026 - The UK's fascinating forecasts of capacity growth

The UK government's Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published a bunch of forecasts recently - the chart below shows the varied capacities of technologies they forecast will dominate their electricity system. Source.

025 - UK Electricity demand forecasts dominated by business and homes

The UK's BEIS government department released forecasts for 2016 onwards - the chart below, from their data, shows that they suspect the bulk of electricity demand will come from homes and businesses. Source.

024 - The death of coal in the UK will be in 2021

A few days ago, the UK just went it's first 24-hour period without burning coal since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

The UK government's Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) recently publish projections of greenhouse gas emissions and energy demand, from 2016 to 2035. Annex J of their report shows the precise moment they except to switch off their coal supplies. It'll be a historic moment.

Source.

014 - Distribution frequencies for different fuels in the UK

These charts show the number of five minute intervals each fuel spends at a certain level of output, with each bin showing the 'ceiling' of that range (either averaged to 100 or 1,000 megawatts, depending on the fuel type).

I've included frequency, demand and interconnection too. It's interesting to see the UK spending a lot of time importing electricity, and that frequency is more often lower than 50Hz, suggesting demand is slightly higher than generation, on average. But not by much.

Source

013 - The UK imports a fair amount of electricity

The United Kingdom is electrically connected to four different regions - France (two gigawatts), the Netherlands (one gigawatt), Northern Ireland (500 megawatts) and the Republic of Ireland (500 megawatts, 'East-West'). The chart below, sourced from Gridwatch in the UK, shows variations in the average flow across these four interconnections over the past few years. You can see real-time data here.

012 - The decline of coal-fired power in the UK

The United Kingdom has used a range of different fuel types to reduce their reliance on coal-fired power, and as such, emissions in the UK are dropping to their lowest levels since the 19th century. The chart below, via Gridwatch, shows the mix of fuel types in the UK over the past few years. The next few charts will explore UK electricity, too.