A combination of various factors serving to limit energy generated from plants in several European countries could push up domestic prices, households have been warned.
A particularly dry period in Scandinavia meant that Norwegian and Swedish hydro plants were generating well below expectations, lowering the overall output from the countries – both of whom export a sizeable amount of power when running at usual capacity.
Over in France, EDF temporarily shut down twenty of their nuclear reactors so that checks can be conducted on their parts, following the announcement of an investigation conducted by French nuclear regulator ASN.
The investigation came about after faults were noticed in the steel used to build the EPR reactor in Flamanville. The reactor is, as all of EDF’s are, built by Areva, and so the ASN are now looking into the rest of EDF’s nuclear fleet in order to ensure that they are safe and functional.
The temporary shutting down of nuclear plants is not, in itself, unprecedented, but EDF have had to shut down 5 more than they would usually at once this time. Given that around 75% of France’s power comes from nuclear plants, this has put a strain on the country’s supply.
The head of RTE, France’s equivalent of National Grid, said: “During some periods of the day in winter, and during some days, we may need to use exceptional measures to guarantee the balance of electricity demand and supply on the network.”
These issues are unfortunately coinciding with what is already set to be a tight winter in terms of spare energy supply, with National Grid having already had to resort to new emergency measures to ensure a steady supply.
However, all of these problems are set to conspire to push prices up for households across the UK, as suppliers struggle to absorb their own costs.
Cornwall Energy has been tracking the price paid by energy companies for electricity since 2012, with prices currently the highest since they started recording them.
Tom Edwards, an analyst at Cornwall Edwards, explained that these current supply issues are feeding into these wholesale prices increases.
He said: “It is unusual for there to be significant volumes of outages in the French nuclear fleet, however this is also one of our tightest winters in recent times in terms of extra capacity, which has also influenced how high prices rise.”
To make matters worse, expected low temperatures throughout this winter look set to push demand up as well, further straining the supply balance and, as a result, further pushing up costs.
He explained: “The increase was primarily driven by rising wholesale prices, so the effect will be driven by supply and demand issues. If it’s a cold winter and supply issues remain, then this should persist for the next three to four months. There has been some concern raised about how suppliers will cope over the winter if they aren’t able to hedge against these short-term price rises.”
