In this blog, I focus on where our electricity came from across the whole of Christmas Day
On Christmas Day, this piece looked at how National Grid used gas stations and energy storage to turn all of our turkey ovens. Today, I focus on where our electricity came from across the whole day and on how much we actually consumed.
The pie chart below shows the total generation from each source on Christmas Day. If you include an estimate for embedded wind then you can see that wind was the biggest contributor to Britain’s electricity (34% in total). Nuclear provided 28% and Gas 18%.
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Remarkable and though provoking on the surface, these record numbers also show us something deeper about our electricity usage. On Christmas Day demand is much lower than a typical workday because most of our businesses close:
- On Thursday 22nd December, Britain consumed an estimated 971GWh of electricity versus 733GWh on Christmas Day (a 30% difference).
- Peak demand on 22nd December was 49GW versus 38GW on Christmas Day. A difference of around 5 million Asda Smart Price kettles!
Wind was high on Christmas Day but it was a combination of that with the low demand which meant that led to the record figures.
There are many conclusions that can be drawn from this. For me, Christmas Day 2016 shows that if Britain finds a 30% energy saving across residences and industry then that we can make a large inroads to our carbon goals, on the cost of generating electricity and the cost of moving power around the country.
I bet anyone reading this can think of one item where a more efficient appliance exists (a TV on standby, an old fashioned lightbulb etc.).
