It has cost £47.9 million in a single day to turn windfarms off in areas with an oversupply of electricity and turn gas plants on in areas where supplies were tight, reports The Guardian.
The incident that happened last week, will be levied on to household energy bills and included a £1.6 million payment for one half-hour period. These were some of the highest recorded since the early months of the Ukraine crisis in 2022.
They add to the increasing costs of balancing the grid, which reached a total of £505 million in September alone, the highest monthly cost recorded and are expected to reach £3.2 billion over the next year.
Overall windfarms and hydropower plant with about nine gigawatts of capacity were paid to not generate that day, according to the consultancy LCP Delta.
Instead, the grid operator was forced to pay for a string of gas and biomass plants to fire up and bought more electricity imports from Europe via high-voltage subsea power cables.
The record costs have come to light days after the National Energy System Operator (Neso) was forced to call for “last resort” emergency assistance from its counterpart in France, which agreed to send last-minute power supplies to the UK on Monday and Friday last week.
A Neso spokesperson has said that the country’s energy supplies were “secure” during the emergency.
During the summer the operator faced multiple grid challenges when a high-pressure heat dome led to a drop in renewable energy output and surging electricity demand to power air conditioning and refrigerators.
Copyright © 2026 Energy Live News LtdELN