David T. C. Davies – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

The below Parliamentary question was asked by David T. C. Davies on 2016-02-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, how many times a Notice of Insufficient Margin has been issued in each of the last three years.

Andrea Leadsom

In the past three years, National Grid have issued one Notice of Inadequate System Margin (NISM). This was issued on 4 November 2015.

National Grid requires a safety cushion to be able to manage the system in real time and a NISM is a call to the market to maintain that safety cushion. This gives generators in the market the opportunity to provide additional generation ahead of National Grid instructing plant and demand side response held in the Contingency Balancing Reserve, if required. It is not an indication that demand is about to outstrip supply.