Last Friday the electricity network suffered a number of major failures with power cuts closing Kings Cross station and associated lines, traffic lights in South-East London being cut and other areas of the country affected. This caused me to consider whether National Grid (NG.) has been running too close to the wind in terms of capacity to cope with exceptional events.
I have not held shares in the company since late 2017/early 2018 but I do recall attending one of their AGMs when a shareholder questioned whether the country and the company had enough spare electricity capacity (National Grid has a monopoly on electricity distribution in the UK and also acts as a “system operator”). The shareholder concerned was reassured by the directors so far as I recall.
Keeping the power on is quite essential in the modern world. Heating appliances rely on it to operate, phone networks fail if the electricity supply is down (unlike some years ago when landlines operated on batteries), hospitals and other essential services rely on electricity being available and even cars will soon be reliant on the electricity supply. But it seems that the grid suffered three “near-misses” in the months before Friday’s disruption. On Friday the problem appears to have been caused by the failure of a gas power plant in Bedfordshire and a North Sea wind farm at the same time. This combination caused automatic systems to be triggered that cut supplies to certain parts of the country to avoid a wider shutdown. Note that this is nothing to do with reliance on unreliable supply sources such as wind power generation. It’s about network management, being able to get alternative supplies into action quickly and having spare capacity.
Has the company been under investing in capacity and system resilience while paying out enormous sums in dividends to investors, as some people allege?
It’s worth reading the company’s last Annual Report where the risks the company faces are covered in some depth. They have added “two new principal risks” one of which is given as “failure to predict and respond to significant disruption of energy that adversely impacts our customers and/or the public”, so it seems they were already aware of this issue.
They also cover the risk of state ownership if the Labour Party gained power and they say “The Government would have to pay fair compensation for the Company’s property….”. That is simply untrue. It would only have to pay what Members of Parliament considered fair which may be very different to a truly independent valuation or what the company’s shareholders might consider reasonable.
It would appear to me that the company has been excessively optimistic over its ability to maintain the supply network when an unusual combination of events arises, and has been discounting other major risks to shareholders.
It is surely time for the Government and National Grid’s regulator (OFGEM) to take a close look at the company.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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