London had to pay a record price for electricity as the temperature increased upto 40 degrees Celsius, or more than 104 degrees Fahrenheit. The Met Office reported, “For the first time on record temperatures in the UK have exceeded 40°C.
A provisional temperature of 40.3°C was recorded at Coningsby at 15:12 yesterday (19 July) which, if confirmed, will beat the previous record of 38.7°C set in 2019 by 1.5°C.
With temperatures continuing to climb through the afternoon we will have to wait to see what the new record will actually be. New temperature records could also be set for Wales and Scotland.”
Electricity price
Bloomberg reported, “Last week, unbeknown to many outside the power industry, parts of London came remarkably close to a blackout — even as it was recovering from the hottest day in British history. On July 20, surging electricity demand collided with a bottleneck in the grid, leaving the eastern part of the British capital briefly short of power. Only by paying a record high £9,724.54 (about $11,685) per megawatt hour — more than 5,000% higher than the typical price — did the UK avoid homes and businesses going dark. That was the nosebleed cost to persuade Belgium to crank up aging electricity plants to send energy across the English Channel.
The crisis, which quietly played out within the control room of the British electricity system, shows the growing vulnerability of energy transportation networks — power grids and gas and oil pipelines — across much of the industrialized world after years of low investment and not-in-my-backyard opposition.”
They added, “The £9,724.54 price, settled between noon and 1:00 p.m. on July 20 via the so-called NEMO interconnector that links the UK with Belgium, was the highest Britain has ever paid to import electricity, nearly five times higher than the previous record. The absurdity of that level is apparent when comparing it with the year-to-date average for UK spot electricity: £178 per megawatt hour.”
