Britain’s unpredictable weather forced it to buy record amounts of electricity from Europe in 2023, generating import bills of £2bn for the first half of the year, government figures have revealed.
A combination of low winds and increased cloud cover dampened output from turbines and solar farms, while UK power generation was also hit by outages across an ageing fleet of nuclear power stations.
This meant that from January to July, the UK was forced to rely on the kindness of its EU neighbours, plus Norway, to secure 13pc of its power needs.
Crucially, it also sparked an electricity bill averaging £245m a month.
France has been the main beneficiary of Britain’s soaring demand, to which it sold £900m of power during the seven-month period.
A spokesman for National Grid ESO, the electricity system operator for Britain, said the same pattern had persisted through the summer so far. “Across our interconnector cables we’ve seen a general increase in imports compared to last year.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/wild-weather-britain…/
0 Comments