Anatomy of a price spike

On a cold, calm January day the wind faded to a tenth of its capacity while demand stayed high. Britain leaned on its interconnectors for close to six gigawatts of imported power — around three-fifths of everything the cables can carry — and the system price spiked to £2,900 a megawatt-hour, roughly forty times an ordinary afternoon. By the end of the day the bill for those imports came to £87.5 million, the most Britain has ever paid to import electricity in a single day. Press play and watch the day tighten.