UK Electricity Generation Map

https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/map

by zeristor • 11 months ago

175 98 11 months ago

energydashboard.co.uk

unglaublich• 11 months ago

Nice, and on a global and interconnect level there's:

https://app.electricitymaps.com/

Iv• 11 months ago

I am also a fan of RTE (French electricity distribution network) live website: https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/la-production-delectricit...

CraigJPerry• 11 months ago

Never realised just how much diversity of power generation there is on my doorstep in Lanarkshire. I live basically in the middle of nowhere, this is not a dense population centre although several of the sites are dedicated to industrial processes.

Great presentation of this data, i just lost 15 mins satisfying curiosity. Thanks :-)

arethuza7• 11 months ago

I was surprised to see a solar plant near Rhynie - but then again it will be in the rain shadow of the Cairngorms so probably reasonably sunny...

Absolutely fascinating map!

Edit: As I typed that I thought "Rhynie sounds a bit Welsh (British)" and I checked and it might be related to the old old phrases for "king" - which seems appropriate for a place with a huge ancient fortress looming over it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhynie,_Aberdeenshire

alimbada• 11 months ago

I was in Dumfries/Ayrshire a few weeks ago. Came up from Manchester; saw so many wind farms on the way and during our visit, most of them after crossing the border.

pjc502• 11 months ago

The Conservative government banned new onshore wind in England for some years, hence the difference. There's now plenty of wind power in Scotland and a shortage of transmission capacity.

wiz21c• 11 months ago

Is it me or the size of the circles is proprtional to the installed capacity instead of the generated capacity (i.e. a 1200MW nuclear plant is as big as a 1200MW wind turbine, which seems not right to me)

rmccue• 11 months ago

I don't think they're directly proportional, seems to be some sort of tailing off - Seagreen 1 (1075) and Torness (1200MW) seem to be a very similar size to Neart Na Gaoithe (450MW). (This could just appear similar because area of circles isn't a great way to visualise data though.)

nonethewiser14• 11 months ago

If so there is a very generous floor. Solar would probably not be visible if it was install capacity.

drcongo• 11 months ago

This is excellent. Led me to discover this mini hydro generator: https://courtfarmdorset.co.uk/water-wheel/

mnw21cam2• 11 months ago

Just a minute while I cringe at the units.

haltcatchfire• 11 months ago

Yes, the water wheel will generate electricity all year round. In winter, it produces between 120 and 170 kWh per 24-hour period, with peak generation reaching up to 11 kW per hour. In summer, it generates between 3 and 5 kW per hour.

Seems like a nice complement with solar, given that they peak at each others inverse.

dreamcompiler3• 11 months ago

I've seen worse.

But yeah, "11 kW per hour" is meaningless.

petesergeant• 11 months ago

for some reason I thought this would look much more bucolic than it does

arethuza7• 11 months ago

Ironically, hydro power causes a lot of environmental problems - a lot of glens in the Scottish highlands have had ugly roads bulldozed up them to install fairly small hydro schemes. Maybe this is worth it overall, but they can certainly be terrible to look at.

gdubya• 11 months ago

Very interesting! Who made this?

zeristor• 11 months ago

I don’t know.

I had noticed the Norway interconnect was running at 0 MW, and I was trying different sites to see if it was the data feed.

It wasn’t, it seems Norway NO2 area has 50% water levels in its hydro dams, the rest seem OK but NO2 region is the one which exports power to UK, Germany, and Denmark.

The little animations of power moving along lines are very cool.

dannyfraser3• 11 months ago

A bit of digging in the T&Cs, Companies House, and LinkedIn pointed me to an individual working for the NHS who has put this together as a side project.

I work in this space (https://www.woodmac.com/), mostly with natural gas data but have worked on power in the past so I'm always interested to see if it's anyone I know (in this case it isn't).

Building something like this isn't really that difficult - all of the data is publicly accessible and if you can transform it and pull it into a database and build a front-end app then you're pretty much there. The developer has stated that the main source for this is https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/, but other good sources of energy data (across Europe) are https://transparency.entsoe.eu/ for power and https://transparency.entsog.eu/ for gas. Also useful are https://alsi.gie.eu/ for LNG imports and https://agsi.gie.eu/ for gas storage.

HPsquared• 11 months ago

Is there any way to turn off the animation? I'm getting about 5 FPS viewing on mobile.

arethuza7• 11 months ago

It's actually faster on my relatively new phone than on my ancient desktop!

dijit2• 11 months ago

fun fact, the marriage of hardware and phone browsers (especially iOS) allow full utilisation of floating point calculations for javascript (since every “number” is a float of course).

ARM is literally tweaking CPUs to be better at running Javascript: for example ARMv8.3 added a new float-to-int instruction with errors and out-of-range values handled the way that JavaScript wants.

Meaning, yes, typically, the most powerful devices for browsing the web are in fact phones.

Webapps that perform fine on an iPhone 14 can cause the latest i9-14900k to choke.. It’s hilarious.

This is part of why the Apple M-Series CPUs feel like magic. Lots of electron apps suddenly perform very well.

user____name• 11 months ago

I got about 0.5 FPS on my iPhone 15. Yikes.

Cthulhu_• 11 months ago

Related, in the Netherlands we have https://energieopwek.nl/ which shows a chart of power sources (not all are selected, press top right to add more) and shows that the vast majority of electricity is solar/wind, even in winter, with non-renewables being used as the baseline.

WJW• 11 months ago

I don't think that's correct. It only shows renewable sources, and of those solar and wind are (obviously) the vast majority here in NL. But it's not even possible to enable showing coal and nuclear on that site, even though you can't convince me that they are literally not operating at all on a relatively cloudy day like this.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be surprised if renewables were a majority of the grid these days. It's just that this dashboard contains insufficient information to conclude that.

frou_dh• 11 months ago

The main page https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live is just as interesting as the map that's linked to.

alexnorton• 11 months ago

See also the GB Renewables Map by Robin Hawkes which has a nice wind overlay:

https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/

nonethewiser14• 11 months ago

Solar has a count of 1354 out of a total of 3047. So 44%.

Solar accounts for ~5% of the actual output per https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity and https://www.renewableuk.com/news-and-resources/press-release...

edit: change source from https://grid.iamkate.com/

alkonaut2• 11 months ago

How is that surprising?

nonethewiser14• 11 months ago

Its not. Why do you ask?

pixelesque• 11 months ago

Huge offshore wind farms with hundreds of turbines are counted as single counts in this map though, so it's not really a compareable thing I don't think.

hopelite• 11 months ago

What would be the point of that? It seems to be by complex. You would not count every single generator separately at a hydro plant, would you? Every single solar panel?

tobylane3• 11 months ago

I see 16% now, and my own panels have jumped up to 400w since your comment, with a peak of 1500 earlier today. https://imgur.com/a/HOX6YJu

While domestic installations are counted, they aren't in OP's link. https://www.projectsolaruk.com/blog/latest-uk-solar-photovol...

nonethewiser14• 11 months ago

Thanks for pointing that out - I guess I was a bit hasty with that source. It's not showing quite what I thought it was. Live data and percentages which can total more than 100%. Here is a better one that shows in 2023 solar was 4.7% of the overall electricity mix. And another source showing 5.2% in 2024.

[0] https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity

[1] https://www.renewableuk.com/news-and-resources/press-release...

maxmcd• 11 months ago

I think this is the comparable view: https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live

mytailorisrich• 11 months ago

It's the British weather.

Today there is an Atlantic storm so most the the country is grey but with sunny periods and windy.

In the depth of winter, solar only makes a contribution 3-4 hours per day, which kills the annual average.

ZeroGravitas2• 11 months ago

Yep, it's amazing how modular solar is. It's probably one of the biggest factors driving it down the cost curve and making it the primary source of energy for the human race going forward.

You can buy single panels from the supermarket and plug them in on your balcony! That's amazing.

And that modularity directly drives the competition which reduces the prices of the modules themselves and the many competing solar farms at many different scales racing to connect to the grid and delivering on or under budget on cost and time.

What a time to be alive.

marcosscriven• 11 months ago

I think another way of saying this is “commoditisation”.

toomuchtodo2• 11 months ago

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/solar-photovoltaics...

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/08/28/strongest-year-on-rec...

nonethewiser14• 11 months ago

Why is there a battery category? That does not seem to fit with electricity GENERATION but I may be missing something.

estel• 11 months ago

Generation might be a slight misnomer, but it's conceptually the same as pumped storage - grid capacity that can be called upon as necessary.

nonethewiser14• 11 months ago

I think you're right. I think its more like you say - grid capacity that can be called upon as necessary. Which is often from generators but not necessarily.

The "interconnectors" are more evidence this isn't really about generators, but grid entry points. The interconnectors are connections to the French, Danish, etc. grids.

dannyfraser3• 11 months ago

Generation in this instance means power generation to meet consumption demand. Typically withdrawals from storage are counted as a source of supply to meet that demand regardless of the original source of the power in storage.

nonethewiser14• 11 months ago

So either the solar, wind, etc. datapoints are not being stored or they are double counting. It seems very unlikely all these solar, wind, etc. generators are not storing energy.

infecto5• 11 months ago

A battery is a form generation. Ideally it soaks up power when not being used and then releases at peaks.

nonethewiser14• 11 months ago

A battery is a source of electricity. I think being a source is being conflated with being a generator. A battery does not generate electricity. It stores it.

jillesvangurp• 11 months ago

Dispatchable power is probably a more neutral term than generation. The reason battery is included in tools like this is that there is a rapidly growing, non-trivial amount of dispatchable battery power on grids. Anything that excludes that is kind of not giving you the full picture. And of course this is widely expected to vastly increase in amount of dispatchable GW over the next years. It's early days.

Dispatchable power is what matters if you are managing a grid. If you have lots of dispatchable power, you can deal with peaks and dips (both are valuable) in demand very rapidly and relatively cheaply. Long term, daily, and seasonal trends are fairly predictable. Even the weather is short term fairly predictable.

Battery adds a lot of predictability to grids. If you have hours to plan for it, you can bring online gas if needed (coal and nuclear are not typically kept around in a mothballed state for this). If it's seconds, you are screwed because that is non dispatchable power (you need to plan to have it and spend money to get it online). That's the gap batteries fill.

Anything with flywheels (gas, coal plants, etc.) needs time to (literally) spin up. And before that happens you first need to generate steam by boiling a large amount of cold water. Some gas plants can start relatively quickly but then run less efficiently. You can trade off dispatchability for efficiency. It means expending a lot of fuel just to get the thing started that otherwise delivers no power. They provide a lot of power once they are up and running but they are kind of useless when you need that power right away. And the more often you shut them down, the more you lose on spinning them up again.

throw0101d• 11 months ago

For those in Ontario, Canada, see perhaps:

* https://www.ieso.ca/power-data § Supply

* https://www.ieso.ca/market-data

The output for individual generators is available at:

* https://sygration.rodanenergy.com/gendata/today.html

(AIUI, historical data available for a fee.)

slavik81• 11 months ago

The Alberta Current Supply Demand Report: http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServle...

Podrod• 11 months ago

Hah neat, didn't know there was a 15MW battery about 15 minute walk from me.

Here's a kinda related site that I think is neat: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

alias_neo2• 11 months ago

Interesting that the city I live in has basically nothing apart from a single, relatively small "battery".

I wonder, does residential solar with export count towards this sort of thing?

Presumably residential export is fairly small relative to everything else, but anecdotally, I export enough daily to run another home the size of mine.

EDIT: Clarify a sentence

ZenoArrow• 11 months ago

I wonder, does residential solar with export count towards this sort of thing?

It isn't displayed on this website, or at least not all of them, I checked by looking for an installation that I know exists that is on a feed in tariff and it wasn't shown.

To be fair to the creators of this website, it's probably quite hard to gather and display this type of residential solar information.

alias_neo2• 11 months ago

I agree the display part is probably challenging, the exact location likely isn't recorded and the density could make it an issue to show on the map; regarding collecting it, I'd be surprised if there wasn't some public-ish record of it somewhere, we do all have to register with the DNO etc as micro-generators so it'd be interesting to know if someone makes an API with that information available.

Aside from that, my real wonder was whether residential solar is factored into national renewables or if it's simply too little to be worth it.

newyankee2• 11 months ago

I really wish a simulated version with very granular transmission and distribution capacity for different type of producers and consumers, from large plants to individual houses to community solar or agrivoltaics could exist.

This might be very helpful in understanding how to correctly allocate the infrastructure to enable distributed production at the right place. What kind of reversible flow is possible ? What types of electrical equipment is needed etc.

I feel finally we are at a place where grid cost might be much higher than solar and batteries when amortized over 20-25 years.

scrlk• 11 months ago

The Estonian transmission system operator (Elering) has built this: https://youtu.be/NFuXzu-GIPo?t=51

newyankee2• 11 months ago

thanks, that looks quite interesting. Probably Estonia's push to be a true e-state has something to do with it, as the markets become larger transparency possibly becomes a liability for incumbent utility companies who will not like it

dreamcompiler3• 11 months ago

TIL there are no coal plants in the UK. How long has this been true?

arethuza7• 11 months ago

Last year:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y35qz73n8o

Liftyee• 11 months ago

The last coal power plant was shut down in late 2024. I remember checking the grid power stats before then and often seeing 0 MW of coal generated power.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y35qz73n8o

toomuchtodo2• 11 months ago

Britain's last coal-fired power plant shuts down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41734993 - October 2024 (95 comments)

UK to finish with coal power after 142 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41695587 - September 2024 (63 comments)

Britain's reliance on coal-fired power set to end after 140 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41443347 - September 2024 (70 comments)

pjc502• 11 months ago

There's a slight fudge: the largest coal plant, Drax, is still in operation - burning wood pellets imported from the US and Canada. In theory this is CO2-neutral. But it could go back to coal in an emergency with some enabling legislation.

_mlbt• 11 months ago

How do they import these wood pellets? Is it fossil fuel powered ships? Is that factored in to the CO2 neutrality?

bparsons• 11 months ago

The minimalist Alberta Electricity System Operator dashboard is far superior:

http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServle...

hk1337• 11 months ago

Wind generation is king, apparently. I'm curious what the imports consist of, presumably natural gas but it's not indicated; however it doesn't seem to have that big of a reliance.

arethuza7• 11 months ago

I think the imports refer to power transfers to/from other countries along interconnectors?

https://www.nationalgrid.com/national-grid-ventures/intercon...

frameset• 11 months ago

We import from France mostly, via the interconnects between our countries' grids. That means it's probably mostly nuclear.

ZeroGravitas2• 11 months ago

The electricity maps site calculates the carbon intensity of the grid imports and lists it on the map and the country specifically views (click for more info):

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly

As a general rule, the imports are imported because they are cheaper and generally cheaper means cleaner.

ksec• 11 months ago

Most of it is still Wind Farm on shore, how Off shore is not at least 50% of UK energy output is completely beyond me.

arethuza7• 11 months ago

The default view is for Operational sites - you can add other categories e.g. "Under Construction" which gives a view of the pipeline of new sites.

There are a lot of offshore wind sites at various stages of construction/planning - some that are amongst the largest in the world.

ajd555• 11 months ago

This looks great! I've been planning on adding NYISO power data to the NYC Dashboard (https://dash.hudsonshipping.co), so this is very encouraging to see! I unfortunately don't think the US has such granular data - I love seeing the interconnectors to other countries.

komali2• 11 months ago

We have this in Taiwan but it's uglier and some moron put `user-select: none` on the table. But anyway: https://www.taipower.com.tw/d006/loadGraph/loadGraph/genshx_...

boringg• 11 months ago

Some kind of form of this energy data visualization shows up on hacker news every 6 months or so ... why is that?

cramcgrab• 11 months ago

Wow! The app is just as fast as parliament!

divbzero• 11 months ago

Are there electricity generation maps with the same level of granularity for other countries? Or is the UK unusual for providing data for each power plant?

nikcub• 11 months ago

here's Australia:

https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/

lloydatkinson• 11 months ago

Always impressed with these because the disjointed energy APIs that exist in the UK are quit honestly the worst APIs I’ve ever had the misfortune of trying to use.

0xWTF• 11 months ago

It would be nice if the totals included total power produced by the selected subset.

NooneAtAll3• 11 months ago

list of energy sources doesn't have scrollbar - so on a device with not enough screen height it's impossible to read the whole list without using browser zoom

lolc• 11 months ago

Apparently there's a 400 MW flywheel near Oxford! It's listed as battery which is close enough I guess.

UK Electricity Generation Map

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