The UK government has created plans for rolling blackouts over the next couple of months in response to repeated warnings from the National Grid about the ongoing energy crisis.
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The plans consist of various levels of blackouts that could be implemented throughout the UK with power totally cut to households from as little as blocks of three-hour periods moving up to full-day blackouts. In the document, it is possible to see the exact times that your household would be affected depending on the group letter you are assigned, as shown on your energy bill.
National Grid
The National Grid has been warning of blackouts for some time with a view to conserving the gas of electricity generators. The government’s response has been to create the rolling blackout plan called ‘The Electricity Supply Emergency Code’ (ESEC).
The document also describes the three main steps the government can take to conserve energy, with the blackouts being the final stage, as per Edinburgh News:
- Direct appeals to the public and industry, asking them to reduce their electricity demand
- Restrictions to be placed on industrial energy consumption, such as requiring companies and firms to reduce their energy usage by a certain percentage
- The use of rolling blackouts or “rota disconnections” throughout the country
Blackout times
The ESEC’s main goal is to equally distribute electricity throughout the country and reduce consumption in the case of shortages. Since the UK has several energy suppliers, it has been divided up into 18 different load blocks which work like postcodes and each block is assigned a letter from A-U.
Each day is then split into eight three hours periods, starting at 12.30 am and each period is assigned a number from one to eight. In order to find out how it impacts your household, you look at the Variable Rota Disconnection Plan in the annexe of the ESEC and it has a breakdown of what times the blackout would ensue.
There are 18 different rotas in the document, all of which denote different levels of blackout. Level 1 has just one 3-hour period of blackout per block and this increases progressively right up to level 18 where a full 24-hour shutdown or ‘disconnection’ is reached for all areas.
In the extreme case of a full disconnection, however, protected sites such as hospitals, food manufacturers, oil refineries, ports, essential water and sewage services, airports and communication services would remain unaffected, as per Gov.uk.
Sources used:
- Edinburgh News 'UK Blackouts: The exact times your house could face hours of power cuts this winter amid energy crisis
- Gov.uk 'ELECTRICITY SUPPLY EMERGENCY CODE (ESEC)'
