Live Grid Data
Current GB Electricity Generation & Imports
Grid data by category
% of installed generating capacity currently in use
Interconnector transfers (imports/exports)
The North Sea link interconnector between England and Norway opened in 2021 and is the world’s longest subsea electricity interconnector. It has a current capacity of 1400MW. Eleclink opened in 2022, has a capacity of 1200MW and runs through the channel tunnel.
UK energy & GHG data records
Increasing renewables in electricity generation 1996-2021
The decline of British coal
Greenhouse gas emissions 1990-2022
Carbon dioxide emissions by sector
Data Sources
Current generation data, except solar, is licensed and obtained from the Balancing Mechanism Reporting System (BMRS) API feed produced by Elexon. Solar and embedded wind generation data comes from the Electricity System Operator (ESO) (a division of National Grid) feed. Current generation data is updated at 10-minute intervals; embedded generation data and detailed transfers (imports/exports) data updates every 30 minutes. Historic generation data comes from UK Gov’t Electricity Statistics.
Implementation
Electricity generation information displayed on this page has been obtained from BMRS and ESO raw data feeds and stored and organised in Google spreadsheets. A Google apps script is triggered to run every 10 (BMRS) or 30 (National Grid) minutes to refresh the data feeds and update the spreadsheets. This web page uses JavaScript to retrieve data from the spreadsheets and the Google Charts library to produce the charts shown.