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 is simplified by assuming it is about 30GW. It's been falling in recent years and is higher during winter months. As can be seen from the graph, we already have enough low carbon capacity to meet demand on some days. However the trend line suggests we won't be averaging 100% renewables until 2048, something the government is hoping to achieve by 2030
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
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
Supported by National Energy SO Open Data