Households might have blackout this winter if power plants cannot get enough gas to keep running, the National Grid has warned.
In what it called an “unlikely” scenario, the National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) said that households and businesses might face planned three-hour outages to ensure that the grid does not collapse. Planned blackouts last hit the UK during the 1970s in response to the miners strikes and the oil crisis.
There have also been major unplanned outages in storms, including in 1987 when over 1.5 million people were left in the dark. But the lights will stay on this winter unless the gas-fired power plants that produced 43 percent of Britain’s electricity over the last year cannot get enough gas to continue operating.
