Avoid running big appliances at home when the traffic lights are on RED and you'll reduce your carbon footprint!
| Grid is OK; but you could still avoid CO2 emissions by postponing running big appliances such as dishwashers or washing machines |
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You might have saved as much as 20% carbon emissions by choosing the best time to run your washing and other major loads.
Latest data is from Sun Apr 20 08:10:00 UTC 2014. This page should be updated every few minutes: use your browser's refresh/reload button if you need to check again.
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This free service is in BETA and may be unavailable or withdrawn at any time and is provided "as-is" with no warranties of any kind.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 especially on week days in winter (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.
(Shifting loads to the night when energy is going into grid-scale storage such as pumped hydro, avoids pulling it out when you would otherwise run/dispatch the load, and thus saves round-trip losses of ~25%.)
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 453gCO2/kWh including transmission and distribution losses of 7%.
Latest available grid generation carbon intensity (ignoring transmission/distribution losses) is approximately 423gCO2/kWh at Sun Apr 20 08:10:00 UTC 2014 over 28959MW of generation, with a rolling average over 24h of 426gCO2/kWh.
Minimum grid generation carbon intensity (ignoring transmission/distribution losses) was approximately 370gCO2/kWh at Sun Apr 20 05:15:00 UTC 2014.
Maximum grid generation carbon intensity (ignoring transmission/distribution losses) was approximately 460gCO2/kWh at Sat Apr 19 13:15:00 UTC 2014.
Average/mean grid generation carbon intensity (ignoring transmission/distribution losses) was approximately 426gCO2/kWh over the sample data set, with an effective end-user intensity including transmission and distribution losses of 456gCO2/kWh.
| Recent mean GMT hourly generation intensity gCO2/kWh (average=426); *now (=423) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 00 | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08* |
| Mean GMT hourly generation GW (all, zero-carbon) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Current/latest fuel mix at Sun Apr 20 08:10:00 UTC 2014: CCGT@3403MW COAL@10924MW INTEW@0MW INTFR@1998MW INTIRL@0MW INTNED@998MW NPSHYD@453MW NUCLEAR@7698MW OCGT@0MW OIL@0MW OTHER@759MW PS@307MW WIND@2419MW.
Current draw-down from storage is 307MW.
Generation by fuel category (may overlap):
Overall generation intensity (kgCO2/kWh) computed using the following fuel intensities (other fuels/sources are ignored): CCGT=0.36 COAL=0.91 INTEW=0.45 INTFR=0.09 INTIRL=0.45 INTNED=0.55 NPSHYD=0.0 NUCLEAR=0.0 OCGT=0.48 OIL=0.61 OTHER=0.3 WIND=0.0.
Rolling correlation of fuel use against grid intensity (-ve implies that this fuel reduces grid intensity for non-callable sources): CCGT=0.8404 COAL=0.9693 INTEW=-0.1752 INTFR=0.7893 INTIRL=-0.4661 INTNED=0.7828 NPSHYD=0.5851 NUCLEAR=-0.1080 OTHER=0.8352 WIND=-0.8066.
Key to fuel codes:
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 Sun Apr 20 08:11:07 UTC 2014; generation time 4546ms.
See also:
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Some data used to generate this page is licensed from ELEXON.
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