The first planned blackouts in decades might hit parts of the country this winter if power plants cannot get enough gas to keep running, the body that oversees Britain’s electricity grid has warned.
Households are being encouraged to help avoid blackouts, “save money and back Britain” by using more energy during off-peak times. 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 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.
