UK capacity auctions secures 40.8 GW of backup power led by gas plants

March 11 (Reuters) - Gas-fired power plants secured 26.4
gigawatt (GW) of a total 40.8 GW of awarded backup power
contracts in a UK capacity market auction, provisional data
released by National Grid showed.

The capacity market is a British government scheme to pay
energy providers to maintain spare capacity to ensure adequate
supply for future years.

The latest auction on Wednesday for 2024/25 secured 40.8
gigawatts (GW) of back-up electricity capacity and cleared at 18
pounds ($25.08) per kilowatt per year.

Electricity transmission cables connecting Britain with
neighbouring markets secured a total capacity of nearly 6.9 GW
across nine interconnectors, followed by 2.1 GW of pumped
hydropower capacity.

Nuclear power was awarded just over 2 GW of agreements, with
operator EDF Energy saying it secured one-year
agreements for the period Oct. 2024 to Sept. 2025 for four of
its reactors, in addition to three units at its West Burton
gas-fired power plant and two new-build battery storage units.

Drax secured agreements to provide nearly 617 GW of
existing capacity, predominantly from pumped storage and hydro
assets which are worth 10 million pounds in 2024-25.

Germany's RWE said it had secured 6.5 GW of
capacity agreements, most of it gas-fired units.

Another German utility, Uniper, secured 4.2 GW of
agreements across gas- and diesel-fired units, the National Grid
data showed.

Energy supplier SSE secured capacity contracts for
just over 2.8 GW of electricity generation capacity for
gas-fired, hydroelectric and pumped storage capacity as well as
an onshore wind farm.

($1 = 0.7176 pounds)
(Reporting by Nora Buli in Oslo; editing by John Stonestreet)