily total included a payment of £1.6m for a single half-hour period. Costs on that scale were among the highest recorded since the early months of the Ukraine crisis in 2022.
September alone cost £505m to balance the system, the highest monthly total recorded. Costs over the next year from October 2026 are expected to reach £3.2bn.
About 9 gigawatts of wind farm and hydropower capacity was paid not to generate on Wednesday, according to consultancy LCP Delta. That volume would have been enough to power more than 8 million typical households.
At the same time, the operator paid for gas and biomass plants to fire up. It also bought additional electricity imports from Europe through high-voltage subsea cables.
The National Energy System Operator, known as Neso, which runs the GB grid, called for 'last resort' emergency assistance from its French counterpart. France sent last-minute power supplies to Britain on Monday and Friday in the week before 15 October.
Rising network costs are already feeding through to bills. Rising network costs will add an extra £130 to a typical household's energy bills without further government intervention. In June, Neso had expected to pay about £10m on a Wednesday to secure enough electricity to meet demand during a heatwave.
