English houses are really not made for winter, especially not for this freezing January. Parts of the UK are currently experiencing the coldest days since the 1980s so double glazing would obviously be an advantage. But you won’t find them in many houses. Instead: zero insulation, leaking roofs, single glazing. There’s nothing left to do but turn the heating up all the way. No wonder that the energy crisis is felt much more severely in Great Britain than in Germany, which is completely protected from heat.
To keep the cold under control, many British households have installed electric radiators. That also costs money, but now the country has a problem with the electricity supply. Not only is it bitterly cold, there is hardly any wind, and the offshore farms supply far less electricity than is usual at this time of year. And so the British electricity and gas network operator National Grid has asked people to save electricity. There is money for that to happen.
For the first time ever, National Grid launched a power-saving program this week to relieve the grid on particularly cold days. Anyone who did not turn on electricity guzzlers such as washing machines, dishwashers or stoves on Tuesday between 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. received a credit for doing so. National Grid always announces the exact time at which electricity is to be saved a few hours in advance; on Monday, for example, it was one hour from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. The program is initially scheduled to run until March, hoping that it will warm up again by then.
If you want to take part, you need a smart meter
However, only households whose electricity suppliers are participating in the campaign can take part. So far there are 26 providers, including British Gas, Eon and Shell. You also need a so-called smart meter, i.e. an intelligent electricity meter. The small boxes have already replaced the old meters with their rotating discs and mechanical displays with digital displays in many houses. With the help of intelligent meters, heat pumps can be switched off, for example, when little electricity is available and the price is correspondingly high. Thanks to intelligent electricity meters, suppliers receive the information they need for needs-based grid expansion and optimal use of grid capacity.
According to National Grid, more than a million households in the UK have signed up to take part in the electricity savings scheme. With the help of the smart meter, the network operators know how much energy was used in an electricity-saving hour. This value is then compared with the usual average consumption during this time. For every kilowatt hour saved, a household is credited with three pounds, equivalent to 3.40 euros.
National Grid is very careful that people don’t panic about the tight supply situation. A spokesman said people needn’t worry, the power-saving program is just “a precautionary measure to maintain the necessary buffer of spare capacity.”
The question that remains is how Great Britain will manage to make itself less dependent on wind and weather in the long term. Treasury Secretary Jeremy Hunt pledged £6 billion (€6.8 billion) for home insulation and heating upgrades in his budget last year. The only thing is: Its predecessors have repeatedly launched programs for energy efficiency over the past ten years – but demand has remained rather modest. It seems many Britons feel it is unnecessary to spend money on thermal insulation or double glazing. The climate on the island is just too mild for that – apart from this winter.