Britain’s biggest energy supplier, Centrica, warned this week that the UK faces a ‘looming gap’ in its energy supplies, due to a series of failures in the Government’s scheme to keep the lights on. As reported in The Telegraph, Centrica, which owns British Gas, warns that ministers must make significant changes to the UK’s capacity market. Currently the government pays power stations to guarantee their availability in order to push the subsidy high enough to secure investment in new gas plants.
Centrica believes that the current scheme overestimates the available levels of wind power. When the wind is not blowing, of course, there will be zero supplies. The scheme also procures insufficient reliable power plant capacity. Subsidy prices awarded through the scheme have been so low that the only new gas plant secured seems in doubt and SSE is currently preparing to shut its Fiddler’s Ferry coal plant, despite a subsidy contract. Therefore, a looming gap for 2018-19 winter period approaches, according to Centrica’s Head of Energy Production, Mark Hanafin.
shentongroup has reported on various energy shortfall stories from multiple sources as of late. We help more and more housing developments, hospitals and organisations with greater hot water demands to step away from National Grid power and help them to specify and implement gas powered combined heat and power solutions. Producing large volumes of hot water, CHP systems generate reliable, greener and cheaper electricity.
For organisations that rely on continuous power in order to provide their products and services, shentongroup has a standby generator solution for all types and sizes of organisation; from providing large, permanent generator sets, to delivering emergency generators through its Power Call ‘power in the hour’ division.
If the ongoing conversation surrounding National Grid power supplies concerns your business and it’s continuity, learn more about disaster planning, continuous power and combined heat and power through shentongroup’s free whitepapers, downloadable here. For any further information, to discuss every continuous power supply option available, speak to a member of the shentongroup team now.