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Earth Notes: GB Grid Intensity GREEN

Avoid running big appliances at home when the traffic lights are on RED and you'll reduce your carbon footprint!

 
 
Grid is good; you might run major loads such as your dishwasher and/or washing machine now to minimise CO2 emissions

You might have saved as much as 23% carbon emissions by choosing the best time to run your washing and other major loads.

Latest data is from Sat Jul 31 23:05:00 UTC 2010. This page should be updated every few minutes: use your browser's refresh/reload button if you need to check again.

Follow this grid status on Twitter @EarthOrgUK; 100 currently following.

This free service is in BETA and may be unavailable or withdrawn at any time and is provided "as-is" with no warranties of any kind.

This page shows the current "carbon intensity" of the GB National Grid (ie the England/Scotland/Wales portions of the UK electricity grid) as a simple traffic-light indicator. Carbon intensity is a measure of how much greenhouse-house gas (especially CO2 or carbon dioxide) is emitted to generate a fixed amount of electricity.

Anything other than a GREEN light suggests that you should consider deferring heavy loads (eg starting a dishwasher or washing-machine at home) because the carbon intensity is relatively high, or because of other factors. Avoiding running major appliances such as washing/heating/cooking during RED times will save CO2 emissions.

You should still conserve first: don't run things that don't need to be run at all, don't leave things on that can be turned off at the wall, run full loads in your washing machine and dishwasher, etc, etc, before worrying about carbon intensity.

Planning ahead: note that in the UK/GB peak demand for electricity will usually be 4pm to 9pm (and a lesser peak around 9am/10am), and peak carbon intensity is often around peak demand, so try to avoid big loads then; if possible run loads such as your dishwasher and washing machine overnight, eg on a delay timer or just as you go to bed.

Technical Stuff

You don't need to understand the numbers below, but some people like to see them!

Effective grid carbon intensity for a domestic user is currently 361gCO2/kWh including transmission and distribution losses of 9%.

Latest available grid generation carbon intensity (ignoring transmission/distribution losses) is approximately 331gCO2/kWh at Sat Jul 31 23:05:00 UTC 2010 over 25608MW of generation, with a rolling average over 24h of 357gCO2/kWh.

Minimum grid generation carbon intensity (ignoring transmission/distribution losses) was approximately 313gCO2/kWh at Sat Jul 31 04:30:00 UTC 2010.

Maximum grid generation carbon intensity (ignoring transmission/distribution losses) was approximately 402gCO2/kWh at Sat Jul 31 10:05:00 UTC 2010.

Average/mean grid generation carbon intensity (ignoring transmission/distribution losses) was approximately 357gCO2/kWh over the sample data set, with an effective end-user intensity including transmission and distribution losses of 389gCO2/kWh.

Recent mean GMT hourly generation intensity gCO2/kWh (average=357); *now (=331)
000102030405060708091011121314151617181920212223*
  • 326
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Mean GMT hourly generation GW (all, zero-carbon)
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  • 33
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  • 5

Current/latest fuel mix at Sat Jul 31 23:05:00 UTC 2010: CCGT@14881MW COAL@3234MW INTFR@1946MW INTIRL@0MW NPSHYD@142MW NUCLEAR@5161MW OCGT@0MW OIL@0MW OTHER@0MW PS@0MW WIND@244MW.

Generation by fuel category:

fossil
18115MW [CCGT, COAL, INTIRL, OCGT, OIL, OTHER]
nuclear
7107MW [INTFR, NUCLEAR]
renewable
386MW [NPSHYD, WIND]
storage
0MW [PS]
zero-carbon
5547MW [NPSHYD, NUCLEAR, WIND]

Overall generation intensity (kgCO2/kWh) computed using the following fuel intensities (other fuels/sources are ignored): CCGT=0.36 COAL=0.91 INTFR=0.09 INTIRL=0.7 NPSHYD=0.0 NUCLEAR=0.0 OCGT=0.48 OIL=0.61 OTHER=0.61 WIND=0.0.

Key to fuel codes:

CCGT
Combined-Cycle Gas Turbine
INTFR
French Interconnector
INTIRL
Irish Interconnector
NPSHYD
Non-Pumped-Storage Hydro
OCGT
Open-Cycle Gas Turbine
PS
Pumped Storage Hydro

Methodology

This estimates the the carbon intensity of generation connected to the National Grid GB (Great Britain) high-voltage transmission system, ignoring (pumped) storage and exports but including imports via interconnectors. This excludes 'embedded' generation, eg connected directly to the distribution system, such as small diesels, domestic microgeneration and a significant chunk of wind power, all of which also benefits from reduced transmission/distribution losses, so actual intensity may be somewhat different to (and probably lower than) that reported. However the emissions cost of each marginal/conserved kWh is probably accurately reflected.

This page updated at Sat Jul 31 23:06:13 UTC 2010; generation time 10500ms.

See also A Note On Variations in UK Grid Electricity CO2 Intensity with Time and National Grid: Electricity demand - Last 7 Days.

This free service may be unavailable or withdrawn at any time and is provided "as-is" with no warranties of any kind.
Some data used to generate this page is licensed from ELEXON.
Copyright © Damon Hart-Davis 2010. [home]