Power
See below for:
- How electric power is being supplied
- The future of renewable generation
- Our gas supply and its future
- How heat pumps may replace gas boilers.
ELECTRICITY SOLAR AND WIND
https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live is an amazing site.
If you scroll down the web page, you will see how the proportion of electricity has been generated
If you click on the three lines on the top left of the page and go to Live and then Map you are then able to untick Select All. I then did tick Waste to see the Waste to Energy units in Bristol that convert waste from London into energy.
On a phone it is worthwhile downloading the NESO App (National Energy Systems Operator) The screen shot shows 58% Zero Carbon generation
The last UK coal powered electric power station closed down October 2024. It only took 15 years for the UK to go from three quarters coal to no coal. Coal is very polluting.
Our web site Climate Change Info was launched in 2022 with information mostly from 2021.
What a change in only five years. In the last 10 years the cost of Solar and Batteries has dropped by 90%
There are over 1.85 million houses with Solar installed on their roofs in the UK with over 200,000 installed in 2025 breaking the last record in 2011.
11-12-25 https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/batteries-now-cheap-enough-to-deliver-solar-when-it-is-needed/ See the graph
Batteries are now cheap enough to deliver solar energy when it is needed. So, in sunny countries solar power with battery storage can now give 24 hours of electric supply.
This is a major breakthrough for a country that does not have an electric supply as the cost of putting in the National Grid cables is not required.
In the UK we do not have that amount of sunshine and thus wind power is important. However, the increased use of storage batteries reduces the need of gas power during peak power requirements which is very expensive.
Wind Power
Wind installations World Wide 2024 with China at 521 Gig Watts and UK 30 Gig Watts. (The UK usage is a comparable proportion to that of China). This chart shows the huge increase in wind renewable power
UK land Wind Turbine power is on an average 40% of the time and offshore is 60%. There are about 9,000 land wind turbines and about 2,800 offshore wind turbines. The original land wind turbines were about 3.5 MW (Million Watts).
There is a shallow area of the North Sea called the Dogger Bank and the 300 wind turbines being installed at present are 12 MW each. The tip of the blade vertically is 260 metres above sea level. The Gurkin tower in London is 180 metres high and the Eiffel Tower in Paris is 312 metres high. To see them must be an amazing sight when compared to the 3.5 MW turbines on the land at 100 metres high.
The Dogger bank Wind Turbine project A, B and C is expected to be completed in 2026 and will be 3.6 Gig Watts in power and will cost about £9 billion with very little ongoing maintenance costs and has taken only four years to build.
The Nuclear power station being built at Hinkley Point C in Somerset is taking12+ years to build and at 3.26 Gig Watt is costing over £46 billion pounds with very large ongoing costs.
Two more Nuclear power stations are being built at Sizewell C in Suffolk and Wylfa, Anglesey North Wales. The building of these nuclear power stations are replacing our existing ones which do not have many years of life left.
However, with the drop in the price of Wind power and particularly the dramatic drop in the price of Solar and Battery power I do not see much of a future of Nuclear in our power mix. They are very expensive to build, have large ongoing costs and take a very long time to build.
Gas Power
The gas power stations are called Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) where they recycle the waste heat to obtain an efficiency of 60%. (Note as of 2026 many of these gas power stations are getting old but there is shortage of new turbines available to replace them). The price of electricity is high with us dependent on world gas prices and we rely on imports from abroad. About 45% from Norway, our own supply of 38% from the North Sea and Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) from USA and other countries by ship of about 17%.
A wind turbine company may be paid about £80 per MW hour but a gas turbine company is paid about £144 per MW hour. Unfortunately, historically everyone has been paid the same as the highest price electric supplier which is gas. This is why our electric prices are so high. Today in February 2026 due to high winds gas was only 17% of the power mix for the country. The belief is that when renewables become the dominant % then the price of gas will not set the price. Spain is getting near to this happening.
There is a lot of misunderstanding of the cost of renewables. The coal stations that were closed down were old and would have needed to be replaced. The government does Contracts For Difference (CFD) where the Government guarantees a price but if the supplier is paid more than this price they have to pay the difference back to the Government.
The Government does an auction each year and in 2025 there was 5 gig watts granted of contracts and 2026 8 gig watt of contracts. There are plans for the UK to work with European countries to install 100 Gig Watt of wind turbines in the North Sea all interconnected with each other and the countries to give security of supply. That leads me onto Heat Pumps. We need much more renewable energy to replace gas boilers with heat pumps.
Heat Pumps
Air to Water Heat Pumps are refrigerators in reverse where heat is extracted from the outside air and the water for the radiators is heated. It is more of a problem where a house has solid walls. See on this web site the Insulation Section about Wall Rock Internal Insulation Wall Liner.
2026 there is a £7,500 grant from the Government towards the installation of a heat pump to replace a gas boiler. The house holder of a modern cavity wall house may need to pay about £4,500 on top of the grant but that is not much more than the cost of replacing a gas boiler. With a solid wall house, it may cost an additional £5,000 for a larger heat pump but I would suggest having Wall Rock Internal Insulation Wall Liner fitted at about £6,000 reducing the loss of heat through the walls by 25% and saving on the cost of running a larger Heat Pump
We had four heat waves in 2026 so I was very pleased when the Government announced a grant of £2,500 for Air to Air Heat Pumps (I.E Air Conditioning). We take for granted seeing businesses being cooled and heated by Air Conditioning equipment. I had a quote for the lounge in our house to have a unit fitted and the engineer said that 800 watts of electricity produces 2,400 watts of equivalent heat.
The Government quote that replacing a gas boiler with an Air To Air Heat Pump for a two-bed flat should cost £4,500 and so with the grant of £2,500 it will cost the householder £2,000. Our body temperature is 37 degrees so if a heat wave over that temperature lasts for a long time it can become dangerous especially for frail older people. That is why I am pleased to see this avenue of replacing a gas boiler and having air conditioning as well as heating. It is also very important for an electric heated flat as there is not the cost of fitting radiators.