I've just discovered 'starter packs' on here and I mean the lack of Nazis is nice compared to Twitter, but starter packs are a game changer innovation.

Welcome to Cardiff. The land of endless blue skies and a free fake bird for every building owner. What brings you to South Wales?

So back to the central question, are we reliant? Structurally no, we could ban all imports. Would be bad, bad news for electricity costs though as it means burning a hell of a lot more very expensive gas (spot prices of 91p/therm, about 100% higher than historic average)

In English, this means half the time the ESO doesn't expect the French ICs to be available at times of system stress. Doesn't sound like the ESO is planning big reliance on them, does it?

If you really want to understand the role of interconnectors in the realm of energy security, follow me down the rabbit hole of derating factors (DRF). DRFs for big ICs (i.e. France) be as low as 25% in the capacity market - but generally get around 50-60%...

In more detail, imports don't generally get instructed by the system operator (I'm simplifying as they can be through the balancing mechanism), they turn up because they are *cheaper* than gas plant in the UK (gas is expensive) So no, the UK is not reliant. It's just frugal.

Just because you are importing more, doesn't mean the underlying power generation stations they are displacing (gas) are disappearing. They are being used less, but not demolished (further reading: capacity market). So if imports stopped tomorrow, the lights wouldn't go off.

Have electricity imports from the continent increased? Why yes, of course they have. Generally ticked up every year (some outlier years which have their own reasons). So why does the phrase irk me if imports are going up, that's an increasing reliance, surely!? Nope...

The shutting down of Ratcliffe (yay) means a first* edition of: things that grind Tom's gears. Today it is the phrase "the UK is reliant on imports" cropping up in media articles in response to decomming an old coal plant. Let's explore why it annoys me. *If you follow on X, many editions exist

It can be bad news in short bursts, in that very low prices will deter renewables but it will be inherently unstable - upstream will be shuttered, go bust etc - prices will spike. Cycles will be brutal. In that scenario, the price security of renewables will emerge as a valuable characteristic.