The UK imports record amounts of power from Europe, with the country spending more than £250 million on power from abroad each month, according to new analysis by Drax Electric Insights.
A record 20% of the country’s electricity demand was met by imports from Europe during the second quarter of 2024. Imports accounted for more than double the volume of power generated by the country’s solar panels, and even nearly overtook gas the first time ever. The UK’s imported power is brought ashore through a series of underwater cables known as interconnectors.
Britain has imported electricity from abroad since 1961, but changing power grids and trading rules has led to a sharp rise both in the number of interconnectors, and the volume of power flowing into the country in recent years. During the second quarter of 2024, Britain imported 12.2 TWh, while exports were just 3 TWh. However, that balance could change, resulting in exports from the UK in the year ahead, says the research.
The findings have been released as part of the next instalment of the quarterly Drax Electric Insights report. The publication is an independent report by academics from Imperial College London commissioned by Drax through Imperial Consultants.
Dr Iain Staffell of Imperial College London, lead author of the quarterly Drax Electric Insights report series, said: “Much of Britain’s conventional power generators like coal and nuclear stations have retired in recent years. Fewer dispatchable generators means less competition and higher prices, making cheaper electricity from the continent much more attractive to import.
“The government must be mindful of the need to retain sufficient dispatchable generation capacity on our system for both energy security and affordability reasons as it works towards its ambition of having a clean power grid by 2030. Britain is always going to need weather-proof sources of power to keep the lights on.”
He continued: “There’s been a huge rise in the volume of solar power capacity installed on the continent. Germany has installed 14 times as much solar capacity in the last three years as the UK to cut its reliance on Russian gas. That means in spring and summer months there is often an abundance of cheap electricity on the continent which the UK can import.”
While some may see this increasing reliance on imports as a risk to energy security, Dr Staffell thinks these interconnectors will increasingly be used by the UK to export power as the renewables revolution takes hold here. “As long as we maintain sufficient homegrown, dispatchable generation on the system then interconnectors can actually strengthen our energy security.
“The new government wants to make Britain a clean energy superpower, and if we achieve the scale of installed renewables that is being talked about, we simply won’t be able to use all of the power we generate here in the UK,” he said. “Being able to either store this power at home through more storage capacity or selling it abroad is an attractive proposition. During periods of high winds in the North Sea but calmer weather on the continent, exporting power could be potentially lucrative for the UK and help to lower bills for consumers here.”
