Planned Emergency power cuts mean switching power off to at least 5% of NI households at once.
The System Operator for Northern Ireland (SONI) works to ensure the electricity supplied (by generators such as power stations, renewable energy sources and interconnectors) is balanced with the customer demand.
If there is not sufficient supply, the balance of the electricity system is at risk.
To restore the balance SONI instruct NIE Networks to reduce demand for a period of time by removing customers off the network – this is referred to as Planned Emergency Power Cuts.
It is important to note that Planned Emergency Power Cuts are different to planned local outages, such as for maintenance, and unplanned outages caused by damage to wires and cables, for example during storms.
