Data and Sources

This website and its content is intended to provide information, data and visualisations relating to Great Britain's electricity and gas systems, and the United Kingdom's generating sites. It is provided for general information only and should not be relied upon for any purpose. It is subject to change without notice.

No attempt has been made to correct errors or amend missing or incomplete data and neither we nor any third parties provide any warranty or guarantee as to the accuracy, timeliness, performance, completeness or suitability of the information, materials and data found or offered on this website for any particular purpose. In using this website you acknowledge that such information and materials may contain inaccuracies or errors and we expressly exclude liability for any such inaccuracies or errors to the fullest extent permitted by law. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.

It is the responsibility of the user to decide whether information, materials and data from this website is appropriate for their purpose and meets their specific requirements and if used, to make a note of the limitations in any published material.

This disclaimer forms part of the terms and conditions for our site, and should be read in conjunction with the website terms and conditions and privacy policy.

Energy Dashboard publishes national and asset-level views of the GB energy system:

• Live and Historical — electricity generation mix, demand, carbon intensity and wholesale price
• Gas — National Transmission System (NTS) supply, demand and linepack
• Map and Sites — generating sites, interconnectors and battery storage
• Records — peak generation and carbon intensity extremes from 2009 onwards

For programmatic access, see the API data service.

Charts and tables on this site are assembled from public industry sources. The main ones are:

• Live metered generation, demand, interconnectors and wholesale price — Elexon / Balancing Mechanism Reporting Service (BMRS)
• Embedded wind, historic generation and demand series, and grid carbon intensity — NESO (National Energy System Operator)
• Embedded solar — PV Live (Sheffield Solar)
• GB gas NTS flows — National Gas
• Site metadata — public registers including REPD and DUKES

Older references to “National Grid ESO” or “NG ESO” mean NESO, which took on the electricity system operator role in October 2024. Historic data portal material now sits on the NESO data portal.

GB electricity supply on the dashboards is assembled from several sources:

• Transmission-metered generation and interconnectors from Elexon (BMRS) — typically 5-minute on Live, half-hourly on Historical
• Embedded wind estimates from NESO
• Embedded solar from PV Live on Live, and from NESO series that originate from PV Live on Historical

BMRS figures alone omit most distribution-connected (embedded) generation. On the dashboards, wind combines metered output with an embedded estimate. National solar is the PV Live estimate, which leaves out solar Balancing Mechanism units.

Data can be delayed or incomplete. Gaps or delays may appear in charts. Instantaneous power is shown in gigawatts (GW), where 1 GW = 1,000 megawatts (MW). Cumulative energy is shown in gigawatt hours (GWh) or terawatt hours (TWh).

Installed capacity changes often. This page does not quote fixed wind or solar capacity figures. For current installed capacity, use the latest statistics from DESNZ, RenewableUK and PV Live (solar).

Gas

Mostly combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) from Elexon on Live and NESO on Historical. Open cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) are included in the overall gas figure on Live charts and are not shown as a separate series. Some of these burn gas oil rather than natural gas, but Elexon still reports them as OCGT. Their contribution is small: they are mostly peaking plant, used for short periods of high demand.

Coal

Historic category. Great Britain's last coal-fired power station closed on 30 September 2024. Output is normally zero; the category remains so historical charts and records stay comparable.

Nuclear

Elexon on Live and NESO on Historical. Output is relatively steady from day to day and forms part of baseload generation, alongside biomass, subject to planned outages.

Wind

Metered wind (offshore farms and larger onshore farms) comes from Elexon. On Live this is combined with NESO's embedded wind estimate. NESO's historical series keep embedded wind separate; the historical charts combine those figures into a single wind total. Unless a chart says otherwise, wind includes embedded generation. On the Map and Sites pages, wind is shown by asset and split into onshore and offshore.

Solar

Live national solar is from Sheffield Solar's PV Live service, updated about every 30 minutes. Most solar in Great Britain is not metered by NESO, so PV Live estimates national output from a sample of live sites, scaled to installed capacity. That estimate excludes solar Balancing Mechanism units, which NESO meters directly. Historical data is from NESO and originates from PV Live. On the national charts, solar is this embedded estimate.

An increasing number of large solar farms are now connected to the Balancing Mechanism. A few of those metered sites appear on the Map and Sites pages. NESO plans to add a metered solar category to its generation data.

Biomass

Elexon and NESO, including coal-to-biomass conversions and biomass combined heat and power (CHP). Output is fairly consistent from day to day and forms part of baseload generation, alongside nuclear.

Hydro

Run-of-river renewable hydro, from Elexon and NESO.

Pumped storage (PSH)

Pumped storage uses electricity during lower demand or price periods to pump water into a higher reservoir, then releases it to generate during higher demand or price periods. Data is from Elexon and NESO.

Imports and interconnectors

Live import and export figures use Elexon flows for the ten operational interconnectors between Great Britain and neighbouring systems:

• France — IFA, IFA2 and ElecLink
• Netherlands — BritNed
• Belgium — Nemo Link
• Norway — North Sea Link
• Denmark — Viking Link
• Northern Ireland — Moyle
• Republic of Ireland — East–West and Greenlink

Ofgem describes these as ten operational links with about 10.3 GW of nominal capacity. Available capacity can be lower during outages or constraints, and further links are in development. Charts may group several links to the same country. Historical views often show combined interconnector flows from NESO.

Battery

On Live, Battery is national battery storage discharge (export), shown separately from Misc. Figures are derived physical output — Physical Notifications plus balancing actions from Elexon — not settled metered output. Battery state of charge is not published. Charging appears on the demand side where it is shown. NESO plans to add a metered battery category to its generation data. In the meantime, the national battery figure is our own total of site-level battery assets, updated every 10 minutes. The Historical page does not currently include battery.

Misc

Elexon publishes this category as Other. On this site it is renamed Misc (miscellaneous). It is real-time metered generation with no category of its own. It is mainly batteries, along with transmission-connected solar, some gas reciprocating peakers and flywheels.

On Live, battery generation is subtracted from Misc so it is not counted twice. That adjustment stays in place until NESO splits battery out of its Other category.

Live demand is from Elexon. Historical demand is NESO's half-hourly series. Both use the same National Demand and Transmission System Demand definitions, based on high-voltage metering. They exclude most embedded generation, so demand can look low when solar and smaller wind farms are generating strongly.

National Demand (net demand, also called INDO — Initial National Demand Out-Turn) is HV metered generation after transmission losses. It excludes station transformer load, pumped storage demand and interconnector exports. The related forecast is NDF (National Demand Forecast).

Transmission System Demand (gross demand, also called ITSDO — Initial Transmission System Demand Out-Turn) is National Demand plus station load, pumped storage demand and interconnector exports. The related forecast is TSDF (Transmission System Demand Forecast). Elexon's ITSDO series does not include battery charging.

On Live we also show two constructed series:

• Actual Demand Net — National Demand plus embedded solar and wind, closer to GB consumption
• Actual Demand Gross — Transmission System Demand plus embedded solar and wind and battery demand

Generators connect either to the transmission network or to the local distribution network. Embedded generation (also called distributed generation) is plant connected at distribution level — much of GB solar, smaller onshore wind, CHP, and a growing share of battery storage. These sites feed electricity into the local network.

NESO has real-time metering of transmission-connected generation, but not of most embedded output. When embedded generators are producing, NESO typically sees lower demand rather than extra supply. That effect is clearest on windy or sunny days, and it is why wind and solar on this site include an estimate as well as metered output.

Embedded wind and solar estimates use weather and capacity models built from public information, including Ofgem scheme data (ROCs and FiTs), DESNZ statistics and RenewableUK.

Carbon intensity on this site is shown in gCO₂/kWh (grams of CO₂ per kilowatt-hour). This is point-of-generation emissions, not lifecycle emissions. Technology contributions use the factors below. Overall grid intensity on Live uses NESO's Carbon Intensity API. The latest half-hour may still be a forecast rather than an outturn. Historical intensity uses NESO's half-hourly series. Charts also show the resulting emissions in tonnes of CO₂ on Live, and in tonnes or kilotonnes on Historical.

Hydro, nuclear, pumped storage, solar, wind and battery discharge are treated as 0 gCO₂/kWh at the point of generation or discharge. Oil is retained as a factor for residual generation even though it is not a separate chart category.

Where a price is shown, it is the GB short-term wholesale index from Elexon's Market Index Data (MID), in £/MWh, with traded volume. It is not a retail tariff and does not include network charges or other bill components.

The Gas page covers Great Britain's National Transmission System using National Gas instantaneous flow data. That includes supply (UK Continental Shelf, Norwegian pipelines, LNG, storage and gas interconnectors), demand (local distribution zones, power stations, storage and exports), linepack, and historical gas-day energy in GWh. Instantaneous rates are shown in million cubic metres per day (mcm/d).

The Map and Sites tools combine public site registers with near-real-time generation. Where live site output is shown, it is reconstructed from Elexon Physical Notifications and balancing actions. The same derived output is used for curtailment (turn-down) and turn-up on the map strip and site charts. Settled metered generation for a site is published later, about five working days afterwards (around seven days in total).

The Map and Sites pages also list technologies that do not appear as their own category on the national charts, including anaerobic digestion, marine, energy from waste (EfW), geothermal and hydrogen. These are generally non-metered embedded generation, and some are experimental or pilot sites.

Records track peak generation by source, including battery, and the lowest and highest carbon intensity from 2009. They are calculated from the historical NESO series. Battery records use the derived site-level figures described above, because that series does not yet include battery. Generation peaks are shown in GW for a half-hour, or as daily energy. Carbon records use gCO₂/kWh.

Megawatts (MW) are used only for individual assets: site output and installed capacity on the Map and Sites pages, including the map total of live sites. National charts use gigawatts (GW).

Last updated: 11 October 2026