Britain’s electricity market saw average transmission system demand drop to 23.5GW in the second quarter this year, the lowest for any Q2 since 2020.
This was partly attributed to increased embedded generation from solar PV and load shifting from batteries and other sources.
A report by energy data analyst Montel Analytics shows that GB power generation (excluding imports) fell 17% from the previous quarter to 54.6TWh. Renewables contributed 47% to the generation mix this quarter – the report groups wind, biomass, solar and hydro in this segment.
Renewables generation was the largest contributor to the GB power generation mix in Q2 2024, followed by gas-fired generation, which comprised 21% of the total.
Solar generation surged by 174% compared to Q1, reaching its highest level of any recent quarter with total solar output of 5.14TWh.
Solar output rose 4% year-on-year in Q2 2024, lower than the year-on-year increase from 2022 to 2023. Phil Hewitt, director at Montel Analytics, put this in the context of “some pretty horrible weather.”
Wind output contributed 17.2TWh to the generation mix, a decline of 31% from Q1 2024 but still 3.8TWh higher than Q2 2023. Weather conditions meant bid volumes were introduced to reduce the excess of available wind generation, amounting to 8% of the average wind generation.
Gas output reduced by more than a third this quarter to 13.4TWh, the lowest figure that Montel Analytics recorded in 20 years. Gas prices rose steadily: at the start of Q2, they were £23.24/MWh, reaching a high of £30.06/MWh on 3 June and finishing the quarter at £27.35/MWh.
Hewitt attributed some of the drop in demand to businesses and consumers becoming more conscious of limiting their energy costs.
He said: “Higher levels of net imports resulted in very low gas output, while gas prices increased steadily following a decline in the previous quarter.”
Carbon Brief research showed that fossil fuel-generated electricity fell 22% in the UK in 2023, dropping to its lowest level since 1957. This decrease is likely to continue, particularly following a decline in coal-fired generation in Q1 2024 in line with the decommissioning of the last coal-fired power station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar. Our sister publication, Current±, recently reported that the power station had received its final shipment of coal. It is scheduled to close on 30 September this year.
