For the complete year 2024 what fuel mix percentages were used to provide the UK with electrical energy?

At the start of each year my US Electrical power company issues a chart showing the fuel sources (Natural gas, Nuclear, Solar, Oil and coal etc) with its percentage (Natural gas of 75% or 43.3%) where the first percentage represents my Florida local power company and the second percentage the complete US.

Does a similar chart exists for the UK, covering the whole of 2024, where the KWh values used to calculate the percentages is based on "power consumed" by "paying" customers and not just considering potential generating capacity?

It should also include electrical power imported into the UK.

Peter Brooks Palm Bay Florida USAj

  • These figures look to be for GB rather than the whole of the UK, and I suspect will be actual generation figures (so will differ slightly from end user consumption due to transmission and distribution losses) but this might be what you're looking for: https://www.neso.energy/news/britains-electricity-explained-2024-review

        - Andy.

  • and you can see it in pretty graphs here too: https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=1-year&start=2024-01-01

       - Andy.

  • have a look for the NESO app which you may find interesting. real-time generation stats. 

  • I suspect the NESO figures will be for centrally metered generation - so is likely to be an  underestimate for small scale on-site generation like domestic PV - which at a national level merely looks like reduction in demand as the current is consumed either within the premises or in the local neighbourhood.

       - Andy.

  • Hello Andy:

    This is exactly what I am looking for.

    The big difference with the US data is Wind - it is not big enough to be recorded as a percentage.

    There are wind turbines in the US but I have only seen them near the West Coast. There is work in progress to have a string of them in the Atlantic just off the Massachusetts coast.

    Massachusetts has some of the highest power costs in the US- twice what we pay here in Florida- it could be due to general tax practices however.

    I was watching a youtube program yesterday that highlighted the reasons why the UK pays such high power bills.

    It identified two companies that have gas based systems that are used to keep the UK power grid up in event of a major loss of  renewable energy.

    They bid for contracts for this service and are effectively being paid not to be used.

    It is like being hired as a hangman without there being a death penalty - just because the practice might come back.

    Peter Brooks

    Palm Bay 

      

       

  • Further to the links above,  the UK govt publishes the 'DUKES' Digest of UK energy statistics, which are about a year behind reality, but are used for central planning purposes. 

    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/digest-of-uk-energy-statistics-dukes

    This also allows the curious to look at other aspects of energy use in remarkable detail. (as well as power generation, chapters on transport fuels and so on )  The only problem, is there is rather a lot of it, much of it as tables of raw data, and even the annual 'summary' is a pretty long read.

    The most recent one is the one published in July 2024, mostly about UK energy use in 2023.

    Annual summary https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66a7e14da3c2a28abb50d922/DUKES_2024_Chapters_1-7.pdf 

    and the raw data https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/digest-of-uk-energy-statistics-dukes-2024

    I suspect anyone who actually digests that lot probably ends up knowing rather  more about the UK energy use than the relevant minister !

    Mike.

  • Hello Mike:

    Even while DUKES does not cover 2024 it certainly appears to answer my questions.

    It struck me as strange that for a country that wanted to be self sufficient (think Brexit) it sure is importing a lot of electrical power..

    Peter Brooks

    Palm Bay Florida 

  • It struck me as strange that for a country that wanted to be self sufficient (think Brexit) it sure is importing a lot of electrical power.

    Nuclear takes forever to build.  The last Conservative government pretty much banned all new onshore wind farms to appease the NIMBYs.  Then they set the price for offshore wind so low that nobody bid to build wind farms there either.  Maybe things will start moving again with a change of government.

    So we import nuclear and hydroelectric power from overseas instead.

  • it sure is importing a lot of electrical power..

    Compared to what we import in oil, gas, food etc, it's a pretty low percentage.

       - Andy,

  • not since about the year 2000 have we been anywhere near self sufficient in energy and by now the north sea stocks of  both gas and oil are in terminal decline, - the heyday for peak UK wealth in that sense was probably the 1980s. Having lived through it I can say it did not feel like it.

    Mike.