UK National Grid Warns Of 3-hour Power Cuts in Winter

By Staff, Agencies

The National Grid power authority in Britain issued a warning about possible power cuts this winter in case of electricity and gas shortages.

Britain could face planned power cuts to homes and businesses this winter if it is unable to import electricity from Europe, Britain’s National Grid warned on Thursday.

The British government's power authority admitted that it was struggling to attract enough gas imports to fuel its gas-fired power plants.

“We are confident in our plans to protect households and businesses in the full range of scenarios this winter,” the government’s department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said in a statement.

“To strengthen this position further, we have put plans in place to secure supply and National Grid, working alongside energy suppliers and Ofgem, will launch a voluntary service to reward users who reduce demand at peak times,” it added.

The warning comes as the UK's Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss said on Thursday that she planned to call on European leaders to help by sharing their electrical power resources with the Britons during the cold winter season and keep energy exports flowing when consumption goes up.

Turss, in an op-ed in The Times newspaper, asked for help from France, Belgium and the Netherlands to supply Britain with energy to avoid blackouts, saying the UK's neighbors ought to commit to keeping the energy flowing through undersea cables and pipelines during winter to keep "the lights on across the continent."

Truss is expected to state her request for energy at the first European Political Community [EPC] summit in Prague that kicked off on Thursday.

The EPC summit has brought together the 27 leaders of the European Union with 17 leaders from the continent currently outside the club, including Britain, Turkey, Norway and Ukraine.

The summit comes as the new British government faces serious problems at home, with Truss having to make a humiliating U-turn on Monday on some tax plans that caused chaos in UK's financial situation.

Truss' now-defunct tax policy had aimed to cut government tax for the upper class and instead borrow to cover the increased budget deficit while letting the soaring inflation to rise higher, and markets reacted by pushing interest rates up and the pound down.

Analysts assessed the fresh British government's disastrous new "growth plan" as an intellectual and moral disaster.