I love National Grid: Live but I wanted to see more historic data for renewable energy production so I've started to create something here. It's very much a work in progress but I will add to it over time.
Gas sets the price of our electricity and when it eventually starts to drop out of our generation mix, electricity prices should fall and should be more consistent. At time of writing, we are very close to occasionally using no gas at all
For this graph I have chosen wind, solar, nuclear and hydropower as sources of low carbon production. Demand has been falling in recent years but as we electrify everything, it is likely to increase. As can be seen from the graph, we already have enough low carbon capacity to meet demand on some days. However the trend lines suggest we won't be averaging 100% renewables until 2039, something the government is hoping to achieve by 2030
This shows the wholesale price of electricity against the percentage of the generation that comes from fossil fuels. The data comes from the last 6 months so that changes in the price of gas don't impact the chart too much. It is clear that higher fossil fuel usage leads to higher prices.
Note, the wholesale price is not the only factor in what we pay for our electricity, and as the price drops, renewable subsidies will increase (since renewables are paid a contracted price for their electricity) so there is a floor to the price the consumer will pay.
Not a huge amount to see here at time of writing, but I'm hopeful it will start shooting upwards soon. It shows the number of hours where low carbon electricity has produced more than 30GW of power, which is the approximate demand for the UK
This shows that solar and wind are complementary sources of energy in the UK, wind peaks during the winter months, solar obviously peaks during the summer months
This is similar to the first chart, but is more impressive. It emphasises the big impact removing coal from our generation mix has had. In 2012, coal was our biggest generator of electricity and by 2019 it had virtually disappeared
Same theme again, this time the percentage of our electricity that is coming from fossil fuels. This provides a more optimistic prediction for reaching zero fossil fuel usage as it suggests we may get there by 2032. I expect the trend going forwards will not be linear and the use of fossil fuels will continue to fall but at a slower rate
This shows the cost of electricity rising after the start of the war in Ukraine due to higher gas prices and they have never returned back to their old levels
Supported by National Energy SO Open Data
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