Energy: Storage

Lord Christopher Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I do not think that there is any intention to switch nuclear power stations on and off to cover short-term peaks in demand; coal-fired generation, on the other hand, is much more flexible in that regard. The whole point of these new smart systems is to allow much better demand management over the peaks and troughs of energy demand so that, hopefully, we will need less generation capacity in the future than we have done in the past.

[Lord Christopher (Lab)]

My Lords, further to my noble friend’s last question, I believe that we are still using a good deal of nuclear energy—usually electricity—from France. Are we making any contingency arrangements, should there be problems post Brexit over the fact that we rely upon that source of energy?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, if there is any issue about availability of supplies from France, it probably relates more to the fact that a number of France’s nuclear plants are nearing the end of their lives than to anything that comes out of Brexit. In fact, as the noble Lord may know, we are investing in more interconnector capacity, which would increase the capacity from 2,200 megawatts to more than 7,000 megawatts. Again, that should reduce the cost of electricity to our consumers.