Fans for fans: power demand surges as England viewers cope with heatwave

A handful of Great Britain’s gas power plants were paid almost £4m to generate electricity for just a few hours on Tuesday evening as millions of sweltering viewers turned to air conditioning, fans and icy drinks during England’s second World Cup game. The heatwave has caused electricity prices across Europe to surge this week amid higher demand for cooling and a string of power plant outages due to the record high temperatures. In Great Britain, the energy system operator was also required to manage a jump in electricity demand during breaks in England’s goalless draw with Ghana as millions of viewers headed to make drinks at half-time and after the final whistle. However, the much-discussed hydration breaks failed to have an impact on power demand, experts said. Gas plants were paid up to £1,000 a megawatt-hour to ramp up their output during the evening to help battle the record high temperatures as Great Britain’s solar power began to wane; solar-charged batteries were used to manage the grid fluctuations during the match. These prices are about 14 times the average power market price in June last year but Shivam Malhotra, the head of power trading at the consultancy LCP Delta, said there had been no signs that gas plants had been trying to “game” the market to secure higher prices for their power. “These are the prices I would expect to see at the moment; they’re at about the right level to reflect the scarcity we can see in the market,” he said. …