Energy secretary reassures Didcot27 Oct 2014 21:59
Energy secretary reassures households after power station fires - expects no negative shocks in Ofgem’s energy supply outlook following fire at Didcot B. A burnt cooling tower , after a fire halved the power station's output. After a series of fires at power stations raised fears about Britain’s lights going out. Davey said: “There will be no blackouts. Period.” He made his pledge shortly before THE energy regulator Ofgem. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, suggests he expects no negative shocks in Ofgem’s energy outlook for autumn and winter, drawn up with National Grid. Fears about an energy crisis during the peak month of January rose last week when a fire halved the output of Didcot B, a power station near Oxford serving the densely populated Thames Valley region. Didcot B is a 1.4 gigawatt power station that supplies about 1m homes. The fire broke out in one of the site’s two cooling towers. The fire at Didcot was the third at a fossil fuel-fired power station this year. After a blaze in February, E.ON decided not to bring one 370MW unit back online at its Ironbridge power station in Shropshire. In July, a fire caused the closure of two units at SSE’s 1GW Ferrybridge coal plant in West Yorkshire. EDF Energy also took two of its nuclear plants out of service in August for inspections after a fault was found. Ofgem said in June, before the run of fires and shutdowns, that the risk of power blackouts within 18 months had doubled from a year earlier. DECC - measures in place to counter the threat but admitted: “Without timely action there would be risks to security of supply.” National Grid said after the Didcot blaze that the longer-term effect on supply was difficult to judge and that the outlook report would take the plant’s reduced capacity into account. Peter Atherton, an energy analyst at Liberum Capital, said the fires, along with boiler problems at EDF’s plants in Heysham and Hartlepool, had removed about 7% of Britain’s conventional and nuclear energy capacity. He said UK energy policy, criticised for lack of investment in infrastructure, had left supply precariously thin. In a note to clients, Atherton said: “This may just be an unusual run of events, or it might suggest that the aging power station fleet is becoming more vulnerable to accidents. The odds are still that UK will escape a security of supply crunch this winter. But the mere fact that a security of supply crisis is a material possibility is in itself a sign of huge policy failure.” Davey has previously said that the government was prepared to use “last resort” measures to avoid winter blackouts in the next two years. The government has agreed to pay businesses to shut down at peak times. HTH
Sign In
Follow the stocks
