UK Energy Demand off 13% on Lockdown: Report
A day after the UK government imposed a lockdown that all but stopped public movement, energy demand was down 13% across the day (March 25) according to research from Cornwall Insight published March 31. This could have implications for power supplies, it said.
"As more people started to work from home throughout last week, the load was increased and spread. With a rise in home workers, there could even have been an increase in telecommunications and server load to cope with the rising bandwidth requirements.
|
Advertisement: The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (NGC) NGC’s HSSE strategy is reflective and supportive of the organisational vision to become a leader in the global energy business. |
"However, as large electrical loads such as factories, shops and rail started to reduce their activities, demand on March 23 (before lockdown) was down 9% across the day versus an average March Monday in 2019. It is likely we can expect more reduced activity over the coming weeks," it said.
"The government announced lockdown resulted in further reductions. This is most notable in the morning peak and middle of the day when we would typically expect the industrial and commercial load to be ramping up.
"Lower demand brings its own set of challenges to managing the system, the chief among which is managing system stability. Low demand means there is less space to operate larger synchronous generators. This can affect system inertia and rate of change of frequency – how quickly the system responds to a change of conditions. To cope with this, the electricity supply operator [a function carried out by National Grid] could constrain wind and keep thermal plant such as gas or coal running."