With gusts of 99mph recorded by the Met Office on Sunday evening (21 January) wind generation in Britain increased to more than 50% of generation.
This jump was shown through National Grid ESO’s (ESO) GB electricity mix data, as published on X, which showed that wind produced 26.5% of Britain’s electricity mix on Thursday (18 January) but leapt to 56.7% on Sunday (21 January).
According to ESO data, Sunday also represented the second time in January that wind replaced gas in supplying the majority of Britain’s electricity mix – the first being on 15 January.
As illustrated by the graph above, the vault in wind generation coincided with a significant drop in gas’ share of Britain’s electricity mix – which had hitherto been hovering around a rough average of 51% – to drop to 16.7% – less than half the previous low of 37.2% recorded on 15 January.
Imports also rose to a new high this month on Sunday making up 11.2% of Britain’s electricity mix, up from 2.3% on 18 January and beating the previous high of 8.6% on 13 January.
Wind continues to be Britain’s renewable powerhouse, becoming the second largest contributor to Britain’s electricity mix in 2023 at 29.4%, beaten by gas by only 2.6%.
