National Grid ESO predicts stretches of zero carbon electricity from 2025

Britain could enjoy periods of zero carbon electricity as early as 2025 as its fleet of renewable power projects continues to grow and the electricity system is updated to run without relying on fossil fuel power plants, the grid operator has predicted.  

An update published yesterday by National Grid ESO predicts ongoing reforms to how its control room operates will be completed in 2025, meaning that it will be able to deliver zero carbon power in periods when zero carbon generation eclipses national electricity demand.

"Our engineers are deploying innovative, world first approaches to transform how the power system operates, such as removing the need to draw on fossil fuel-based generation for critical stabilising properties," explained Fintan Slye, executive director of National Grid ESO. "There is still plenty of hard work ahead but it's an exciting time and getting to this position has been a huge team effort from everyone across the entire energy industry. "

Currently, ESO's control room cannot deliver a fully zero carbon grid because it relies on "synchronous plants", like gas or biomass, to provide sufficient levels of inertia to stabilise the grid, it explained.

This was what happened on 23 May 2020, when there was potential for near-100 per cent zero carbon electricity, but the control room had to step in and pull back some wind and hydro generation and replace it with gas and biomass to stablise the grid, meaning that just 83 per cent of the power was zero carbon, it said.

The operator is now working to avoid this scenario in the future, by investigating new ways to source inertia through "synchronous compensators", hydroelectric power stations or repurposed gas turbines.

Slye said he was confident there would be stretches of zero carbon electricity by the middle on this decade, provided the system was updated to accommodate the record levels of zero carbon generation that is set to come online.

"We're confident that by 2025 we will have periods of 100 per cent zero carbon electricity, with no fossil fuels used to generate power in Great Britain," he said. "As with coal free operation of the grid these may be short periods at first but will still be a significant milestone on the road to net zero, and these periods will quickly extend. The growth in renewable sources of power, with record levels of wind and solar, means there will be enough zero carbon generation to meet demand."

In the past decade coal gas gone from providing around a third of the UK's power to less than one per cent last year, with the grid often running for weeks at a time without using any coal power.

National Grid ESO revealed its latest projections in a report that details how a number of clean power records were broken in the past year as renewable electricity generation soared.

Energy Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan celebrated the report's findings. "Today's report shows that the industry and the public's hard work to drive up renewables is paying off and we are on the cusp of achieving periods of 100 per cent zero carbon electricity generation with no fossil fuels used," she said. "There's still some way to go, which is why we are powering forward with our ambitious commitments to increase renewable power across the UK and invest in new, green technologies so that we build back greener from the pandemic and tackle climate change."