ENERGY users in the UK should be braced for the possibility of rolling power cuts this winter – the stark warning comes after a warning on Thursday (Oct 6) from National Grid.

The electricity and gas system operator has said households could face a series of three-hour power cuts if Vladimir Putin shuts off gas supplies from Russia, and Britain experiences a cold snap akin to 2018’s “beast from the east”.

Although National Grid has labelled the scenario “unlikely”, the emergency plan has prompted memories of persistent power outages in the 1970s and brought into focus the process by which people are cut off.

Households are being offered £10 a day to cut electric usage at peak times in a bid to avoid winter blackouts.

The deal relies however on smart meters which are unreliable and have been installed in around only half of homes and small businesses.

Customers would be warned in advance of the blackouts which are likely to occur in the morning peak or between 4pm and 7pm.

A move to implement power cuts would need approval from the Government and King Charles, who would need to sign off an emergency Privy Council order.

The number of homes left without electricity would depend on how many power plants need to be shut down because of gas shortages.

The system of rota disconnection, or rota load-shedding, is designed to equally share out the available power in a country or region through strategic shutdowns. In Great Britain, consumers in different parts of the country would be notified a day in advance of a three-hour block of time during which they would lose power. Households in different areas would then be cut off at different times or days, with the frequency rising depending on the severity of the supply shortage. The process is in legislation under the Electricity Supply Emergency Code.

There are 14 licensed areas of the country; within these, there are smaller areas on different circuits that have a timetable for cutoffs. The aim is to reduce power usage by about 5% through the three-hour disconnections. Consumers would typically be notified with a text message, similar to when there is a planned outage for maintenance work. An emergency public information campaign by National Grid and the government would be deployed across radio, billboards and social media platforms to urge people to use less energy. Liz Truss has so far resisted calls to ask people to use less energy.

Echoes of Christmas 1970

The 1970s are a decade remembered for industrial strife, particularly the Three-Day-Week of 1974 and 1979’s Winter of Discontent.

The pattern of dispute and disruption was set at the start of the decade, when in the run up to Christmas 1970 the country was crippled by power cuts as the result of industrial action.

As the lights went out, folk had to carry on with their daily lives as best they could – and this picture shows just that.

The photograph was taken on Thursday, December 10, 1970, and shows Mr W.R. Grice and his son Richard using candles and a camping gas lantern as they serve customers at their newsagent’s shop in Ablewell Street in Walsall, West Midlands.

The power cuts came about when electricity supply workers started an overtime ban and a work-to-rule. They were expecting it to be three or four weeks before there were any power cuts, plenty of time to bring pressure on the government and negotiate better terms.

However, it seems that everyone had underestimated the precarious state of the nation’s electricty supply, and the first power cut came just eight hours after the work-to-rule began.

As the the days went by there were more and more outages and widespread disruption, and newspapers were filled with tales of hospitals cancelling operations because of them, with the army drafted in to man emergency generators and keep patients alive.

The public turned against the power workers and after just a week negotiations had begun and the action called off.

The lights were back on but the effect of disrupting the nation’s electricity supply had been demonstrated for all to see. Britain relied on coal for three-quarters of its power supply – the stage was set for a decade of industrial unrest and disruption.