A spokesman for the United Kingdom’s National Grid reports that Britons watching coverage of Queen Elizabeth II‘s funeral on Monday caused a massive power drop, equivalent to 200 million lightbulbs being turned off.
The two gigawatt power drop was detected around 10.30 a.m. GMT as “people stopped what they were doing, [vacuuming] or whatever, to turn on the television which uses a lot less energy,” the rep said.
The spokesperson noted, “It stayed around that level at the start of the funeral, but picked up another 500 megawatts as the ceremony went on because people will have got up from their seats to put the kettle on.”
Even though energy levels went back to normal levels as people got back to whatever they were doing, such as making breakfast, cleaning and the like, they dropped even further — by 500 megawatts — during the 2-minute silence for the monarch, who died September 8 at age 96.
Thousands of people waited in line for hours to catch a glimpse of the queen’s hearse on its way to the funeral at Westminster Abbey in London, and afterwards when her coffin was shuttled to Windsor Castle, where she is to be interred in the Royal Vault next to her husband, Prince Phillip, who predeceased her in 2021.