Parts of London were saved from a blackout on Wednesday 20 July – after the hottest day on record in the UK – by a submarine cable linking the United Kingdom and Belgium.
It was only thanks to the Nemo submarine cable that enough power could be provided, the Bloomberg financial news agency reported.
The British had to pay a record price of £9,724.54 per megawatt/hour for that electricity, about 5,000% more than on a normal day.
On 20 July, rising electricity demand was compounded by a bottleneck on Britain’s power grid, leaving eastern parts of the British capital at risk of losing power. Only by importing power from Belgium via the Nemo link could a blackout be averted, Bloomberg reported.
The British reportedly had to pay a record price of £9,724.54 (about €11,424.9) per megawatt hour for this electricity, the highest price ever for electricity imported into the UK, and almost five times higher than the previous record.
By comparison, the British paid on average £178 per megawatt/hour last year.
The electricity was imported between 12:00 and 13:00 on Wednesday. It would have been only a small amount, but enough to keep the lights on. The price paid shows the desperation that prevailed at the time, according to Bloomberg, with imports from across the English Channel the only option.
If Belgium had not come to the rescue, the network operator would have been obliged to send the required amount and disconnect homes, a spokesperson for the British network said.
