Power Tracker

• Renewables have generated 51TWh of electricity.
  As an illustration, for gas power stations to have generated the same amount of electricity would have required 103TWh of gas.
  This is equivalent to the gas:
  • required to heat 11.3 million homes for the entire winter
  • contained within 118 tankers of LNG.
    
• Other sources of generation (e.g. nuclear) have generated 31TWh of electricity.
  As an illustration, for gas power stations to have generated the same amount of electricity would have required 62TWh of gas.
  This is equivalent to the gas:
  • required to heat 6.8 million homes for the entire winter
  • contained within 71 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. In keeping with energy industry practice, winter is defined as the six months of October to March.

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