The amount of electricity generated by the UK’s gas and coal power plants fell by 20% last year, with consumption of fossil fuels at its lowest level since 1957.
Not since Harold Macmillan was the UK prime minister and the Beatles’ John Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time has the UK used less coal and gas.
The UK’s gas power plants last year generated 31% of the UK’s electricity, or 98 terawatt hours (TWh), according to a report by the industry journal Carbon Brief, while the UK’s last remaining coal plant produced enough electricity to meet just 1% of the UK’s power demand or 4TWh.
Fossil fuels were squeezed out of the electricity system by a surge in renewable energy generation combined with higher electricity imports from France and Norway and a long-term trend of falling demand.
And don’t forget about the people who are charging their full EV cars between midnight and 4am on the excess night time renewables from wind and tidal power to help drive the downturn in fossil usage. Champions 🏆
I’m one of these people! Costs me like £2 to fully charge my car overnight, absolutely love it
The last couple of weeks, they’ve been paying me.
As someone who has just got solar and has an EV, please explain on what I am doing wrong!!!
Look at Octopus’ Agile tariff. It gives you prices that change every 30 minutes based on wholesale prices. https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/
Over the last few months there have been quite a few windy nights where generation has exceeded demand and prices have gone negative.
There are also times of super-peak demand where they will pay you quite a lot for foreceably discharging you batteries into the grid.
If you are interested in switching I have an introduction code to Octopus that would give you and me £50 each
Whats the negative side of the agile tarrif? Are energy prices that volatile that it can potentially screw you over? Whats the risk here? Thanks!!
It goes up and down. At peak times usually 5pm-7pm-ish it’s usually substantially more expensive than a standard tariff. So it only makes economic sense if you are either able to shift usage (cook dinner at 4pm) or can use your batteries to do a bit of arbitrage (buying power when cheap).
You have to be a bit hands on, and potentially someone (like me) who finds it interesting
You can get an idea of prices here
The good news is they make it easy to go from agile to standard tariffs
So I have started the switch. Do I just email the intro code over to them, as I didn’t see a place to use?
I have also been looking at my solis inverter and can see settings to control when the battery can be charged from the grid. At the moment, that is off, so if I switch, I should turn this on and charge from say 1am to 5am.
You have to take the rough with the smooth. When prices go up you’re the first to see it, but when prices go down you’re the first to see it. Currently prices are still dropping.
There’s a 3hr window every afternoon from 4pm to.7pm where prices go up 15p/20p. If the day has had already high prices because there’s no wind or sun and high, then that can be 45-55p.
Overall, at the moment, I’m saving 20% over Octopus Go, but my usage isn’t heavily biased overnight. Somebody who’s charging an EV or battery every night might do better with more predictable rates.
https://energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-yorkshire/ is good to see how the price varies over longer periods.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The amount of electricity generated by the UK’s gas and coal power plants fell by 20% last year, with consumption of fossil fuels at its lowest level since 1957.
It was the third year this decade that renewable energy sources, including wind, solar, hydro and biomass power, outperformed fossil fuels, according to the analysis.
Dan McGrail, the chief executive of RenewableUK, said the data shows “the central role that wind, solar and other clean power sources are consistently playing in Britain’s energy transition”.
“We’re working closely with the government to accelerate the pace at which we build new projects and new supply chains in the face of intense global competition, as everyone is trying to replicate our success,” McGrail said.
Renewable energy has increased sixfold since 2008 as the UK has constructed more wind and solar farms, and the large Drax coal plant has converted some of its generating units to burn biomass pellets.
Electricity demand has tumbled by 22% since its peak in 2005, according to the data, as part of a long-term trend driven by more energy efficient homes and appliances as well as a decline in the UK’s manufacturing sector.
The original article contains 617 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
What’s behind the “long term trend of falling demand”? LED lights and OLED TV’s? Aren’t EV’s increasing demand?
From the article
Electricity demand has tumbled by 22% since its peak in 2005, according to the data, as part of a long-term trend driven by more energy efficient homes and appliances as well as a decline in the UK’s manufacturing sector.
But also
Demand for electricity is expected to double as the UK aims to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 because the plan relies heavily on replacing fossil fuel transport and heating with electric alternatives.
I hope this is good news… but could this be an indicator of an economic downturn?
It seems to have been driven by 3 things.
- Reduced demand (which is your concern)
- More wind generation
- Higher imports from Europe. (new connection to Norway)
The demand has been dropping since 2012 (except 21 and 22), and this just seems to be a continuation of the trend. Now you could ask if we’ve been in an economic downturn since 2012, but I think we’re getting more efficient.
