It easily slipped under the radar earlier this week that Great Britain had, in the early morning of 28th April, broken its record for the longest period of electricity generation without coal.
The news came via energy data analyst EnAppSys, and we can collectively be forgiven for perhaps not giving this the attention it merited given the unprecedented challenges that we face all around the world right now. Make no mistake, however, about the significance of this development.
The previous record of 18 days, 6 hours and 10 minutes was set at 21:25pm on 4th June 2019, according to EnAppSys. This was marginally surpassed with the new record of just over 19 days; the last coal station to run was Drax unit 5 near Selby, which switched off at 23:35pm on 9th April 2020 – meaning that the record was surpassed at 05:45am on 28th April 2020 when coal power was drawn upon.
This week’s record set is attributed to a reduction in the size of the available generation fleet and low demand due to the coronavirus pricing coal out of the market.
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