{"id":341,"date":"2020-10-16T13:25:58","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T13:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.uk\/?p=341"},"modified":"2021-03-05T13:32:20","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T13:32:20","slug":"capacity-and-production-statistics-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/?p=341","title":{"rendered":"Capacity and production statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Dr Iain Staffell – Imperial College London<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This quarter saw new lows for both nuclear and coal power plants, and prices return to 2017 levels.<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Nuclear power hit its lowest levels in over a decade, falling by one-fifth on last year to supply just 3.7 GW in mid-June. Several plants were offline for their annual summer maintenance, but Sizewell B suffered an unexpected ammonia leak<\/a>, and Hunterston B was unable to come back online after further cracks were discovered<\/a> in its reactor core. A third of the country\u2019s nuclear fleet remained offline for the entire three months of Q2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monthly average nuclear output<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Coal supplied the smallest share of any generating technology, behind even run-of-river hydro plants, which rarely supply more than one percent of Britain\u2019s electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wind output was one-fifth higher than this quarter last year, boosted by the offshore fleet. Similarly, imports and exports were both up on last year as the new link to Belgium continues to push up import dependency<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britain\u2019s electricity supply mix in the second quarter of 2019<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Wholesale power prices fell back to below \u00a340\/MWh for the first time in two years as gas prices fell by a third. Ofgem reacted by lowering the cap on retail power bills<\/a> by \u00a375 per year for a typical household.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Installed capacity and electricity produced by each technology<\/em> 2<\/a><\/sup> 3<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

1: About 60% of Britain\u2019s hydro plants are connected to the national grid and reported on here, another 800 MW is \u2018embedded\u2019 and thus invisible to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2: Other sources give different values because of the types of plant they consider. For example, BEIS Energy Trends<\/a> records an additional 0.7 GW of hydro, 0.6 GW of biomass and 3 GW of waste-to-energy plants. These plants and their 
output are not visible to the electricity transmission system and so cannot be reported on here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3: We include an estimate of the installed capacity of smaller storage devices which are not monitored by the electricity market operator. Britain\u2019s storage capacity is made up of 2.9 GW of pumped hydro storage, 0.6 GW of lithium-ion batteries, 0.4 GW of flywheels and 0.3 GW of compressed air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authors:<\/em> Dr Iain Staffell<\/a>, Professor Richard Green<\/a>, Dr Rob Gross<\/a> and Professor Tim Green<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Dr Iain Staffell – Imperial College London This quarter saw new lows for both nuclear and coal power plants, and prices return to 2017 levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-q2-2019"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t