The covid-19 pandemic restrictions are a new challenge for the UK’s National Grid ESO CW Images/Alamy

The coronavirus-led shutdown of large parts of the economy is likely to cut the UK’s electricity needs dramatically this summer, potentially by as much as a fifth.

While electricity demand always dips in summer months, the UK’s National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) said today that the response to covid-19 could see electricity demand drop by between 4 and 20 per cent in the daytime.

That will make it harder than usual to match electricity supply with demand, and ways of balancing the two …