Energy data firm EnAppSys has raised concerns about National Grid ESO‘s actions, stating that power is “being dumped into Belgium and the Netherlands“.
According to EnAppSys, these countries currently have an excess of power, prompting National Grid ESO to pay high prices to offload the surplus.
Energy Live News contacted National Grid ESO for comment, but they declined to provide a statement.
Phil Hewitt, Director of EnAppSys, shed light on the situation, explaining that National Grid ESO cited it as an “energy action” taken to manage an oversupply of power and reduce generation and interconnector imports.
Mr Hewitt told Energy Live News: “The reason National Grid ESO gave yesterday (Monday 29th May) was that it was an energy action. This means they had too much power and needed to reduce generation and interconnector imports.
“They couldn’t turn off power stations because they needed them on to provide inertia to the system so this left the interconnectors as their only option. To change the output of interconnectors, they trade with counterparties that have access to the intraday markets on the other side of the interconnector. These traders quote prices that National Grid ESO then accepts to change the output of the interconnectors.
“This kind of high price reversal event is likely to occur on any sunny weekends this summer. As a response to the high energy prices last year, industrial and domestic consumers in Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and France have responded by installing solar panels; this has resulted in a big increase in solar generation on sunny days.
“Electricity system operators in these countries need to investigate how to create curtailment products to encourage consumers to stop generation during these periods, otherwise the SOs will be spending a lot of money on balancing the markets on these kind of days.
“Yesterday (Monday 29th May), National Grid ESO spent £9.4 million on balancing the system by trading and using the balancing mechanism.”
GB / NL / BE : NG ESO in GB is currently dumping power into Belgium and Netherlands. Unfortunately Belgium and Netherlands have more power than they need at the moment so NG ESO is paying upto £550/MWh to dump power into these countries ^PH#toosunny
— EnAppSys (@enappsys) May 29, 2023
