Wholesale electricity price normally fluctuates up and down quite a lot, but usually in the £0-£200-ish range. Yesterday afternoon it spiked up to £1400 briefly, then came back to normal. Unlucky to those paying dynamic pricing!
I can't find any news or reporting about this. Any idea what happened?
I did notice that gas usage was really high, at about 26GW at one point, and wind was very low. So maybe it was simply high demand combined with low supply, now that we don't have coal power? 😕
Purely a guess, but maybe a combination of cold, dim, and the wind dropping off.
Then as somebody else mentioned, when the estimates came in, gas stations absolutely rinsing it.
Things happen, and we'll gradually get better as storage improves.