Power Tracker

• Renewables have generated 64TWh of electricity
  As an illustration, for gas power stations to have generated the same amount of electricity would have required 129TWh of gas.
  This is equivalent to the gas:
• required to heat 10.7 million homes
• contained within 148 tankers of LNG.

• Other sources of generation (e.g. nuclear) have generated 44TWh of electricity.
  As an illustration, for gas power stations to have generated the same amount of electricity would have required 88TWh of gas.
  This is equivalent to the gas:
  • required to heat 7.4 million homes
  • contained within 102 tankers of LNG.

Amidst concerns about supplies of gas for power generation this winter, the contributions of renewables and other forms of generation are reducing the amount of gas that is needed for power generation. As more renewables and other forms of electricity supply are connected to the grid, more gas will be displaced. This means that more gas is available for other purposes, for example heating.

In this analysis, renewables are primarily wind, hydro and solar, whilst other sources of generation are primarily nuclear, biomass and pumped hydro.

Data sources are:

• Transmission generation data from Elexon’s Balancing Mechanism Reporting Service (BMRS): https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=generation/fueltype/current
• Solar PV distributed generation from Sheffield Solar’s PV Live analysis: https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/
• Estimates of distributed generation based on data from DUKES Chapters 5 and 6 (BEIS, 2022): https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/digest-of-uk-energy-statistics-dukes
• Gas calculations use recent maximum CCGT efficiency of 50% and data from DUKES Chapter 4 (BEIS, 2022): https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/digest-of-uk-energy-statistics-dukes