UK Electricity Generation Map
101 comments
·September 3, 2025unglaublich
Iv
I am also a fan of RTE (French electricity distribution network) live website: https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/la-production-delectricit...
HPsquared
Is there any way to turn off the animation? I'm getting about 5 FPS viewing on mobile.
user____name
I got about 0.5 FPS on my iPhone 15. Yikes.
arethuza
It's actually faster on my relatively new phone than on my ancient desktop!
dijit
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.
arethuza
Yeah, my phone is a iPhone 15 Pro and my desktop PC is an i7-4790
dreamcompiler
TIL there are no coal plants in the UK. How long has this been true?
Liftyee
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.
toomuchtodo
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)
pjc50
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.
lolc
Apparently there's a 400 MW flywheel near Oxford! It's listed as battery which is close enough I guess.
nonethewiser
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/
tobylane
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...
nonethewiser
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...
Retric
So presumably ~6% in 2025, that seems excessive as the UK is such a horrible location for solar. However at such a low percentage across so many locations there’s no need for storage, minimal transmission losses, etc which presumably means it’s not actually a bad idea.
ZeroGravitas
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
I think another way of saying this is “commoditisation”.
pixelesque
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
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?
maxmcd
I think this is the comparable view: https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live
null
alkonaut
How is that surprising?
nonethewiser
Its not. Why do you ask?
alkonaut
or interesting? I mean, why did you point it out? Wasn't it roughly what one would think/expect?
mytailorisrich
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.
Podrod
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/
newyankee
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
The Estonian transmission system operator (Elering) has built this: https://youtu.be/NFuXzu-GIPo?t=51
newyankee
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
Abidrahman435
[dead]
hk1337
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.
arethuza
I think the imports refer to power transfers to/from other countries along interconnectors?
https://www.nationalgrid.com/national-grid-ventures/intercon...
ZeroGravitas
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.
frameset
We import from France mostly, via the interconnects between our countries' grids. That means it's probably mostly nuclear.
frou_dh
The main page https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live is just as interesting as the map that's linked to.
CraigJPerry
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 :-)
arethuza
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.
alimbada
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.
pjc50
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
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
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.)
nonethewiser
If so there is a very generous floor. Solar would probably not be visible if it was install capacity.
throw0101d
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
The Alberta Current Supply Demand Report: http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServle...
Nice, and on a global and interconnect level there's:
https://app.electricitymaps.com/