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

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.

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.

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 

Peter Brooks said:

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.

Peter Brooks said:

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.

Hello Simon:

So Nuclear takes forever to build-- WHY???

I was watching the History TV channel yesterday and it stated that the massive Colosseum in Rome took only 8 years to build.

They had between 60,000-100,000 people building it, most of the actual workers being slaves.

Maybe the UK should put illegals to work, building Nuclear power stations.

Remember In the 1800's and early 1900's the UK used Irish Labor to build the railways and the road systems.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay   

Peter Brooks said:

So Nuclear takes forever to build-- WHY???

Big projects always overrun, and the budget always spirals out of control.

Hinkley C was announced in 2010.  Building started in 2017 with an estimated completion of 2025.  But it's now more like 2031 for commissioning.

If a nuclear power station is going to take 21 years to build, then it's hard to see how more nuclear is going to solve any of our energy problems.

Maybe Rolls Royce can actually build their much hyped, but never seen, small modular reactors, then things might be different.

Is the basic problem caused by hiring way too many chiefs and way too few Indians?

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay Florida 

In the case of Hinkley C, it's a one-off.  So no standard plan to follow.  No off-the-shelf safety case for the regulators.  So every safety feature has to be justified.

It took ages to start building.  With a price of about £31 - 35 billion (according to Wikipedia) in 2015 prices, getting anyone to actually fund it was a problem.  Who wants to invest in something that won't deliver any returns for over a decade?

When it does get build, the energy customers are going to be fleeced.  The Chinese and French investors have only been enticed to put up the money by being offered a ridiculous price per MWh.  Of course, the government negotiated the deal, but it will be the consumers footing the bill.

Hello Simon:

Hinkley C is a one off?

As I understand it, Hinkley C uses the modern European Reactor (EPR) design installed in Power Stations in France.

So how can it be a ONE OFF!

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

Partly, there are many organisations that have a right to 'put an oar in' at the planning phase. so things like discussions over access road routes,  and bat relocation boxes take disproportionate time, that problem is not just nuclear power but anything large enough to attract significant attention.  This can delay anything by years from 'agreed' to 'spade in ground' well, diggers on site.
Then the actual design of the thing - all the more mil background and grounded in practical experiment folk who built Hunterston  Hinkley etc at breakneck speed in the 1960s have all long retired from the game and the modern way is to computer model to death in all the fine detail before freezing even the outline of a design - which avoids last minute plan changes, is technically less risky, but also is a very sow process compared to scale models, and starting and then finessing on the fly - and as a country we don't have a huge pool of folk who can be design authorities and design reviewers, so things move very carefully and in a very risk averse way, with what is actually by historical standards a modest technical team and a large crew of support and admin.
Of course the old way was probably more expensive too, but it was perhaps deliberately not made clear how many folk were on secondment  from the atomic weapons establishment  and so on. so an unknown fraction of the cost may well have been borne by the cold war budget - there used to be jokes about departments with ten thousand employees doing the work of two thousand jobs and that is no longer politically correct to say perhaps, but there is an element of that today, but more about the management of paperwork side than the engineering.

Mike