Confidence over winter power supplies

Despite turbulence in global energy markets, the system operator has said it is confident over winter electricity supplies.

In NESO’s latest outlook report it forecasts a surplus of 5.9 GW, representing a 9.5% buffer of peak winter demand and broadly similar to winter 2025/26.

It said the forecast remains comfortably within the government's reliability standard and the margin is higher than in June outlook, but it said this was due to improvements in the assessment methodology.

It said additional battery storage, wind generation and gas-fired power are helping maintain healthy margins, broadly in line with recent winters.

Dr Deborah Petterson, Director of Whole Energy System Resilience at NESO, said: “While we never take resilience for granted, households and businesses can be confident that Great Britain's electricity system remains secure, reliable and among the most resilient in the world.”

A separate gas winter outlook also said Great Britain is expected to have sufficient gas supply capability to meet forecast demand. Forecast peak demand is expected to reach 493 million cubic metres per day (mcm/d), while total supply capability is assessed at 592 mcm/d.