Britain's grid since May 2018
Every month and every UK day of Britain's carbon intensity and generation mix, from NESO's half-hourly figures: the same figures as the monthly reports, May 2018 to November 2026 so far. The files are made each time the site is published; these are as of 10 November 2026.
Every month (CSV, 103 rows) Every day (CSV, 3,106 rows)
Each month's report has that month's days to download too: November 2026, for one.
Every month: gb-grid-months.csv
| Column | What it is |
|---|---|
month | The UK calendar month, as 2026-10. |
status | final; provisional for a month that ended in the last 2 days, whose last figures NESO can still revise; in-progress for this month so far. |
avg_gco2_per_kwh | The month's average carbon intensity, in grams of CO₂ per kWh. |
min_gco2_per_kwh, min_at_utc | Its cleanest half hour, and when it began (UTC). |
max_gco2_per_kwh, max_at_utc | Its dirtiest half hour, and when it began (UTC). |
low_carbon_pct | The share of the electricity generated that came from wind, solar, nuclear, biomass and hydro, in %. |
wind_pct, gas_pct, nuclear_pct, solar_pct, biomass_pct, imports_pct, hydro_pct, coal_pct, other_pct | Each fuel's share of the electricity generated, in %. Imports count as one source, as NESO counts them, so the nine add up to 100. |
half_hours_recorded, half_hours_in_month | The half hours with a figure, and the month's half hours on UK clocks (a March has 1,486, an October 1,490). |
Every day: gb-grid-days.csv, and each month's
| Column | What it is |
|---|---|
date | The UK day, as 2026-10-25: midnight to midnight on UK clocks. |
avg_gco2_per_kwh | The day's average carbon intensity, in grams of CO₂ per kWh. |
low_carbon_pct, wind_pct, solar_pct, gas_pct | Shares of the electricity generated, in %. |
half_hours_recorded, half_hours_in_day | The half hours with a figure, and the day's: 48, or 46 when the clocks go forward and 50 when they go back. |
Every figure is NESO's for Great Britain (Northern Ireland has its own grid): the actual where NESO has published one, otherwise its forecast, averaged over the half hours by GridMonkey. The few half hours whose figure can't be right (0 g with gas running, say) are left out. The days file runs from the record's first day to the day the files were made, that last day only in part; a day NESO published nothing for is there, empty.
Every power station, wind farm and solar farm
For each of the 158 power stations, 163 wind farms and 8 solar farms GridMonkey follows, every finished UK day it has recorded, up to the last 12 months:
the energy generated, the average output and the load factor, and for a power station or solar farm its peak and its
hours running. GridMonkey began recording the power stations and wind farms on 17 October 2026 and the solar farms on
26 October 2026, so the files grow a day at a time to a year. Each one's page has its file, under Download and cite;
the address is /grid/station/<name>.csv for a power station or a solar farm and
/grid/farm/<name>.csv for a wind farm, with the name as in its page's address.
Drax (CSV)Hornsea 2 (CSV)Cleve Hill Solar Park (CSV)
Those are the biggest power station (Drax), wind farm (Hornsea 2) and solar farm (Cleve Hill Solar Park) on GridMonkey's lists that are running now. Find the rest from the power stations, wind farms and solar farms.
A wind farm's, power station's or solar farm's days
| Column | What it is |
|---|---|
date | The UK day, midnight to midnight on UK clocks. |
mwh | The energy generated in the half hours recorded: each half hour's output for half an hour, in MWh. A unit that told the grid nothing for a half hour counts as 0 MW then, as on the pages and in the league tables. |
avg_mw | The average output over the half hours recorded, in MW. |
load_factor_pct | That average as a share of the capacity on GridMonkey's list today, in %. Left empty for a wind farm or station still being built, or sending no power for months: the league tables leave those unranked, and the file's first line says why. |
peak_mw | Power stations and solar farms: the highest half hour's output, in MW (0 on a day it generated nothing). |
hours_running | Power stations and solar farms: the hours it generated at least 2% of its capacity (1 MW for the smallest). |
mwh_pumping, hours_pumping | Pumped storage: the energy it took from the grid to pump water uphill, in MWh, and the hours it pumped at least 2% of its capacity. |
mwh_charging, hours_charging | Batteries: the same while charging. |
half_hours_recorded, half_hours_in_day | The half hours GridMonkey recorded, and the day's: 48, or 46 and 50 when the clocks change. A day it recorded none of has empty figures; one with fewer than the day's has energy for those alone. |
The output is each unit's physical notification: what it told the grid it would generate in the half hour, an hour or so ahead, from Elexon. It is not metered output, which can differ (a unit can be asked to run harder or less hard in the hour itself), but it is the figure published for every unit as it happens.
Reading the files
Every file starts with four lines beginning with #: what it holds, where the figures come from, the
licences and the credit. A spreadsheet shows them as text above the table: delete them before you sort or filter.
Python and R can skip them as they read:
# Python (pandas)
import pandas as pd
months = pd.read_csv("gb-grid-months.csv", comment="#")
# R
months <- read.csv("gb-grid-months.csv", comment.char = "#")Numbers are plain, with a point for decimals and no thousands separators; dates are UK days, times are UTC, and an empty cell means there is no figure. The files are plain text (ASCII), so Excel opens them as they are.
Licence and credit
GridMonkey's files are yours to use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0): share them, chart them and build on them, commercially too. Credit GridMonkey by Energycount with a link to energycount.co.uk, or to the page the figures came from, and say if you changed them. (GridMonkey's own changes, summing NESO's half hours and leaving out the few that can't be right, are said in each file.)
The figures in them are NESO's and Elexon's, and their credits travel with them:
- Britain's carbon intensity and generation mix: NESO's Carbon Intensity API, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Each power station's, wind farm's and solar farm's output: Elexon's BMRS data. Contains BMRS data © Elexon Limited copyright and database right 2026, used under the BMRS licence. Keep that line with the figures wherever you publish them.
Neither NESO nor Elexon endorses GridMonkey or these files. They come with no warranty: GridMonkey records the feeds as they are published, gaps and all, so check anything that matters against the source.
How to cite
Each monthly report, power station, wind farm and solar farm page has a reference of its own to copy, under Download and cite. To cite the files, or GridMonkey's data as a whole, cite this page:
Cite this page (Harvard)
Energycount (2026) UK Grid Data to Download: Carbon, Mix and Output (CSV). Available at: https://energycount.co.uk/tools/grid-mix/data/ (Accessed: [date]).
Want the cleanest time to use electricity as a live feed instead? The GridMonkey API gives it for Britain, a region or a postcode, free.