Great Britain's electricity supply during lockdown.

28 April 2020

How did our electricity supply cope with the reduced demand?

In March, average demand was 30730MW and in w/c 13 April this had reduced by about 25% to 23545MW.

Over the week:

• Nuclear contributed 23.3% of demand and was steady at around 5500MW


• Wind contributed 19.1%, but varied from about 50% in the early hours of Monday morning, when demand was at a minimum, to under 10% over the next 24 hours and by Thursday this had dropped to less than 5% of demand


• Biomass contributed 9.4%, being used most when wind was lowest


• There was considerable input via interconnectors, at 12.9% on average. It must be assumed that imported electricity was cheap as continental countries were also in lockdown


• It was still up to gas (CCGT) to meet the peak demands and, even at these low levels of demand, remain the major contributor at 32.4% of demand.

What would have we done if we had not had CCGT Gas? Even a massive increase in wind capacity would not have kept the lights on.