An emergency blackout plan set to be brought in tomorrow could see Brits being paid to turn off their power.
Households might be paid to help Britain's grid operator avoid a potential blackout tomorrow evening as supplies will be tight due in part to problems in the French energy grid.
The move could see football fans give the option of earning money by opting out of the World Cup clash between England and Wales whose final Group B game kicks off at 7pm.
National Grid's electricity systems operator division said it is considering whether to activate a live run of its demand flexibility service for the first time on Tuesday.
The scheme, which launched at the start of this month, has already been tested twice in the last two weeks but has not yet been run for a live event.
National Grid said it would decide by around 2.30pm today whether to issue the notice to suppliers and households.
A spokesperson for National Grid ESO said: "What has happened is that the ESO has issued an indicative notice on BMRS to alert demand flexibility service providers that we may issue a requirement at 2:30pm for the use of DFS tomorrow night.
"We’re still assessing what requirement we might need, so it’s still possible that we will issue a requirement for 0MW at 2:30pm that will stand down the use of the DFS tomorrow night."
Downing Street previously said the potential for power blackouts was not discussed but insisted ministers are "preparing for all eventualities".
"We do have quite a diverse energy provision. Offshore wind continues to provide a huge amount of our energy, particularly during the winter months," a spokesman said.
"While we are preparing for all eventualities, we are confident that we will continue to have good provision throughout the winter months."
The National Grid had issued a warning to UK households that blackouts could become a reality as winter hits its peak and icy weather bites.
John Pettigrew, National Grids CEO, said this was a "worst-case scenario", but the government has nonetheless been creating emergency plans to cope with the energy blackouts.
These could last up to seven days in the event of a national power outage as worries grow over the security of supplies.
The government is currently stress-testing Programme Yarrow, a confidential plan put in place for power outages.
This pre-dates the current energy crisis hitting millions of households and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as it was instead created in 2021 in an effort to improve planning in the event of a major fault on the National Grid.
Documents marked “official sensitive” warn that in a “reasonable worst-case scenario”, all sectors including transport, food and water supply, communications and energy could be “severely disrupted” for up to a week during the blackouts, the Guardian reports.
Plans suggest that ministers will focus on getting food, water and shelter to the young and elderly people, alongside those with caring responsibilities, should the country experience blackouts.
In the plan's worst-case scenario, only analogue FM radios would work, with just BBC Radio 2 and 4 broadcasting.
There are, however, plans for more severe situations. These include three-hour rolling blackouts, as announced last month.
These will "probably [be] between 4pm and 7pm in the evenings on those weekdays when it’s really, really cold in January and February", with the Met Office predicting low temperatures.
And under the electricity supply emergency code, households and businesses will be given 24 hours’ notice of a planned outage.
