Where Britain's power is coming from right now

How live is this?

The pie updates every half hour because Britain's true national mix includes the solar power made on rooftops and in fields — which isn't metered directly, so it's published once per half-hour settlement period by National Grid ESO.

Demand and interconnector flows update every 5 minutes — that's Elexon's FUELINST feed, about as close to real time as public GB grid data gets. It only covers large transmission-connected stations, so it leaves out solar. Flip the pie to “Transmission · 5-min” to see that faster, solar-free view.

Carbon intensity is National Grid ESO's half-hourly figure for the grams of CO₂ behind every kilowatt-hour you use.

In the National view the mix is published only as percentages, so the power (GW) in each tooltip is estimated — the share applied to Britain's live total output (including the embedded solar and wind that isn't transmission-metered). In the Transmission view the GW figures are exact, straight from the 5-minute feed.

By company / power station / wind farm groups live per-unit output (Elexon Physical Notifications) using the BM Unit register that maps each unit to its owner, station and fuel. It covers transmission-connected generators — the big stations like Drax and Sizewell and the major wind farms (London Array, Hornsea, Dogger Bank…) — so shares are of transmission-metered output, and smaller embedded units aren't included. The wind-farm view lists every metered farm and how hard it's running versus its capacity, and its By owner toggle rolls the farms up to their parent company (Ørsted, SSE, RWE, ScottishPower, Vattenfall, Ocean Winds…) — approximate, since many are joint ventures, so it shows the operator or majority owner.