SONI undertakes a ‘Winter Outlook’ every year which helps to inform the electricity industry and prepare for the winter ahead. This provides more information on how likely Planned Emergency Power Cuts are.
As part of this process, SONI takes several steps to protect customers. These include:
- Asking companies to generate more power to meet the demand and switching on generators which aren’t currently supplying power to the market.
- Asking heavy industrial users to limit how much power they use during certain hours.
- Reducing household power usage – this includes asking customers to change how and when they use appliances like washing machines and dishwashers or reducing voltage across the country by a small percentage, which would be undetectable.