National Grid plc (NGG)
| Previous close | 54.56 |
| Open | 56.62 |
| Bid | 0.00 x 800 |
| Ask | 57.14 x 1800 |
| Day's range | 56.54 - 57.38 |
| 52-week range | 44.29 - 69.08 |
| Volume | 467,160 |
| Avg. volume | 405,907 |
| Market cap | 39.889B |
| Beta (5Y monthly) | 0.09 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 8.83 |
| EPS (TTM) | 6.44 |
| Earnings date | N/A |
| Forward dividend & yield | 3.08 (5.64%) |
| Ex-dividend date | 01 Jul 2020 |
| 1y target est | 69.98 |
- Bloomberg
U.K. Plans to Create Offshore Grid to Connect Wind Farms
(Bloomberg) -- National Grid Plc outlined a plan for an offshore grid that will link new wind parks and interconnectors, saving consumers 6 billion pounds ($7.7 billion) by 2050.The network operator’s vision tackles the problem of how best to bring electricity produced at offshore facilities to the grid. Pairing multi-purpose interconnectors with wind capacity could bring a 50% reduction in how much grid infrastructure needs to be built in the next three decades.The U.K. is the largest market in the world for offshore wind and has set a target to build 40 gigawatts by 2030, a four-fold increase from now. Achieving this would cost as much as 50 billion pounds and require one turbine to be installed every weekday during the whole of the 2020s, according to Aurora Energy Research Ltd. Linking all this capacity to the onshore grid is likely to be both costly and difficult.The plan would connect a number of individual wind farms located in a similar geographical area, via the shared use of offshore transmission infrastructure.Last week, National Grid and Dutch grid Tennet BV announced a plan for a cable to connect offshore wind farms in both nations. The U.K. network manager’s plan involves more agreements like this one.Read more about the U.K., Dutch wind farm link here“Offshore wind power is a key part of government plans for the U.K. to meet net zero by 2050,” said Fintan Slye, director of the National Grid electricity system operator. “Our project is assessing the most beneficial approach to offshore networks, examining a range of different technical and engineering solutions to grid connections.”National Grid is consulting on its plan until Oct. 28.“The grid must be able to cope in an era of rapidly increasing volumes of renewable power, intermittent generation, flexible electricity markets, undersea interconnectors, battery storage, and households both taking electricity from and supplying it back to the grid,” said Danielle Lane, Vattenfall AB’s U.K. country manager.By 2030 Vattenfall will have enough offshore wind capacity to supply 5 million homes.(Adds comment in final paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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U.K. Power Price Spike Raises Questions for National Grid
(Bloomberg) -- A spike in electricity prices last week in the U.K. is raising questions about how well the network operator is balancing the grid and at what cost to consumers.Electricity prices surged to more than 10 times the average following a market warning from National Grid Plc on Sept. 15. The network manager said calm weather and warm temperatures were set to lower the supply buffer it keeps to ensure there’s enough power in the system. At the same time, the company was paying a nuclear station not to generate.The incident is threatening to elevate the highly technical practices of grid managers into a political issue. Some analysis suggest National Grid made mistakes in the process that could lead to higher bills for consumers.The contract with EDF was “a particularly clunky way of dealing with variable demand,” Alan Whitehead, the opposition Labour Party’s shadow minister for energy and climate change, said in an interview. “What has undone them is that demand has bounced back much more quickly than they thought.”Analysis by trading house, Hartree Solutions, show that halting one unit of Electricite de France SA’s Sizewell B nuclear reactor, added 73 million pounds ($94 million) to wholesale power prices during the 20 weeks of the contract. If the reactor had been generating on Sept. 15, the market warning wouldn’t have been needed, the analysis shows.National Grid said its decisions were made to protect the grid from blackouts.“We are confident the actions we have taken, including the Sizewell contract, have minimized the impact on consumers, with the potential implications of emergency actions and the associated disruption being even greater,” a National Grid spokesperson said.Electricity demand fell as much as 20% below normal levels during lockdown as people stayed at home and offices and manufacturing shut. National Grid became increasingly worried about how to manage a system with much lower demand than normal.On May 7, the network operator agreed a contract with EDF to cut output from its Sizewell B nuclear reactor to avoid oversupply. The contract originally ran for six weeks and cost 17 million pounds to 23 million pounds. It was extended to 20 weeks and now ends on Sept. 24. EDF declined to comment.Electricity demand has mostly recovered and is now just 1% below normal levels, according to BloombergNEF data. This raises the question of whether National Grid should have kept the contract with EDF for so long.“A price surge of this magnitude, as a result of National Grid failing to foresee the higher demand we are now experiencing is not acceptable,” said Alexander Stafford, a Conservative MP who sits on the business and energy select committee. “The considerable cost to the consumer of this judgment must be closely examined.”National Grid has said that the cost of fine-tuning supply and demand will be 500 million pounds ($646 million) more than usual this summer because of lower consumption during the lockdown. The power regulator Ofgem was already scrutinizing looking at that issue and may probe deeper.“We regularly review the performance of the Electricity System Operator,” an Ofgem spokesperson said. “We also do ad hoc assessments when we think events warrant it.”(Adds comment in 11th paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
