System Fuel Mix

About

The system fuel mix plotted levels of generation by fuel type based on National Grid Operationally Metered data. This is the most accurate source of fuel mix data and includes units not included elsewhere in this tool (for instance there are additional wind farms) as data for these units is not available except as part of this aggregate as it is not made publicly available.

Included Fuel Types

The included fuel types are as follows:

• Biomass - Designated by National Grid as the ‘Other’ class, but this class was at the time of writing only containing full biomass units (enhanced co-firing units are not included in this class).
• Britned Interconnector - ~1GW interconnector between Belgium and England, landing in the South East of England.
• CCGT - These are combined cycle gas turbine units and are the larger gas-fired units in the GB fuel mix. Also includes CHP units alongside units on beneficial contracts such as voltage control contracts so some units may see higher than otherwise would be expected levels of generation. The CCGT class can include baseloading (on 24 hours per day) all the way to peaking units.
• Coal - This includes coal-fired units. Coal units are typically baseloading units (on 24 hours per day).
• East-West Interconnector - ~0.5GW interconnector between the Republic of Ireland and England, landing in North Wales.
• French Interconnector - ~2GW interconnector between France and England, landing in the South East of England.
• Hydro - Run of river hydro plants (i.e. not pumped storage).
• Moyle Interconnector - ~0.5GW interconnector between Northern Ireland and England, landing in southern Scotland.
• OCGT - These are open cycle gas turbine units and are smaller gas-fired units that typically act as high priced peaking units. Gas engines are included in this class.
• Pumped Storage - These are units that will pump water uphill when the price is low and then use that water to generate power when the price is high with very fast response times.
• Wind - This class includes wind powered units and contains more units that those otherwise in this report as a number are embedded with no generation data, but visible through this stream. Beyond this stream there are an additional ~30% of additional embedded wind farms.

The SNSP plot is the System Non-Synchronous Penetration which is a measure used to track levels of non-synchronous generation from wind farms, solar and interconnectors.

This is measured as SNSP = (IMPORT + SOLAR + WIND) / (DEMAND + EXPORT).

Data Service

The System Fuel Mix data can be extracted from the API to extract the fuel mix data. The parameters used as follows: