{"id":2489,"date":"2025-09-05T11:14:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T11:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/?p=2489"},"modified":"2025-09-10T10:28:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T10:28:40","slug":"power-system-records-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/?p=2489","title":{"rendered":"Power system records"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This quarter was defined by record-breaking solar output and the lowest ever carbon emissions. Solar power broke all hourly, daily, and monthly records. At <a href=\"http:\/\/1%20pm%20on%2010%20may\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">1 PM on 10 May<\/a>, it supplied more than 40% of Britain\u2019s electricity demand for the first time. That month also saw both the <a href=\"https:\/\/electricinsights.co.uk\/#\/dashboard?start=2025-05-26&amp;&amp;_k=58ii6i\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">cleanest day on record<\/a> (averaging 28 grams of CO2 per kWh of electricity consumed), and then the <a href=\"https:\/\/electricinsights.co.uk\/#\/dashboard?start=2025-05-29&amp;&amp;_k=fxx2zh\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">lowest ever instantaneous carbon intensity<\/a> of just 6 g\/kWh. June then extended the run of milestones, with solar power averaging more than 3.4 GW over the month, well above the previous record of 2.8 GW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The tables below look over the past sixteen years (since 2009) and report the record output and share of electricity generation, plus sustained averages over a day, a month, and a calendar year. Cells highlighted in blue are records that were<br>broken in the second quarter of 2025. Each number links to the date it occurred on the Electric Insights website, so these records can be explored visually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"367\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/WEL_Drax_EIQ_2025_Q1_Graph_12-367x1024.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2528\" srcset=\"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/WEL_Drax_EIQ_2025_Q1_Graph_12-367x1024.png 367w, https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/WEL_Drax_EIQ_2025_Q1_Graph_12-108x300.png 108w, https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/WEL_Drax_EIQ_2025_Q1_Graph_12-768x2141.png 768w, https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/WEL_Drax_EIQ_2025_Q1_Graph_12-551x1536.png 551w, https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/WEL_Drax_EIQ_2025_Q1_Graph_12-734x2048.png 734w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 367px) 100vw, 367px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>3 Note that Britain has no inter-seasonal electricity storage, so we only report on half-hourly and daily records. Elexon and National Grid only report the output of large pumped hydro storage plants.<br>The operation of battery, flywheel and other storage sites is not publicly available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This quarter was defined by record-breaking solar output and the lowest ever carbon emissions. Solar power broke all hourly, daily, and monthly records. At 1 PM on 10 May, it supplied more than 40% of Britain\u2019s electricity demand for the first time. That month also saw both the cleanest day on record (averaging 28 grams of CO2 per kWh of [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[41,63],"class_list":["post-2489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-q2-2025","tag-electric-insights","tag-q2-2025"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2489"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2529,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489\/revisions\/2529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}