If there isn’t enough electricity being generated to power every home and business in Northern Ireland at the same time, SONI – who is responsible for balancing generation with demand – will instruct NIE Networks to reduce electricity demand through planned emergency power cuts.
SONI have indicated that Planned Emergency Power Cuts could happen due to a number of factors which may or may not be relevant on any given day. These include:
- Unforeseen forced outages of other plant and managing planned maintenance outages
- Variable demand – winter vs summer demand / peak vs non-peak
- Variable generation – variability of renewable generation
- Small-scale nature of NI grid – factors more difficult to balance
- Introduction of new technologies to help facilitate energy system transition
Planned emergency power cuts are only implemented to protect the electricity network from more
damage, which would be more disruptive to customers for a much longer period. They are a
last resort and wouldn’t affect everyone at the same time.