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    Britain Sets New Green Power Record

Summary

Britain's TSO National Grid, said June 7 that at lunchtime that day, wind, nuclear and solar all generated more than both gas and coal combined.

by: Mark Smedley

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Natural Gas & LNG News, Europe, Carbon, Renewables, Gas to Power, Political, Environment, TSO, United Kingdom

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Britain Sets New Green Power Record

Great Britain's national gas and power transmission systems operator, National Grid, said June 7 that at lunchtime that day, wind, nuclear and solar all generated more than both gas and coal combined. This is the first time ever that non-carbon forms of generation have exceeded fossil fuel-fired ones.

At 1 pm June 7, wind was generating more than gas, nuclear was generating more than gas, and solar was generating more than gas. Coal output was zero, a National Grid spokesperson told NGW June 8, adding that was the first time that all these generation technologies were outputting more than gas and coal output combined. The breakdown was wind (9.5 gigawatts), nuclear (8.2 GW), solar (7.3 GW), and gas-fired CCGTs (7.2 GW).
 
NGrid also said wind, solar, biomass and hydro combined at 1pm June 7 providing over half of power demand, namely 18.7 GW or 50.7% of demand, also a record. This shows that, even with a UK carbon tax working against coal, that renewables can displace gas when the wind blows or sun shines.
 
Aurora Energy Research said that Britain experienced negative day-ahead electricity prices for the first time ever, during the early hours of June 7, because of high wind generation output and low demand for power, with wind supplying over 40% of GB generation during 00.00 to 04.30hrs UK time.
 

The large offshore wind and nuclear contributions are illustrated in the graphic below in period 25, the half-hour starting 1pm, with zero coal (in red at the bottom). The lower orange bar shows gas-fired CCGTs, while the upper orange segment is wind (both off- and onshore); nuclear is shown in purple.

Lunchtime on June 7 corresponds to periods 24-28 above, The lower of the orange segments represents gas-fired CCGTs, with the upper one showing wind (Graphic credit: Elexon/BM Reports)

Recent GB solar and zero-coal records

A number of clean energy records for generation have been recorded by the operator recently. At a point on May 26, record GB solar generation of 8.7 gigawatts was reported, representing 24.3% of Britain's electricity demand at that time. And in the month before that, for the first weekday ever since the industrial revolution, Britain went for an entire day with zero coal-fired generation on April 21, thanks to significant contributions from gas, renewable and nuclear generation

 

Mark Smedley

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